The diversity question

The University of California is committed to maintaining a diverse student body without considering race, ethnicity and gender, in this post-affirmative action era. Yet those same students who would most enhance diversity are often not eligible to attend the most competitive UC campuses where there are more qualified applicants than available space.

Two years ago, the UC Regents appointed a task force to study this issue. Composed of leaders in business, education and government, the Outreach Task Force discovered that the students least represented in enrollment figures - African Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos and Latinos - are heavily concentrated in the lowest-ranking schools.

Educational disadvantage, not simply low income, is the most immediate obstacle to expanding diversity in higher education in California. Economic and other factors are important, true, but the continuing concentration of many minority children within disadvantaged schools most directly accounts for later differences in college preparation and enrollment. For example, nearly a third of all high school diplomas in the state go to Latinos, yet only 12 percent of all UC students are Latino.

Maintaining diversity in higher education is more than a lofty idea, it is part of the University's responsibility as a public land-grant institution to serve all of the population of the state. Equally important, it prepares students to function successfully in the very real global village in which they will live and work in the 21st century.