1(b). Campus Diversity

1.5 (diversity) and Question 3 under Integrity (1) (diversity and respect)

Introduction

The mission of the University is excellence in the discovery and dissemination of knowledge through teaching, research, and service. Berkeley's land grant heritage is a source of our commitment to opportunity. From its founding in 1868, when the University educated the sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics to prepare them for the industrial age, to the present, when we prepare students for the dynamic and increasingly technological world they will enter, Berkeley has sought to adhere to its land grant roots and achieve excellence on par with or exceeding that of the best private universities.

The changes to the undergraduate admission process are just one important example of the campus's ongoing efforts to ensure excellence and diversity. More broadly, the campus's commitment to diversity encompasses admitting and retaining a diverse undergraduate and graduate student body, hiring and retaining a diverse faculty and staff, and creating a climate of inclusion, cooperation, and learning for all members of the campus community. Despite lofty goals and some evidence of success, Berkeley still struggles with diversification. This essay will discuss the current status of Berkeley's efforts at increasing undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and staff diversity, focusing on changes in numbers of each group. In the last decade, Berkeley has witnessed many changes in policies and laws that affect how it approaches diversification. Affirmative Action—admission or hiring based on various forms of preference for underrepresented minorities and women—has virtually been eliminated, first with Regent resolutions SP-1 (for student admission) and SP-2 (for hiring), and then with California Proposition 209. These measures passed at a time when many years of effort to diversify the campus were paying off. In order to maintain momentum and address new needs, Berkeley had to revise its approach, and, in many cases, add emphasis to programs already functioning.

Student Diversity

Undergraduate Students. In response to the Board of Regents' 1995 decision to eliminate race, ethnicity, and gender from consideration in student admissions by 1997, former Chancellor Tien immediately allocated $1 million to establish The Berkeley Pledge. The Pledge had five goals—to strengthen K-12 partnerships, to expand recruitment efforts, to keep Berkeley affordable, to create a campus environment that fosters success, and to inspire students to pursue graduate studies and professional careers. Subsequently, Chancellor Berdahl established a new structure for outreach led by the Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Affairs (VC-UA). The Outreach Steering Committee coordinates programs (75 of them currently) that function out of the Center for Educational Outreach (CEO). Outreach programs, generally targeted toward students historically unlikely to qualify or apply for university admission, provide curricula and professional development for K-12 teachers, academic enrichment and tutoring programs for K-12 students, and school volunteers. The CEO has served 20,000 students so far. For all outreach programs, the number of Fall freshman admits increased from 163 in 2000 to 206 in 2001, with the admission rate increasing from 38.7% to 47%, nearly double the 25% admission rate for all freshman applicants (Report on Educational Outreach). Selected highlights of the programs involved are described in the paragraphs below.

The School/University Partner (S/UP) Program seeks to coordinate outreach efforts by working directly with Bay Area K-12 schools and community colleges to form a college- and university-going culture for students who have not traditionally been eligible for university admission. The Partner Program provides scholarships and linkages between schools to assure coordination of efforts in getting students to achieve, take required courses, and otherwise prepare for university-level education. One of the goals of the S/UP Program is to provide research and evaluation of outreach efforts in order to build support for these programs. Progress toward five-year goals set by the Regents in an Outreach Taskforce Report has been noted already, and some goals were surpassed in the second year, as shown in the table below.

Table 1(b).i: Progress Toward Outreach Goals

The Coalition for Excellence and Diversity in Mathematics, Science and Engineering was formed in 1992, to link several longstanding programs on campus that recruit and retain women and underrepresented minorities in the math and science disciplines. These programs found that many of the students they served were in the same gateway courses; the intent was to coordinate efforts so services would not be duplicated, without muddying the individual goals of the now seven different programs. Each year, the Coalition contacts applicants by mail and telephone, with the assistance of current minority students, inviting them, if they choose to enroll, to take advantage of the Coalition's academic and personal support programs. The Coalition works with some four hundred students, providing them with undergraduate mentors and faculty and staff role models who follow them through four years of college. In September 1998, the Coalition received the Presidential Award from the White House for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.

