UC Berkeley Web Feature

President Dynes' report on admissions

Status report on eligibility and admissions, delivered by UC President Robert C. Dynes to the UC Board of Regents, meeting Nov. 19, 2003, at UCLA.

Madame Chair and members, I'm pleased to give you a brief report on the status of eligibility and admissions issues at the University.

As you know, we will be confronting a number of issues in this area over the coming months. The issues include:

• continued growth in the college-age population,
• potential budget constraints on enrollments, and
• the periodic CPEC study of the eligibility rates being achieved by UC and CSU.

In addition, we have the questions that Regent Moores has raised.

I have commissioned a Study Group to look in-depth at these issues of eligibility and admissions. It is important that we provide more clarity to parents and students about our current policies, and greater understanding more generally abut the direction in which we are heading.

The idea for this Study Group originally was Regent Kozberg's, and I have asked her to co-chair the group along with Senior Vice President Bruce Darling.

There are 15 other members of the Study Group, and I'd like to take this opportunity to name them and to thank them for their service. They are:

• Regents Blum, Davies, Johnson, Lozano, and Moores;
• Chancellors Carnesale and Greenwood;
• Academic Council Chair Larry Pitts and BOARS Chair Barbara Sawrey;
• Student Regent-Designate Jodi Anderson and UCSA Chair Matt Kaczmarek;
• Provost King;
• Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor Paul Gray;
• UCI Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez;
• and former Associate President Patrick Hayashi.

I have convened this group fully cognizant of the fact that the Regents have delegated authority to the Academic Senate over admissions issues.

• Faculty responsibility for admissions criteria, with appropriate Regental oversight, has worked very well for the University of California for many years.
• The faculty are in the classroom and are responsible on a day-to-day level for the academic quality of the institution. They are well-positioned to know the standards we should expect of the students we admit.

I believe, however, that this Study Group will help inform our future discussions and will help develop a more thorough understanding of these issues across many segments of the University of California community.

The group is scheduled to have its first meeting later today, and the Regents and the public will be updated regularly on its progress.

At this time, however, I would like to spend a couple of minutes reiterating my own goals for the Study Group.

I have asked the Study Group to look at three things:

• our eligibility criteria and issues related to the forthcoming CPEC study;
• implementation of existing Regental eligibility and admissions policies; and
• methods to achieve greater efficiencies in UC's admissions policies, as well as ways to communicate with the public more clearly about eligibility criteria, selection practices, and admissions policies.

Let me now lay out for you, in the very clearest terms, the four principles that I believe must guide the work of the Study Group:

• First, comprehensive review is and shall remain the admissions policy of the University of California, requiring every applicant to be evaluated in a broad range of academically relevant areas and in light of the educational opportunities available to them.
   
  This is the right policy for a selective university in America today, and it is a policy adopted overwhelmingly by the Regents.
• Second, the quality of the University must be maintained. But to me, the quality of the institution means several things:
  • It means the caliber of the faculty and the research they conduct ...
  • It means the characteristics of the students we attract ...
  • It means the character of the student experience ...
  • It means the impact of the institution on the society around it ...
  • And quality also is measured by who is participating in all of this – Who is touched by the work of the University and whether they are broadly representative of the society that supports the University in the first place. People at the University of California are not an elite and separate subgroup, but a community of scholars and learners who will benefit all of California.
• Third, UC must continue to recognize that competition for admission to the nation's finest universities has never been more intense and that this causes great anxiety for parents and students. The University has an obligation to clarify for students and their parents how the admissions process works on each campus and to measure the academic impact of all facets of comprehensive review.
• And finally, UC is a public institution with a unique mission as expressed by Regents' resolution RE-28, which said: "The University shall seek out and enroll, on each of its campuses, a student body that demonstrates high academic achievement or exceptional personal talent, and that encompasses the broad diversity of backgrounds characteristic of California."
   
  This means maintaining our historic commitment to enroll a student body that both encompasses the highest-achieving California students and draws them from all walks of life and all Corners of the state.
   
  High quality and broad access, together, have been our historic mandate – and they must remain so.

I'd like to make one further point.

Much of the discussion around these issues in recent weeks has focused on data. I am a scientist, and data is an important part of my own life. Data will, indeed, be an important part of the Study Group's deliberations.

But I would observe that many questions about college admissions ultimately boil down to questions about values and institutional objectives, not data. For instance:

• What are the public responsibilities of a highly selective public university in America today?
• What does quality mean, and how is it best measured?
• What impact do admissions decisions have on the educational environment on campus?

There clearly are different philosophical approaches to these questions, and I suspect that those differing approaches – not data disagreements – are at the heart of the discussion that has been occurring for the past several weeks.

I would encourage the group to look not only at the data, but also at what we are trying to achieve at the University, and the extent to which our policies support that mission.

Madame Chair, that concludes my presentation.