For nearly half a century, the University of California has been at the center of national debates over affirmative action and who is entitled to coveted seats in the premier public higher education system.
In 1974, after Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was rejected from the UC Davis medical school, he alleged reverse discrimination and sued, becoming the namesake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case curbing racial quotas. In 1995, UC regents voted to eliminate affirmative action and one of them, Ward Connerly, championed a successful campaign a year later to pass Proposition 209, the nation’s first ballot initiative to ban consideration of race and gender in public education, hiring and contracting. Over the last decade, California legislators have launched at least three attempts to restore affirmative action in college admissions — all have failed.
As the U.S. Supreme Court opens oral arguments Monday on whether to strike down affirmative action in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, UC’s long struggle to bring diversity to its 10 campuses offers lessons on the promise and limitations of race-neutral admission practices.
The Californiatakeaway: Nothing can fully substitute for affirmative action practices that allow universities to admit a diverse student body, including using income and parent educational levels as proxies for race. But after passage of Proposition 209 touched off UC’s 25-year slog of trial and error — plus a massive investment of more than a half-billion dollars on diversity measures — a meaningful difference can be made.
“While California has not identified a really effective policy to promote diversity other than affirmative action, it has shown experimentation is beneficial for targeted students,” said Zachary Bleemer, a Yale University assistant professor of economics and research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. “And so it’s worth it.”
UC President Michael V. Drake and all 10 chancellors have submitted an amicus brief in support of Harvard and UNC’s affirmative action policies. Calling UC a “laboratory for experimentation” on using race-neutral measures to promote diversity, the university leaders said that decades of outreach programs to low-income students and re-crafted admissions policies have fallen short.
“Those programs have enabled UC to make significant gains in its system-wide diversity,” the brief said. “Yet despite its extensive efforts, UC struggles to enroll a student body that is sufficiently racially diverse to attain the educational benefits of diversity.”
For some private universities, which are allowed to use affirmative action, the looming high court decision is causing consternation. Many experts predict the court’s conservative majority will strike down race-based preferences in a case that could affect not only higher education, but potentially the workplace as well.
“You are talking about the devastation of the American admissions process for students of color, full stop,” said Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr. “Affirmation action is hands down the best tool we have for maintaining racial and ethnic diversity in colleges in the United States.”
Initially, Proposition 209 drastically reduced diversity at UC’s most competitive campuses. In 1998, the first admissions year affected by the ban, the number of California Black and Latino first-year students plunged by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley. William Kidder, a UC Riverside civil rights investigator, recalled his shock when he entered UC Berkeley law school in 1998 and found that his first-year class of 270 included only six or seven Black students, compared with four times that many in the class two years ahead of him enrolled before Proposition 209.
“The lack of diversity in the classroom had a negative impact on my learning as a student,” said Kidder, who is white. “The range of viewpoints and quality of discussion about ideas were inhibited.”
California State University’s 23 campuses did not lose nearly as many Black and Latino students as UC did, and the system’s enrollment today nearly fully reflects the state’s diversity. Among its 422,391 undergraduates in fall 2021, 47% are Latino, 21% white, 16% Asian and 4% Black.
That closely mirrors the demographics of the state’s 217,910 California high school students who met UC and CSU eligibility standards in 2020-21: 45% are Latino, 26% white, 16% Asian and 4% Black. CSU’s wider access, more affordable price tag and greater ease of commuting from home may be some reasons behind the greater diversity.
But diversity varies, with proportions of Latino and Black students lower at several of the more selective CSU campuses. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — with a 31% admission rate in fall 2021 — 53% of undergraduates are white, 19% Latino, 14% Asian and 1% Black. At Cal State Los Angeles — with an 80% admission rate — 72% of students are Latino, 11% Asian, 4% Black and 4% white.
“While Proposition 209 promoted race neutrality in university student recruitment, admissions, financial aid, student academic support and employee hiring, the policy has made it more challenging to erase equity and opportunity gaps that exist in the CSU,” the university said in a statement. “Despite the challenges that have resulted, the CSU has continued to serve significant numbers of students from underrepresented communities over the years and we continue outreach efforts to provide access to students who are Black, indigenous or people of color and provide support once they are enrolled in the university.”
UC enrollment still does not fully reflect the state’s racial and ethnic makeup — falling particularly short with Latinos, who made up just 30% of the system’s 189,173 California undergraduates in fall 2021. Students of Mexican heritage are by far the largest undergraduate ethnic group, however.
But campuses are making notable strides. Black and Latino students increased to 43% of the admitted first-year class of Californians for fall 2022 compared with about 20% before Proposition 209. For the third straight year, Latinos were the largest ethnic group of admitted students at 37%, followed by Asian Americans at 35%, white students at 19% and Black students at 6%.
