Study group to report on admissions issues
UC President Dynes appoints panel to advise Regents, Academic Senate
| 05 November 2003
University of California President Robert C. Dynes has asked a 17-member Eligibility and Admissions Study Group to examine the undergraduate eligibility and admissions implementation issues that UC will face through 2010.
In his three-page charge letter to the group, Dynes wrote: “From its inception, the mission of the University of California has been to enroll a student body that both encompasses the most academically qualified of California’s high school graduates and that reflects the broad diversity of the state’s population. . . . Never before in the university’s long history has this mission been more challenging or important to fulfill.”
In addition to UC facing unprecedented challenges brought on by budget cuts and a burgeoning student population, its admissions policies recently have been the subject of considerable analysis by UC Board of Regents’ chairman John J. Moores.
Dynes’ letter instructs the study group to keep in mind “the historic tradition of shared governance in which admissions is the prerogative of the faculty” and advise the Academic Senate and the Board of Regents in March on:
• eligibility policies and criteria and related issues related to the forthcoming California Postsecondary Education Commission (CPEC) study;
• implementation of existing regental eligibility and admissions policies;
• methods to achieve greater efficiencies in UC’s admissions policies, including ways to communicate with the public more clearly about eligibility criteria, selection practices, and admissions policies.
The study group was suggested to Dynes early last summer by Regent Joanne Corday Kozberg, who will co-chair the group with UC Senior Vice President of University Affairs Bruce B. Darling.
Dynes stressed that the following principles must guide the work of the study group:
• The University of California is a public institution with a unique mission as expressed by regents’ resolution RE-28, which states that, “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”;
• the quality of the university must be maintained;
• UC must continue to recognize that competition for admission to the nation’s finest universities has never been more intense and this causes great anxiety for parents and students. The university has an obligation to increase the transparency of the admissions process for each campus and to measure the academic impact of all facets of comprehensive review;
• comprehensive review will remain in effect, requiring every applicant to be evaluated in a broad range of academically relevant areas and in light of the educational opportunities available to them.
The other 15 members of the group are: Regents Richard Blum, John Davies, Odessa Johnson, Monica Lozano, and John Moores; Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Paul Gray, UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale, UC Santa Cruz Chancellor M.R.C. Greenwood, UC Academic Council chair Lawrence Pitts, Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools chair Barbara Sawrey, student Regent-designate Jodi Anderson, UC Student Association chair Matt Kaczmarek, Provost and Senior Vice President C. Judson King, UC Irvine Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, and former UC Associate President Patrick Hayashi.
Additional information on this topic can be found online at www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/compreview/update.html.
In addition, a summary of the UC Berkeley admissions controversy, with links to news articles, UC reports, and other resources pertaining to admissions criteria and comprehensive review, is on the Berkeley NewsCenter site at www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/
10/31_admit.shtml.