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Losing UC outreach would devastate state

BY JEANNIE OAKES

In the frantic rush of state budget cuts, the governor’s office has targeted the college hopes of more than 110,000 elementary and secondary school students around the state. On average, these students attend schools that send the fewest students to four-year colleges and universities. Slated for elimination is UC outreach, a small piece of the UC budget that helps schools do a better job of preparing college-hopeful students to become college-ready high school graduates.

The loss of UC outreach would be devastating to the state. California’s future depends on university research and innovations in education aimed at ensuring that the state’s most disadvantaged students have a fair chance to get the college education they need for tomorrow’s jobs.

Students participating in outreach typically have the fewest qualified teachers, the most overcrowded classrooms and the least safe conditions at their schools. Outreach concentrates on bringing them opportunities that many other students take for granted: access to high-quality courses, academic counseling, mentoring and even information about following a path to a UC campus by transferring from community college. These programs are effective; 40% of the African-American and Latino freshmen currently at UC campuses participated in outreach programs while they were in school.

Juliana Carranza, a first year pre-psychology major at UCLA, participated in a student-initiated outreach project. “I don’t think I would be here at UCLA if it wasn’t for them. They pushed me.” The daughter of immigrants and the first in her family to go to a university, Juliana found in outreach the direction she needed to attend college. “I had potential, but I didn’t know how to apply to college. My parents didn’t know either, so how could they help me?”

Outreach is far more than a recruitment program designed to attract students to the university. It’s California’s way of bringing the practical research and technical resources of its great university to address the state’s educational needs and crises. Outreach programs work on the entire education system. They offer professional development programs that increase teachers’ and administrators’ effectiveness. They generate new research and policy solutions for reducing disparities in California’s education system. Outreach expands the college horizons and the college skills of highly capable students who otherwise would have little understanding of or access to what they need to succeed in college. To this end, UC faculty, staff and students are not simply advisers or experts; they roll up their sleeves and are active partners in the daily affairs and challenges of local schools.

Eliminating outreach will not dent the budget deficit. The effect will be largely symbolic, and the message to California’s most disadvantaged students will be that the state cares little about their future.

It is these very students upon whom the state must rely to recapture and preserve California’s prosperity and educational preeminence. Outreach is a small price to pay (far less than 1% of the university’s budget) to guarantee that the university’s greatness and opportunities reach the students in the state whose schools provide them the fewest opportunities.

Oakes is Presidential Professor of Education at UCLA and directs the UC All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD) as well as UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education & Access.