Admissions standards for the University of California are designed to accept the top 12.5% of high school graduates in the state. In response to a recent report revealing that in fact 14.4% of the graduates now meet those requirements, the Board of Regents has been considering raising the minimum GPA required from 2.8 to 3.1. That decision has now been delayed.
The shift would lower eligibility rates for all ethnic groups. However, critics have been particularly concerned about the affect on black and Hispanic students, since those groups already are underrepresented at UC.
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UC officials calculate that raising the GPA, along with other proposed procedural changes, would mean that the rate of black high school graduates eligible for UC would drop from 6.3 percent to 4.7 percent. Hispanic eligibility rates would drop from 6.5 percent to 5.5 percent. The percentage of white students qualifying for UC would drop from 16.1 percent to 14.2 percent; for Asians the rate would drop from 31.4 percent to 27.8 percent.
The changes won’t affect most students who try to get into UC; 75 percent of applicants have GPAs of 3.5 or higher.
The solution to this dilemma seems obvious: simply require higher grades and test scores of whites and Asians. Oh, wait. That’s what affirmative action is, but it was made illegal in California by Proposition 209. Well surely creative admissions offices can find ways of doing under the table what they used to do in plain sight.
“The solution to this dilemma seems obvious: …”
You’re right, it is obvious, but somehow you failed to hit on it: put a stop to the mass immigration that is overwhelming California, including the UC system, which has not built a new campus since UC Santa Cruz opened in 1965, a period during which the population of the state has doubled, from about 18 million to around 35 million, where it stands today. And more than 90% of this growth is due to immigration and the children of immigrants.
And speaking of underrepresentation and affirmative action, whites are still the largest ethnic group in California, and yet Asians outnumber them on the two most prestigious UC campuses: UC Berkeley and UCLA. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for calls to redress that imbalance; neither should you.
Asians have a history of discrimination on a par with hispanics and not much worse than blacks. How do they qualify at rates so much higher than everyone else?
Could it be cultural issues? Then the solution is not screwing with the college admissions standards. It lies in teaching parents how to raise their young children with some of those same cultural standards.