A Startling Statistic at UCLA

[struggle4progress]

At the school whose alumni include Jackie Robinson and Tom Bradley, only 96 blacks are expected in this fall's freshman class.

By Rebecca Trounson, Times Staff Writer

June 3, 2006

This fall 4,852 freshmen are expected to enroll at UCLA, but only 96, or 2%, are African American — the lowest figure in decades and a growing concern at the Westwood campus.

For several years, students, professors and administrators at UCLA have watched with discouragement as the numbers of black students declined. But the new figures, released this week, have shocked many on campus and prompted school leaders to declare the situation a crisis.

UCLA — which boasts such storied black alumni as Jackie Robinson, Tom Bradley and Ralph Bunche, and is in a county that is 9.8% African American — now has a lower percentage of black freshmen than either crosstown rival USC or UC Berkeley, the school often considered its top competitor within the UC system.

The 96 figure — down by 20 students from last year — is the lowest for incoming African American freshmen since at least 1973. And of the black freshmen who have indicated they will enroll in the fall, 20 are recruited athletes, admissions officials said ...

http://ktla.trb.com/news/la-me-ucla3jun03,0,2032307.story?coll=ktla-news-1

[MadMaddie]

1. The opportunities for low income and middle income ....

people (black, white etc) is dwindling....the 12 years of a Republican Congress has set this country back decades.....it's truely pathetic...

[lindisfarne]

9. Part of the explanation is that the highest scoring African-Americans

are going elsewhere - African-Americans are recruited by a lot of private colleges. Many also choose to go to universities which have a larger African-American population. (UCLA and UC-Berkeley are very competitive but being state institutions (in a state which is cutting higher ed. budgets) cannot give out the financial aid packages that private universities often can (that's why I went to a private college: it cost me only a bit more than the state university would have (excluding my loans! but such a better place); UCSD is a little less so amongst undergrad institutions).

But still, it shows that too many are not getting the K-12 education they need.

from the LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-ucla3jun03,0,7995735,full.story
In an interview, Hunt acknowledged the difficulty for a campus like UCLA, which received 47,000 applications this year. Yet he criticized the school for rejecting many black students based on what he described as factors of questionable validity, and that he said may be linked more to socioeconomic privilege than academic merit.

"There's a common misperception that this is a horrible problem but that black students just need to do better," he said. "But most of the black students who don't get in go to other top-notch schools — Harvard, Duke, Michigan. We're losing students who could be here."
<snip>
The new figures were part of an annual report showing that a record-setting 37,000 freshmen plan to enroll at UC campuses in the fall. Overall, across all nine undergraduate campuses, the new class shows a continued trend of slight increases in black, Latino and Native American students. These groups, which are still considered underrepresented at UC, will make up just under 20% of the 2006 freshman class, compared with just below 19% for the current class.
<snip>
In Los Angeles County, blacks accounted for 11%, or 9,152, of the 84,677 public high school graduates. Statewide, blacks made up 7%, or 25,267, of the 343,481 students who graduated from California's public high schools in 2004, the most recent year statistics are available.

[MadMaddie]

13. Thanks.....this information clarifies the numbers..

[FrenchieCat]

14. You're right.....cause my daughter could have gone to UCLA.....

But chose Harvard instead (we are Afro-(French)Americans).

[musiclawyer]

2. Not surprising

Bush being in charge of America doesn't help

[acmejack]

3. That is truly remarkable!

What has happened there? Especially in Los Angeles? Cost issues?

[bluestateguy]

4. When I was growing up in California, we used to call UCLA this:

University of California Led by Asians.

They need to do a better job at recruitment. They need to be sending students, alumni and admissions officers into black neighborhood high schools to recruit the best black students in California.

[MadMaddie]

5. I don't live in CA but I suspect you are right...I also think that

we are starting to see the beginning results of "No Child Left Behind", the kids are not getting the kind of educations that are going to get their SAT scores high enough to be competitive....

[tishaLA]

12. UCLA does work hard at recruitment

believe me. I am a UCLA academic.

