UC Admissions Plan Will Be Ineffective

The shift in the University of California’s admissions policy endorsed by the regents is at once a divisive and ineffective means of addressing the only real problem with the current system: not enough black and Hispanic students qualify, particularly at UCLA and at Berkeley (“UC Admissions Plan Would De-Emphasize Grades, Tests,” Nov. 15).

A much better plan would be to expand the current quota system that admits the top 4% at each high school to 8%, with the top 2% assured a place at the UC school of their choice. Objective criteria are then left in place, and the desired result--an increase in minority enrollment in general, and at UCLA and at Berkeley in particular--will occur with certainty.

Lurking in the background here is the failure of the regents to come to grips with the fundamental incompatibility between group equity and individual equity, leading to another futile attempt to construct policy that somehow accommodates both. It is not at all clear how the new admissions policy accommodates either.

Gerald Beer

Professor of Mathematics

Cal State L.A.