Trends in ethnic and socio-economic diversity are monitored and publicized by the Office of Student Research (OSR). The undergraduate student body as of Fall 2001 consisted of 42% Asian American/Pacific Islander, 31.7% White/Caucasian, 9.7% Hispanic, 3.9% African American, and 0.6% American Indian/Alaska Native, with 12.1% other/no data (Undergraduate ethnicity, OSR website).

By a number of indices, Berkeley is fulfilling its land grant mission to provide opportunity for upward mobility for high achieving California students. A recent study by the Irvine Foundation (March 1, 2002) of the 40 highest ranked colleges and universities (US News & World Report) showed that Berkeley (along with UCLA and UC San Diego) enrolls a very high proportion of economically disadvantaged students in comparison to our peers nation-wide. In fact, the three UC campuses are the top three in the percentage of Pell Grant recipients among enrolled students (UCLA - 34.8%; UCB - 31.0%; UCSD - 28.7%). By comparison, the other highest ranked publics (Virginia, Michigan, University of North Carolina) as well as Stanford range from 9-12% and Ivy League schools average under 10%. Despite their relative economic disadvantage, Pell grant recipients have high graduation rates that nearly match overall campus figures. According to a recent analysis, 82% of Pell Grant recipients entering as freshmen and 85% entering as transfers in 1992 have graduated. The overall figures are 86% and 87%, respectively.  

Approximately two-thirds of all Berkeley undergraduates now receive some form of financial aid. As recently as 1988, slightly less than one-half did so. The new student class (freshmen and transfers) each Fall at Berkeley represents an impressive distribution of reported family incomes. Currently, adjusting for missing data, an estimated 2/9ths of entering students report family incomes under $30,000; 2/9ths report $30,000-59,999, 2/9ths report $60,000-99,999 and 3/9ths report $100,000 and up.

In rather dramatic fashion, a Berkeley education also represents the realization of mobility and achievement for California's substantial immigrant population. According to campus surveys, nearly 60% of new Berkeley undergraduates each year are of "immigrant origin," that is, either were not born in the United States or have parents who were not born in the United States. From the various statistical measures available, it is possible to construct an "index of opportunity" to illustrate the extent to which Berkeley represents the promise of upward mobility for California families. For example, two of every three new freshmen and five out of every six new transfer students have at least one (and typically more than one) of the following characteristics: neither parent has graduated from college; student comes from a low-income family; student was not born in the United States; neither parent was born in the United States.

Graduate Students. In 1978, with the creation of the Graduate Minority Program (later renamed Graduate Opportunity Program) in the Graduate Division, the campus launched a concerted effort to attract a diverse graduate student body. To this end, starting in 1985, directors of diversity and minority recruitment have been appointed in several of Berkeley's schools and colleges across all disciplines; they now meet regularly with an Associate Dean of the Graduate Division. Diversity officers recruit at large professional conferences, such as the National Association of Black Engineers, at historically Black colleges, and at universities with predominately Hispanic populations. Current underrepresented graduate students, whose presence helps demonstrate the existence of a community for incoming underrepresented students, often accompany diversity officers to these conferences. Potential students can rely on diversity officers to assist them in the admissions process and in getting tutoring, financial aid, and access to other resources once admitted.

Two additional programs specifically target graduate students in science, math, and engineering. The Pre-Ph.D. program in Mathematics is designed for students of high potential whose mathematical backgrounds are not as strong as normally expected of beginning Ph.D. students. Pre-Ph.D. students spend their first graduate year taking the honors versions of Berkeley's core undergraduate major courses and are mentored by a faculty advisor. Those who do well begin the Ph.D. program in their second graduate year. The Berkeley Edge is a new recruitment, retention, and advancement program for traditionally underrepresented minority graduate students in science, mathematics, and engineering. It is supported jointly by the National Science Foundation and the colleges of Chemistry, Letters and Science (Division of Biological Sciences and Division of Physical Sciences), Engineering, and the Graduate Division. The goal is to identify, recruit, retain, and assist in advancing talented minority students to the professoriate.

