“While Proposition 209 promoted race neutrality in university student recruitment, admissions, financial aid, student academic support and employee hiring, the policy has made it more challenging to erase equity and opportunity gaps that exist in the CSU,” the university said in a statement. At Cal State Los Angeles - with an 80% admission rate - 72% of students are Latino, 11% Asian, 4% Black and 4% white. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo - with a 31% admission rate in fall 2021 - 53% of undergraduates are white, 19% Latino, 14% Asian and 1% Black. William Kidder, a UC Riverside civil rights investigator, recalled his shock when he entered UC Berkeley law school in 1998 and found that his first-year class of 270 included only six or seven Black students, compared with four times that many in the class two years ahead of him enrolled before Proposition 209.īut diversity varies, with proportions of Latino and Black students lower at several of the more selective CSU campuses. In 1998, the first admissions year affected by the ban, the number of California Black and Latino first-year students plunged by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley. Initially, Proposition 209 drastically reduced diversity at UC’s most competitive campuses. “Affirmation action is hands down the best tool we have for maintaining racial and ethnic diversity in colleges in the United States.” “You are talking about the devastation of the American admissions process for students of color, full stop,” said Pomona College President G. Many experts predict the court’s conservative majority will strike down race-based preferences in a case that could affect not only higher education, but potentially the workplace as well. “And so it’s worth it.”įor some private universities, which are allowed to use affirmative action, the looming high court decision is causing consternation. “While California has not identified a really effective policy to promote diversity other than affirmative action, it has shown experimentation is beneficial for targeted students,” said Zachary Bleemer, a Yale University assistant professor of economics and research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. But after passage of Proposition 209 touched off UC’s 25-year slog of trial and error - plus a massive investment of more than a half-billion dollars on diversity measures - a meaningful difference can be made. The California takeaway: Nothing can fully substitute for affirmative action practices that allow universities to admit a diverse student body, including using income and parent educational levels as proxies for race. Supreme Court opens oral arguments Monday on whether to strike down affirmative action in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, UC’s long struggle to bring diversity to its 10 campuses offers lessons on the promise and limitations of race-neutral admission practices.
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