Wherever he went in the past year, University of California President Richard Atkinson was handing out verbal analogies questions: DRAPERY is to FABRIC as (pick one) fireplace is to wood; curtain to stage; shutter to light; sieve to liquid; window to glass.
The questions come from the SAT I exam that 1.3 million college applicantstake every year. The questions aren't all that tough, but Atkinson believes theyshow that the test is a capricious exercise that adds little information to whatother tests and grades show about a student's academic capabilities. At the sametime, it discriminates against poor and minority students, and distractsattention from the core academic subjects that high-school students should focuson. "If you know the definition of those words," he said, "the reasoning istrivial." So he's been working hard to change UC admissions policies to rely on anew, still-to-be-designed test instead of the SAT I -- and to persuade otheruniversities to do the same. "If we do it," he said, "other institutions willcome along."
Atkinson's message is being heard. In March, a little more than a year afterhe publicly announced his intentions, the College Board, which designs andmanages the SAT tests, announced plans to revise the SAT I. Among thecontemplated changes: adding a writing section, switching to math problems basedless on aptitude and more on specific skills learned in advanced high-school mathcourses, and de-emphasizing or perhaps eliminating the analogies. Board PresidentGaston Caperton acknowledged that the revisions are being prompted by Atkinson'schallenge.
But beyond the matter of the SAT, Atkinson has been struggling with a largerand more vexing issue in American higher education: how to square the demandingacademic standards of a selective public university with its democratic missionto serve all citizens -- "to honor both the ideal of merit," he said, "and theideal of broad educational opportunity." Particularly in a state like California,where whites are now just another minority and where, in another generation,Hispanics will become an absolute majority, the answers will play a crucial rolein determining just what kind of society is to emerge.
Atkinson, cognitive psychologist, former director of the National ScienceFoundation, and former chancellor at UC's San Diego campus, is well aware of theobstacles to fundamental reform.
"He's been stewing about the SAT for years," one of his senior aides said. "Hestarted reading the test questions and saying, 'Hey, this is a lousy test.' Andhe's probably the only guy who could have taken this on. He has the stature, theprofessional background, and [at the age of 73], he's getting ready to retire."
He's also possessed of a quiet passion that's easy to miss. In an era whenuniversity presidents spend much of their time raising money, and are heard lessand less on major policy issues, Atkinson's push to end the use of the SAT I, tobroaden the pool of university applicants, and to "move away from admissionprocesses that use narrowly defined quantitative formulas [mostly grades and testscores] and instead adopt procedures that look at applicants in a comprehensive,holistic way," has put him as close as anyone in this era to the ranks ofeducational statesmen.
By now people in the field understand the closeconnectionbetween affirmative action and the grades-plus-test-score formulas that mostselective universities rely on in admissions, even when it's denied. Race-basedaffirmative action, often by means of an equally inflexible formula, is designedtooffset the effects of test scores on black and Latino applicants who, on average,test lower than whites and Asians. (For two decades or more, until well into the1990s, places like UC Berkeley, the University of Texas, and the University ofMichigan added extra points to the scores of black and Latino applicants.) So asfederal courts -- in Texas, Michigan, and Georgia -- join voters in CaliforniaandWashington in ending the use of race-based criteria in university admissions (andin employment and contracting), the old grades-plus-test-score formulas comeunder increasing scrutiny as well.
One of those courts (in the Texas case) went so far as to effectivelyoverturn the U.S. Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Regents of the Universityof California v. Bakke, a decision that prohibited quotas but permitted university admissions officers to find other ways to make race a "plus" factor in evaluating candidates. Sooner or later the Supreme Court will have to take up the question again. And when it does, it's quite likely to narrow Bakke to prohibit race-based formulas. Thus, the issues Atkinson has raised will become increasingly pertinent even in private institutions. The fact that Bakke was a California case -- that it was the UC precedent that won all universities the right to consider race -- makes the story even more telling.
