Lessons from the UC – A 25 Year Experiment for Race Neutral Admissions Processes

By Giselle Garcia '23, Legal Fellow for the Aoki Center for Critical Race and Nation Studies.

On August 14, 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration issued two resources for colleges and universities now forced to navigate the Court’s holding in Students for Fair Admissions: that consideration of race “in and of itself” as a factor in college admission processes violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, and the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, published a Dear Colleague letter and Questions and Answers guide to provide an early interpretative framework of the holding and proposed ways colleges and universities can still achieve diversification goals. The Dear Colleague letter expressed the Departments’ commitment to supporting institutions of higher learning who aim for student body diversification, and highlighted that initiative, focused energy, and creative approaches will be required of institutions to achieve this goal. The Q & A guide provides an excellent explanation on how admissions can still use a holistic approach to assess how race has affected the applicant’s life which positioned them to contribute to the campus’ educational environment in unique ways, and recommends other ways campuses can use outreach and retention efforts to achieve racial diversity goals. What can and should schools do? The Biden-Harris Administration’s Q & A recommends schools to:

• Consider the full range of circumstances a student has faced in achieving their accomplishments, which include financial means, socioeconomic status, their neighborhood and high school, and experiences of adversity.
• Employ targeted outreach, retention, and pathway programs, which are not restricted from considering race when identifying prospective students—so long as those identified groups are not treated with preference during the admission process—and consider directing efforts toward schools which serve predominately students of color with limited financial means, low-performing schools, schools where large percentages of students receive free or reduced lunch, or geographic areas such as rural or urban communities. Colleges and universities can also partner with select schools to provide mentorship and programs to promote academic exposure for students.
• Retention strategies should include fostering a sense of belonging and support to underrepresented students once on campus. This can be done through the school’s resources such as its office of diversity and campus cultural centers, or support of student clubs and affinity groups, so long as these services are available to all students.
• Continue to collect demographic data on their student applicant pool, admission outcomes, enrollment, and retention to then review and refine outreach and recruitment efforts, as well as ensure their admissions process are not discriminating based on any protected category.
• Make admissions processes holistic to increase access for underserved populations by considering factors such as whether the applicant is first-gen, Pell-grant eligible, or if their application fees, standardized testing requirements and pre-requisites are creating barriers for applicants. Schools should also consider whether legacy admissions promote or stifle equal opportunity.

The UC has employed these recommendations over the course of 25 years—adopting a holistic and comprehensive admissions review process, and a variety of outreach and retention initiatives which rely on socioeconomic and other background factors such as whether students are first generation college attendees—and its project is worthy of evaluation for institutions who wish to improve their admissions practices under the current race-neutral standard. The Amici Brief submitted to the Court from the President and Chancellors of the University of California suggests that these recommendations require an aggressive approach and investment of financial resources to work. The brief recognizes that despite an increase in efforts to diversify admissions immediately following California’s prohibition of race conscious admissions in 1996 through Prop 209, freshmen enrollment fell dramatically for Native American, Black, and Latinx students across all campuses; in fact, the UC has still not achieved the same level of freshmen admission rates for Native American and Black students since 1995.

Statistics are pulled from the UC’s Amici Brief Submitted in Support of Respondents in SFFA.

Two metrics used by the UC for quantifying diversification goals are (1) admitting students proportionately to their high school graduate populations, (2) so as to decrease feelings of racial isolation. Because the UC continues to fall short in both these metrics, it recognizes the use of race in admissions continues to be necessary. Though Latinx student admissions have increased since 1995 to 25.45%, it is still far under the 52.3% of state’s high school student population identifying as Latinx—a metric the UC strives for. These disparities are further highlighted with the UC’s most selective campuses and according to its brief, the “UC’s experience demonstrates that for some universities—particularly the very selective institutions—race-neutral measures may prove insufficient, necessitating that the university engage in limited consideration of race” during admissions evaluations.

Statistics are pulled from the UC’s Amici Brief Submitted in Support of Respondents in SFFA.

However, the UC has experienced record breaking numbers in recent years and its recent sharp upwards trend in racial diversification has occurred due the adoption of more aggressive initiatives and an increase in funding and expenditures for diversification. The UC’s 2022-23 Budget for Current Operations report, reveals that the State Legislature response to Prop 209 was to increase the UC’s budget for Student Academic Preparation and Educational Partnerships (SAPEP), which “grew from $18.1 million […] in 1997-1998 to a peak of $85 million in 2000-01.” Unfortunately, “due to the State’s fiscal crisis in the early 2000s, the SAPEP budget was reduced by $55.7 million over several years.” The budget for SAPEP has stood at $24.6 million since 2012, but the UC also has sought out grants to support their initiatives, receiving $6 million dollars for outreach to low-income and underrepresented groups, and in 2021 received an $22.5 million as a one-time basis for additional support of SAPEP programs. In 2021, the UC also revealed in a statement that it admitted the most diverse freshman pool in its history, with 43% of admitted students belonged to underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, as well as the largest class of California Community College transfer students. It revealed that contributing factors included: pathway programs with high schools and community colleges, the end of standardized testing requirements, and adjustments in response to COVID-19 such as providing flexibility for students who needed more time to meet deposit, transcript, and registration deadlines. The UC Newsroom published an article in January, 2023 and revealed the UC is also aiming to achieve federal designations as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) and Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI) at all UC Campuses to receive the financial resources and access to educational opportunities available to student bodies on campuses which hold such designations; five of the UC’s campuses are HSIs and the remaining four are soon to follow. Beyond admissions, the UC is focusing on retention and support resources like developing pathways to graduate programs and recruiting diverse faculty.

The Biden-Harris Administration’s recommendations to colleges and universities to adapt and take charge of diversification policies under race conscious prohibition are absolutely important, and we should advocate for continued effort from these institutions and beyond! But the lesson to be learned from the UC’s tremendous race-neutral admissions project over the course of 25 years—which has employed the proposals made by the Administration—is that race-neutral diversification admissions policies require large financial expenditures and aggressive approaches by colleges and universities in order to achieve best results.

The UC’s upwards trajectory towards developing admissions policies which advance its diversification goals demonstrates how institutions across the U.S. must bear the onus of advancing racial equity in admission processes, and that they too can start yielding fruitful results through informed intentionality and bold action.