In 1997, African Americans accounted for 5.4% of all admitted freshmen who filed intent-to-register statements. This year, they accounted for only 2%. |
UCLA faces crisis in black enrollment
BY ANNE BURKE
Today Staff Writer
While the identity of Chancellor Albert Carnesale’s permanent successor remains unknown, one thing is certain about UCLA’s next leader: The crisis in African-American enrollment will loom large on his or her agenda.
Carnesale, who steps down June 30, calls the dearth of African-American faces among UCLA students “one of two critical challenges facing the university” alongside the need for increased financial resources.
“There is no question in my mind that my successor must be committed to meeting this challenge head-on,” Carnesale said in a June 5 letter to members of the UCLA Afrikan Student Union, who met with the chancellor June 2 following a student demonstration. “Educational opportunities should be equally available to all students in California, and UCLA should more nearly reflect the demography of our state.”
Declining African-American enrollment has vexed UCLA since Proposition 209, which bars the use of race or ethnicity in admissions, took effect in August 1997. The issue heated up recently with the release of data showing that only 96 African-American students admitted as freshmen this fall intend to enroll.
That’s a 17% decline from the previous year and the lowest number since 1973. Only UC San Diego, with 52, and UC Merced, with 33, have fewer African-American admittees intending to enroll as freshmen this fall. UC Berkeley has 140.
In his letter, Carnesale noted that the number of both African-American transfer students and freshman applicants has increased significantly from 2005 to 2006. But the overall picture remains bleak. The chancellor and other leaders fear that the decline is so precipitous that it could set in motion an uncontrollable downward spiral in the African-American presence on campus.
“This is deadly serious,” agreed Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA. “A lot of these students no longer see UCLA as a welcoming environment for African-American students, so it gets worse and worse every year.”
While all agree there is an urgent need to reverse the decline, opinions differ on how it should be done.
With affirmative action now banned, UCLA officials say the solution lies in widening the pool of UC-eligible African-American high school students through stronger support for public schools and more intense academic preparation programs. The latter is difficult, notes Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Janina Montero. State funding for academic preparation programs has been slashed by more than half over the last three years, she said.
In search of ideas and recommendations, UCLA is talking with the UC Office of the President and prominent black alumni and community members “who are appropriately concerned about this issue and want to work with us,” Montero said.
Carnesale said he expects that the Academic Senate’s Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, which helps guide UCLA’s admissions process, will “review our policies as well as best practices at other institutions to see whether changes would be appropriate.” Also contributing to the dialogue will be a group of faculty and students that has been studying the problem since last fall.
Hunt says the solution lies in fixing an admissions process that is unfair to underrepresented minorities. In a report released this month, Bunche Center authors faulted UCLA for relying heavily on SAT scores and GPA while “personal achievements and life challenges are accorded marginal roles.”
The Bunche Center report concludes that UC Berkeley’s version of comprehensive review — the system by which applicants are judged on both academic and non-academic criteria — is fairer because a single evaluator looks at an applicant’s entire file and judges all criteria as a whole. At UCLA, academic achievement and personal accomplishments are evaluated by different reviewers.
To read the Bunche Center report, visit www.bunche.ucla.edu/frames/index.html.
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