Daily Bruin File Photo Albert
Carnesale
By Robert Salonga
Daily Bruin Staff
Chancellor Albert Carnesale addressed potential admissions
changes, university budget cuts and UC enrollment in an interview
with the Daily Bruin Friday.
He first tackled the issue of comprehensive review, a proposed
system-wide admissions plan designed to consider a student’s
personal situation in addition to academic criteria.
Currently, students in the University of California are admitted
under a two-tier system in which 50 to 75 percent of the admitted
class is accepted based solely on academic criteria.
Under comprehensive review ““ which the UC Regents will
vote on this week in San Francisco ““ all applicants are
reviewed in terms of academic performance, personal achievement
““ such as leadership and extracurricular activities ““
and life challenges, including socioeconomic background and family
contexts.
“UCLA has had a relatively comprehensive review over the
last several years, and this will allow us to go further,”
Carnesale said.
The chancellor said the effect of comprehensive review on the
types of students admitted is not clear.
“It will lead to greater diversity in that you will be
able to identify characteristics in some students that might have
been missed earlier because they weren’t read,” he
said.
One of the main components of the plan is to increase the number
of readers for applications, who will now review an
applicant’s entire folder to take into account non-academic
accomplishments.
He said the plan will not make a large difference in terms of
the numbers of students admitted.
“Some students who may have not gotten in before will get
in now, and vice versa,” Carnesale said. “But that
remains to be seen.”
Carnesale also said the university’s current hiring freeze
would not affect implementation of comprehensive review. On Nov. 1,
UCLA instituted a partial hiring freeze in response to two
executive orders made by Gov. Gray Davis because of the downturn in
the state economy.
“One category of exception to the hiring freeze are those
that are essential to the education mission,” he said.
“There is no problem with the hiring freeze to get the people
we need to perform the tasks to implement this new
system.”
Carnesale went on to answer a letter submitted to the Bruin
asking why the university was not considering capping enrollment in
response to the dramatically increasing numbers of students
admitted. This increase is dubbed Tidal Wave II, an influx of
60,000 students into the UC over the next decade.
“The UC has accepted as its obligation finding a place in
the system for every UC-eligible student,” he said.
“(Capping enrollment is) a step only to be taken in
extreme circumstances, if the resources available took such a
downturn that it would adversely affect the education of all of the
students,” Carnesale added. “We’re not at that
point.”
He addressed additional budget cutbacks in the midst of the
economic downturn. Davis advised all state agencies to prepare for
a 15 percent budget cut, at the discretion of the regents, who will
vote on the issue next week.
“We will not know even for the remainder of the
year,” Carnesale said. “There’s likely to be a
mid-year reduction, but we have no feeling about how
large.”
It is the chancellor’s duty to allocate both resources and
cuts throughout the university, under advisement from the
campus’ respective deans and provosts. Carnesale said the
university “would not make arbitrary across-the-board
cuts.”
Regarding the current war on terrorism, Carnesale, who in the
past has served as a consultant in international affairs and
security to several U.S. presidential administrations and who now
leads a Sept. 11 seminar, offered his insights on the war in
Afghanistan.
“I hope that the American people realize that any strategy
like this has to be long-term, that it’s even hard to define
what victory means in this context,” he said. “This is
a problem that has to be managed; it’s not a problem
that’s going to be solved.”
The chancellor also discussed non-academic issues facing the
campus. Last week, UCLA star running back DeShaun Foster was
suspended from the football team when he violated NCAA regulations
for receiving “extra benefits,” though details of the
case are still pending. Carnesale would not give his opinion on
that specific case, citing lack of details, but suggested more
could be done to prevent future incidents of violations.
“There may be other things we can do to impress even more
on our student-athletes the dangers that are here,” he said.
“But I know (athletic department officials) are looking at it
to see what else can be done.”