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By Marcelle Richards

Daily Bruin Reporter

BERKELEY – The Assembly of the Academic Council met Wednesday to discuss the proposed dual admissions policy, which members said could create particular problems for UCLA.

Though UC President Richard Atkinson gave a prepared address to the assembly, he declined to discuss his controversial proposal to stop using the SAT I in university admissions.

The Academic Council is the systemwide body representing UC faculty.

The dual admissions proposal, introduced to the council by Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools Chair Dorothy Perry, provides a “second chance” to high school seniors who are in the top 12.5 percent of their high school but do not rank in the top 12.5 percent or seniors statewide.

The offer allows students who satisfy contracts with their desired UC to transfer to the campus after working on their degree at a community college.

The UC system currently ushers in 11,500 transfer students every year, according to Perry, whose proposal aims to increase the number to 15,000 by 2005.

“We have a responsibility to increase our transfers because of our partnership with the governor,” Perry said at the meeting held at UC Berkeley. “It will not be a dictatorial situation – we want the campuses to be able to select from the students. But we still want to offer, if you will, guaranteed admissions, like freshman applicants.”

The plan provides a fourth route to the UC system in addition to already existing freshman and transfer procedures, as well as the governor’s Eligibility in the Local Context selection criteria, which grants admission to students in the top 4 percent of their high school for freshman admission.

As the proposal stands, there is no method set up to decide how the incoming transfers will be allocated among the campuses.

“There are some costs of having so many different avenues,” said Stephen Yeazell, divisional chair and chair of the UCLA Academic Senate. “If we go back two years, there were two well-known ways to get in. In the course of two years, we’re proposing two more ways. I have some concerns that the number of tracks are making what was once a fairly transparent process quite opaque.”

According to Yeazell, a primary concern is making the process of entering the UC easy to understand for parents and students.

“It seems to me (the proposal) creates complexity, makes it hard for parents and students to understand,” he said. “The university admissions system begins to become incomprehensible.”

UCLA’s Academic Senate submitted a letter to BOARS critiquing the proposal and requesting UCLA be exempted from Perry’s promises of diversity, higher transfer rates and good public relations.

“It creates special problems because UCLA already accepts more transfers than any other UC campus, and this is an additional transfer program,” Yeazell said. “Because we’re already accepting so many transfer students, it’s not a welcome new source of transfers as it would be at other campuses.”

Currently, UCLA houses 25 percent of UC transfers, and has 7 percent more upper-division students on its campus compared to the systemwide average, according to a report given by UCLA Professor Chuck Buchanan at the last meeting of UCLA’s Academic Senate.

“If this is going on and UCLA isn’t participating, we don’t look very good,” he said about critiquing a policy promoted as increasing diversity and education opportunity. “If a large group satisfies contracts and displaces traditional enrollees, we may have to lower our standards and bring in a poorer group of students.”

But Perry said at the last Academic Senate meeting that dual admissions students would not displace current applicants.

However, with high expected enrollment growth over the next decade, UCLA may not be able to accommodate incoming students if the selection pool isn’t cut down. If confined to a quota of dual admissions admits, the numbers will cut into freshman and transfer numbers because UCLA will simply not be able to accommodate as many students, Yeazell said.

UCLA Divisional Representative Paul Torrens seemed to summarize the afternoon’s myriad questions when he asked Perry, “Is this anything more than just a system to increase the number of transfers?”

Some members also questioned the affect on the quality of a UC education.

“There’s a long-term credibility concern of the UC,” Yeazell said.

When asked repeatedly by faculty senate members for statistics on the performance of expected dual admissions applicants, Perry had none to offer.

“All I can do is rely on the assurances I’ve received,” she said. “We don’t see a way to separate the existing transfers at a community college from the dual admissions transfers.”

“The students would be the same quality as current transfers,” she continued. “We have a sense that students at various high schools have higher minority populations and we hope this will add a more diverse population to campuses.”

UCLA Divisional Representative Kathryn Atchison said a degree from a UC, with two years of community college, would not be viewed equally as the same degree received by a student who attended a UC for the entirety of their undergraduate career.

“I think it would be an embarrassment if we brought in more community college students and they weren’t doing as well,” she said, referring to the percentage of alumni advancing to a graduate-level education. “A community college application is not the same level as a UC classroom.

The nature of dual admissions allows students into the system who would never have access through freshman applications because they aren’t competitive with the pool, Perry said.

The program, theoretically, could allow someone who did not complete high school to enter a UC as a transfer, said Academic Council chair Michael Cowan.

“If a student in community college did not complete high school, they would be in the bottom 1 percent,” Cowan said. “But if they do well in community college they would be eligible for UC.”

Members also said state funding, as provided in Gov. Gray Davis’ budget, didn’t provide for an adequate amount of counseling.

Under the program, community colleges are to be staffed by UC counselors who will guide potential transfer students.

“I don’t think quality control is as much of a problem as is the high cost of the program in relation to the expected amount of students. If we’re serious about transfers we ought to be serious about funding,” Yeazell said.

To make counseling available to all dual admissions candidates, the price will run upward of $30-40 million, Yeazell said.

The proposal currently requires that one UC counselor works for three community colleges.

“If we adopt it, without making staffing available, there is going to be a pool of students in a disadvantaged situation,” said UC Irvine Divisional Chair David Brant.