Atkinson, who was appointed president in August1995, almost didn't survive the first three months of his tenure. Just a month before hisappointment, then-Governor Pete Wilson, looking for a wedge issue to breathe lifeinto his faltering presidential campaign, had successfully pressured the UC boardof regents to end race preferences in university admissions, hiring, andpromotion. At a meeting packed with shouting protestors in San Francisco, theboard, ignoring the faculty governance processes that such decisions normallyrequire, voted 14 to 10 to abandon affirmative action and to base between 50percent and 75 percent of all campus admissions decisions on high-school gradesand test scores alone. That made UC the first major institution in the nationthatcould not consider race in its admissions and hiring. But a few months later,Atkinson, who, along with the university's other chancellors, had stronglyopposed the regents' decision, announced that he was postponing itsimplementation by a year -- from fall 1997 to fall 1998. The university, he said,didn't have time to act sooner.
That brought an angry reaction, particularly from Wilson and Ward Connerly,a black Sacramento businessman and UC regent who, to this day, is a nationalleader in the campaign to end affirmative action and who, along with Wilson,spearheaded the UC ban. Atkinson says he discussed the postponement with two orthree key board members, but Connerly thought the regents had been blindsided.Atkinson was called to the governor's office, where Wilson pounded the table,threatened to get him fired, and ultimately forced him to write a letteracknowledging that he had "erred." "There is no question in my mind," Atkinson'sletter said, "that it is the constitutional duty of the Board to set policy forthe University, and the role of the President is to implement that policy."Wilson, Atkinson said, wrote much of the language himself. At the same time, itwas also clear that if Atkinson had been fired, the resulting uproar -- amongfaculty and among the UC chancellors -- could have made the bitter fight over theban itself look like a picnic.
Atkinson vehemently denies that the ending of affirmative action spurred hissearch for new admissions criteria. But it certainly increased the demographicand political pressure. Although the university has been proclaiming that itsrecent outreach efforts have succeeded in drawing as many black and Latinoapplicants -- and in enrolling as many minority freshmen -- as UC's nine campuseshaddrawn before the regents' ban went into effect, that was emphatically not thecase at Berkeley and UCLA, the system's flagship institutions. It really wasn'teven true in the system as a whole, if one used 1995, the year of the regents'vote, as a baseline, rather than 1997, the last year before implementation, whenmany qualified blacks and Hispanics were already saying they wouldn't have feltwelcome at UC and thus never applied.
As a result, demands grew urgent -- both from dissenting regents like BillBagley, a lawyer and former Republican state legislator, and from thelegislature's increasingly powerful Latino caucus -- to rescind the 1995 ban andtotake other measures to broaden black and Hispanic enrollment. But it wasAtkinson, who had always disliked the SAT, who was the driving force.
Atkinson contends that unlike the SAT IIs (once called achievement tests,which are exams in the major subjects that students take in high school -- math,history, composition, the sciences, foreign languages), the SAT I, originallycalled the Scholastic Aptitude Test, retains the genetic code of its discreditedpredecessors in intelligence testing. It is not directly related to any subjectstudents are taught in high school; worse, it drives affluent students, some asyoung as 12, into $600 cram courses that teach little except the tricks of takingthe test. UC's data also show that the disparity in scores betweenunderrepresented minority applicants and whites and Asians is significantlygreater on the SAT I than on the SAT IIs.
In any case, Atkinson said, "it seems only right that students should bejudged on what they've accomplished in four years of high school, not on how theyrate on an ill-defined measure of aptitude or intelligence ... . Anyone involvedin education should be concerned about how overemphasis on the SAT is distortingeducational priorities ... how the test is perceived by many as unfair, and howit can have a devastating impact on the self-esteem and aspirations of youngstudents." It's not a new argument, but never has it come from a more powerfuland credible source.
