California Governor Offers 4 Percent Plan for UC System

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — In his inaugural address earlier this month, Gov. Gray Davis pledged to give the top 4 percent of students at each California high school automatic admission to the University of California (UC) system — a proposal, according to The Sacramento Bee, he framed as a diversity measure. Improving education, he says, will be the "primary mission" of his administration.
"And I will undertake it with the same sense of purpose, discipline, and focus that I learned 30 years ago, courtesy of the United States Army," he says. "We are going to get it done."
Davis says the proposal would provide more opportunities to minorities and students from poor schools. But some regents — including Ward Connerly, the architect of Proposition 209, which was supposed to end the state's affirmative action policies — fear it will also lead to the enrollment of unprepared students.
The UC system currently takes the top 12.5 percent of all high school graduates statewide, an applicant pool that tends to be filled with students from affluent, top-performing high schools. Taking 4 percent from every school in the state would add 3,200 to 3,500 students to the list, says Charles McFadden, UC spokesman
The 26-member board of regents is set to vote in March on the new plan, proposed by the Board on Academic Relations with Schools. As lieutenant governor and a member of the board of regents, Davis backed the proposal. His pledge was one of very few specific mandates outlined in his inaugural address, and he spoke of the proposal's passage as if it were a foregone conclusion.
McFadden says the proposal would allow bright students who perform poorly on the SAT verbal and math portions to have a better chance at admission. But Connerly, a regent appointed by previous Gov. Pete Wilson, says he wasn't ready to endorse the measure.
"If you admit the top 4 percent at every high school, while that sounds good politically, the effect is that ... without a doubt it does amount to a relaxing of the statewide standards," says Connerly, who adds, "I'm on the fence, but I'm really weighing it very carefully."
UC may need to seek more money from the Legislature to support thousands of additional students who would be guaranteed admission, although not necessarily at the campus of their choice. UC-Berkeley, UC-Davis and UCLA would likely remain the state's elite schools. The new UC campus at Merced could help with the overflow after it opens in 2005.
The current plan emphasizes the SAT I, which focuses on math and verbal skills. The new plan would increase the weight of SAT II scores, which reflect more of what the student has learned in the classroom than general aptitude.