The new UC admissions guidelines will destroy the integrity of
the admissions process

By Edwin A. Locke
web posted December 3, 2001

With great fanfare the Board of Regents of the University of
California have announced new university admissions policies.
These policies will downgrade academic qualifications (grades
and test scores) and will use a policy that includes factors such
as the students' "struggle against poverty or athletic or artistic
ability." The supporters of these changes promise that they will
not use the new policies to promote raced-based admissions.

Speaking as a just-retired academic who spent 34 years at a
major state university, I know how to translate academic code
words into their real meaning. The real meaning and goal of the
new California guidelines is the elimination of the concepts of
fairness and objectivity from the admissions process. It is no
accident that most colleges use the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude
Test) and high school grades as the main criteria for admissions:
these have been shown for decades to be the best predictors of
scholastic performance. The SAT has the added advantage over
grades that everyone takes the same test and the test is scored
the same way for everyone. The SAT is objective; it is race-
blind, gender-blind, age-blind, politics-blind, religion-blind,
country of national origin-blind and sexual-orientation blind. This
is precisely why the regents oppose it. They want the admissions
process to be subjective. This means that hidden agendas can
now be brought into the admissions process with the blessing of
the regents.

For example, does anyone believe for a single minute that the
new guidelines will not be politicized? Berkeley is one of the
most left wing schools in the entire country. Ability aside, who is
more likely to get admitted there under the new "flexible"
guidelines: the high school radical who claims that the attack on
the World trade center was our fault or the conservative student
who supports our right to self-defense?

Does anyone believe for a single minute, despite explicit
disclaimers to the contrary, that race will not be brought back as
a factor? In May the regents voted to drop a six-year ban on
affirmative action. Affirmative action is against state law but
clearly the regents are sending a message by their vote. The new
criteria will serve to protect the university system against
discrimination charges by academically qualified students of the
wrong race.

Previously, students who were discriminated against due to race
could show that they should have been admitted because their
test scores and grades were better than those who were
admitted. Usually, if they took the case to court, they won. But
this will not work any more. The university can now say, in its
defense, "we used a holistic procedure based on numerous
factors that vary from student to student and we decided that
student X had a special combination of qualities that we wanted
and student Y did not." Given the new, subjective guidelines,
there is no way to protest such a decision in court.

The regents claim that the new procedures are superior to the
old on the grounds that people like Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi
Goldberg, who had serious learning disabilities, would be
admitted under the new guidelines but not under the old. This
argument is ridiculous on several counts. First, why would a
university want to admit people with serious learning disabilities?

How could they do the work? Second, how could they know
that Oprah and Whoopi, as high school students, would become
super stars? Third, why would people like Oprah and Whoopi
need a college degree anyway?

The regents claim that the new guidelines will now allow the
admission of people with athletic ability. Who are they trying to
fool? For better or for worse, good athletes have been given
preference in admissions to colleges and universities for decades.
And how does a "struggle against poverty," as admirable as that
is, qualify one for college admission?

UC president Richard Atkinson claims that high school students
can gain admittance if they work hard and take tough courses.
But how can he promise such a thing if the new guidelines
specifically de-emphasize academics?

Under the new procedures, it is impossible for a student to know
what to do in order to prepare for college. The new "flexible"
criteria can be anything the admissions office wants. The ones to
suffer the most will be precisely the intelligent, hard-working,
high-achieving students who most deserve admission.

The real hidden motive for the new admissions criteria is
egalitarianism. The regents cannot accept the fact that some
people are more academically qualified than others so their
solution is to undermine the whole concept of academic
competence. If they succeed, both students and universities will
be the worse for it.

Edwin A. Locke is Dean's Professor Emeritus of Leadership and
Motivation at the University of Maryland at College Park and is
a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (http:
//www.aynrand.org/). Send comments to reaction@aynrand.org.

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