The NAS’s Glenn Ricketts writes that a committee of the California state system’s faculty senate–the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS)–has bypassed the usual procedures for changing admissions policy and placed a proposal for drastic changes before the UC Board of Regents. The sweeping changes–which would be imposed without counsel or consent from individual campuses or faculty, and would receive no public scrutiny–include increasing from 4 percent to 9 percent the number of guaranteed admissions from each high school, as well as eliminating the use of the SAT II admissions test now administered to all applicants.
“The 4 percent rule,” notes Ricketts, “was itself a dodge adopted some years ago to blunt the effects of Proposition 209, which eliminated the use (or at least the legal use) of racial preferences in college admissions. By admitting the top 4 percent of students from all high schools, the colleges would sweep up more ‘underrepresented’ minority students who had low qualifications compared to other students.”