By law, UC is mandated to take the top 12.5 percent of each year'sCalifornia graduates. To pick them, it currently requires undergraduateapplicants to do well on a list of prescribed high-school courses and to take theSAT I. They also have to take three SAT IIs, one in composition, one in math, andone in any other field the applicant chooses. But the university's datademonstrate that the combination of grades, the SAT II scores, and the SAT Iscores provides virtually no more information on how an applicant will doacademically as opposed to the combination of grades and the SAT IIs bythemselves. "The SAT," Atkinson said, "adds nothing to our ability to predict"college performance.
Atkinson is no testing Luddite. He would retain the SAT IIs, and he has UCworking with the nation's two major admissions testing organizations to produce awhole new exam, based in large part on what students are supposed to learn inhigh school. The plan is to also develop a "concordance table" so that scores onthe new exam could be used instead of the SAT I -- thus, Atkinson hopes, sparingstudents applying to other institutions from taking two sets of tests.
The College Board doesn't deny UC's data, although Wayne Camara, the board'svice president for research and development, offers numbers from a group of 23self-selected universities showing that the SAT I does add some marginalinformation for certain ethnic groups. Nonetheless, if UC were to abandon the SATI, it would be a major blow for the test and the board, as UC is the board'sbiggest customer. (The applicants, of course, pay for the test.) It was only whenUC began to require it for all applicants in 1968-1969 that the SAT became atruly national exam. There is thus ample reason for the board to talk aboutrevisions to accommodate Atkinson's complaints.
The outcome of the UC battle over admissions tests is far from a sure thing.It's been pointed out, for example, that the SAT II foreign language test givescertain students -- first-generation Latinos for example -- a large advantageoverAfrican Americans. More important, as Bob Laird, Berkeley's former undergraduateadmissions director said, one of the main reasons many blacks and Latinos areineligible for UC is not "because their grades weren't good enough or becausethey didn't have the required college prep courses, but because they didn'tcomplete the SAT IIs." Continuing to rely on these exams, and adding anothercostly test as well, would hardly improve that situation.
In addition there's the status problem. Institutions not too sure of theiracademic prestige may want those SAT I numbers to reinforce their ratings (say inU.S. News and World Report) and their academic pretensions. Berkeley, UCLA, and UC-San Diego may be secure enough that SAT scores no longer mean as much. But weaker UC campuses like Riverside may feel they need them. The issue is to go to the regents this summer, and it may well be that the College Board's plans to revise its test are, in part, an effort to play regental politics by strengthening the hand of those who have doubts about Atkinson's proposal.
Yet however the SAT question is decided, Atkinson has already moved hisinstitution a long way from where it was in 1995. Three years ago, following theTexas model, UC began to accept every student in the top 4 percent of his or herhigh-school graduating class, regardless of the quality of the school or thestudent's test scores. (For those below the top 4 percent, admission is based ona combination of grades and test scores.) Then came a great gush of reforms: InMay 2001, less than six years after they approved it, the regents (with thesupport of Connerly) unanimously rescinded their ban on race preferences. Because a similar ban had been written into the state constitution with the passage ofProposition 209, the regents' act was largely symbolic. But in removing the UC"unwelcome mat," it was significant nonetheless. In July the board approved a"dual admissions" plan under which all California high school students who arebetween the top 4 percent to 12.5 percent of their respective high-schoolclasses will be guaranteed UC admission as juniors, provided they successfullycomplete their first two years at a community college. The university, citing alack of funds (and probably hoping to extract them from the legislature), hasdeferred implementation of dual admissions but has promised to launch it in thecoming years.
And then in November, the biggest reform was instituted: board approval of"comprehensive review," Atkinson's holistic admissions process, on an Ivy Leaguemodel, under which the total record of every applicant -- grades, tests,handicapsovercome, special skills, diversity of background, talents, and achievements --isconsidered. What UC calls eligibility, meaning a guarantee of admission to someUC campuses, will still be based on class rank or on grades in mandated subjectsand test scores, but admission to any particular campus, including Berkeley andUCLA, will be determined by "comprehensive review."