The problem is that Ward Connerly managed to get the "color-blind" California bullshit past California voters--using, always, language similar to that of the immigration debates ("Do you want an under-qualified Jose to take the place...?")--and we have increasingly fewer ways of circumventing the color blind system. Every summer, I teach in a program that had been designed to prepare "underrepresented" students--African Americans and Latinos--for college, but has had to be redesigned to cater to first generation college students, instead, because of Connerly's initiatives. Nobody in the program is happy with this, but we have to deal with the realities of what we can accomplish under the rules (and under Schwarzenegger).

[ismnotwasm]

6. I remember talking to an anthropology professor

A few years ago who was sure this was going to happen. Some Universities and colleges are having to get very creative to maintain diversity.

Add cut backs for education and social programs everywhere, schools hamstrung by "no child left behind" (the fall out from that hasn't reached colleges yet I don't think.)

The results are bound to be dismal. God, I hope sanity returns to this country soon. If we only funded education like we fund illegal and ill-begotten wars.

[Igel]

7. The Bruin had a slightly better take on it--outraged, but

they reported the actual numbers.

http://www.dailybruin.asucla.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=37450

But there's still outrage over the AA numbers.
The tradition Daily Bruin editorial expressing outrage:
http://www.dailybruin.asucla.ucla.edu/news/articles.asp?id=37465

At least the black acceptance rate is marginally higher systemwide (after all, UC is, in some meaningful sense, one university). The odd thing is, this is in spite of pretty nifty outreach that UC/UCLA conducts. But, in parallel, although they also have minority-specific (or at least used to have minority-specific tutorial programs in 2001), the AA admits still had above average drop-out rates and above average numbers of 5-year degrees.

UCLA also has a high-fee/high-financial aid model. Make above average income, pay through the nose; make below average income, and you start getting grants. At least at the UG level. It's something I fought with them over, since I was a grad student, and that's *not* how it works in the Humanities at the grad level.

I probably still know many of the people responsible for the admissions figures. I wouldn't call them racist. I'd assume that the distribution for UCLA in 2005 isn't radically different from this fall:

2005 (UCLA, not UC)
White: 33.3%
Asian/Filipino: 41.0%
Chicano/Latino: 14.8%
Black: 2.9%
Other**: 7.9%

[lindisfarne]

11. To add: the people making admissions decisions don't know the

race of the applicant (unless the applicant's essay makes that explicit).

[spindrifter]

8. The costs at UCLA:

briefly, it is $16,219 if you are a resident and living with relatives, $23,392 if in the dorms. Nonresident costs for the school year are $34,903 if living with relatives and $42,076 if in the dorms.
http://www.admissions.ucla.edu/prospect/budget.htm

I do not know how much financial aid a person might be able to get--obviously it would depend on a lot of things. Even so, a UCLA education represents a substantial amount of money.

[lindisfarne]

10. Those costs are a little unrepresentative: they include living expenses

and one can choose to live really frugally (especially if you can live with family) and save some money. There's not much benefit to living in dorms at a huge university so you don't lose anything by living in a nearby apartment.

For 2006-2007, resident undergrads at UCLA will pay $7,143.23 in mandatory tuition and fees (including a Mandatory Medical Insurance Fee of $621 which can be waived if you provide evidence of having a different source of insurance - by calling it "mandatory" the school can include it in financial aid calculations, which benefits students who need it). Books can easily add another $750/year, although the availability of used textbooks on the internet can help a bit).

$4,000 annually in loans isn't excessive (this would cover over half of mandatory fees/tuition) - I had over $10,000 almost 20 years ago (and paid it off in 1.5 years (at 8% interest - that was an incentive) while working a job which paid about $16,000/year - I just kept living at the level I had in college - when virtually every $ I earned was put toward tuition. I worked 60 hours a week during summers; 60 hours x $6.75 (CA current minimum wage) = $400/week x 13 weeks = $5,200; I also worked 30 hours/week during the school year (which is probably too much; a more realistic 15 hours/week x $6.75/hour x 39 weeks = $4,000; many students can get jobs that pay more than minimum wage: $10/hour isn't unusual for on-campus jobs, especially if you have computer skills).

It's not cheap and it's gone up a lot in the last few years but still, it's not unreasonable when you compare it with other state institutions. If California keeps proposition 13 which has greatly cut the property tax revenue the state gets, and continues to not replace that revenue with higher income taxes, this is what California gets.

http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/fees/grad.htm