For a public university, that's a major departure. It's also risky. When theregents debated the issue last fall, Berkeley political science professor JackCitrin charged that "these flabby, vague guidelines" are "an invitation tointroduce a new set of group preferences" and "open up a Pandora's box ofproblems," that will undermine academic standards and expose the university tolegal challenges. What's certain is that the "whole man" admissions criteria ofthe Ivy League and other private East Coast colleges for a long time meant thatonly WASP gentlemen from the right families and the right schools got in. The SATwas an antidote, and if students and their legislators don't trust the peoplemaking Atkinson's holistic decisions, they may want to see more such objectivenumbers.
Ever since the supreme Court's 5-to-4 Bakke ruling -- which was really a 4-to-4-to-1 decision and deeply confusing -- the courts have been ambivalent about the use of race-based affirmative action to enhance diversity on university campuses. What's constitutional in most of the country is now unconstitutional in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the states covered by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' 1996 decision in Hopwood v. Texas. And it's uncertain in southeastern states covered by last year's 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that the University of Georgia's admissions policy "that mechanically awards an arbitrary 'diversity' bonus to each and every nonwhite applicant ... fails strict scrutiny." Meanwhile an appellate ruling is pending in two conflicting Michigan decisions, one striking down race preferences in law school admissions, the other upholding them in undergraduate admissions.
Although the Supreme Court has so far ducked the issue, it will not be able todo so much longer. And any decision that removes the possibility of adjusting thetest scores of minority applicants will bring widespread pressure tode-emphasize, if not wholly eliminate, tests like the SAT. That's been the cleartrend where -- as in Texas, California, and Florida -- the courts or the votershave already acted or appeared on the verge of acting.
So far, the results of alternative approaches have been mixed. Atkinson saysthat UC's policy of admitting the top 4 percent of the seniors from each highschool, the first of his admissions reforms to go into effect, has been aresounding success. Last year it prompted an 8 percent jump in the applicantpool, of which a significant percentage are black or Hispanic, many from highschools that had rarely sent students to UC before. In its first year, roughly 80percent of the graduates in the top 4 percent of their high schools applied.
Something similar happened in Texas. But in its brief seeking review ofHopwood last year -- an appeal that the Supreme Court ultimately refused to hear -- the University of Texas argued that such approaches "unavoidably [have] the effect of lowering undergraduate admission standards."
For people like Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, once Bill Clinton'snominee to head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, "merit in apublic institution of higher education cannot exist independent of ...diversity." She wants to vastly enlarge diversity considerations in the admissionof all students, regardless of race or gender. She also seems to favor lotteriesto choose from the pool of qualified applicants, using tests only to establishthe floor.
The chances that any major university would adopt such criteria are slim. Theclosest any came was the City University of New York, with its disastrousopen-admissions plan. That is not what Atkinson is looking for. UC will open moreroutes for students hoping to get in, and it will consider more admissionscriteria, which of course will allow for subtle race preferences -- how can youlook at community service or handicaps overcome without reference to race? ButAtkinson does not intend to abandon tests as a major factor in admissionsdecisions. The tension between "the ideal of merit and the ideal of broadopportunity" will not be resolved by his reforms so much as exposed to the light.Still, if the Supreme Court ever overturns Bakke, the rest of academia may have to learn some lessons from UC.
It's been just 25 years since the California Supreme Court, in a 6-1decision, first ruled that the university could not consider race in makingadmissions decisions. "The principle that the Constitution sanctions racialdiscrimination against a race -- any race," wrote the liberal Justice StanleyMosk, "is a dangerous concept fraught with potential for misuse in situations whichinvolve far less laudable objectives than are manifest in the present case." Itwas California's appeal of that ruling that led to the U.S. Supreme Court'sBakke decision, on which all of this country's admissions office affirmative action rests. Five years ago, the state's voters, through Proposition 209, trumped Bakke and, in effect, restored the Mosk decision. Now, as the number of young American blacks and Latinos continues to grow, Atkinson and UC are trying to take higher education into what begins to look ever more like the post-Bakke era. For Atkinson, who hopes to step down next year, it could be an imposing legacy.