The ethnic breakdown for graduate students as of Fall 2001 was 49.1% White/Caucasian, 15.1% Asian American/Pacific Islander, 5.5% Hispanic, 2.9% African American, 0.5% American Indian/Alaskan Native, with 5.9% of citizens/immigrants reporting other/no data, and 21.0% entering as international students (Graduate student ethnicity, Office of Planning & Analysis).

Faculty Diversity

3.2 (diverse faculty)

A recent statistical analysis by the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Equity examined trends in gender and ethnic diversity on the UC Berkeley Faculty over the last decade. In 1992-93, ethnic minorities made up 13% of the regular (ladder rank) faculty; underrepresented minorities made up 6%, and women constituted 19%. In 2001-02, those figures were 16% ethnic minorities, 6% underrepresented minority, and 24% women (Faculty Diversity, 2002). Although these percentages give evidence of some small improvements, Berkeley is committed to doing better. Of particular concern is the lack of female and minority representation in the ranks of senior administrators and department chairs.

In 1999, the Chancellor appointed an Advisory Committee on Diversity, comprised of faculty, staff, students, members of the Board of Regents and the community. The committee issued its diversity report in December 2000. Spotlighting gender equity as an example, these efforts have marked the reversal of a mid-1990s downward trend in women new-hires each year; in 2001-02, the percentage of women hired was 33%, up from 21% in 1999-00. The most recent figure still falls short of the 37% women hired in academic years 1992-93 and 1993-94. Figures by academic area remain discouraging: only 5% of new-hires in the physical sciences between 1999 and 2002 were women. Again, the news is tempered by the fact that the College of Engineering hired more women than men in the past year for the first time ever (Faculty Equity Office report, April 2002). In contrast, the statistics for ethnic diversity show no significant change over the last 10 years in percentage of new hires who were minority candidates, and a drop from 12% underrepresented minorities among new-hires in 1992-93 to 3% in 2001-02.

In 2001, a Chancellor's Task Force on the Recruitment of Women and Underrepresented Faculty was asked to identify, evaluate, and recommend those strategies most likely to have a substantial effect on hiring in the near future. The Task Force found that departments need data on the composition of availability pools relevant to their academic markets much earlier in the recruitment process. In 2001-02, the Vice Provost of Academic Affairs and Faculty Welfare required every department to engage in a self-study of its hiring performance over the prior five years, prior to the submission of its faculty recruitment requests. The Task Force recommended that the campus implement more effective training of deans, chairs, and departmental officers and introduce effective measures of accountability. It suggested new measures and proposed modifications to the search process. Inserting accountability steps early in the search process without causing fatal delays remains a challenge. Measures under consideration include: requiring search committees to submit lists of potential women and minority candidates to be contacted and encouraged to apply, and regularizing the review of short list candidates by the Faculty Equity Associate prior to interviews. The detrimental effect of such measures on the efficiency of the recruitment and hiring process will have to be considered also. Well-qualified minority and female candidates are often in high demand at other institutions, so they may be particularly sensitive to delays.

To focus efforts to improve the recruitment of women and underrepresented faculty, the head of the office of Faculty Equity Assistance (FEA) was elevated to Associate Provost and now reports directly to the Chancellor. The campus plans to increase the staff and budget of the FEA office to enable it to collect and analyze data better, and to offer more training and resources to departments and faculty search committees. The new Associate Provost is designing a campus-wide survey of faculty, which will address attitudes and issues concerning women and underrepresented minorities.

Staff Diversity

Question 3 (recruiting non-academic staff) under Faculty and Staff (3)

The campus is also committed to the hiring and retaining of a diverse workforce and believes that this diversity is key to the campus mission. The overall ethnic breakdown for staff employees as of March 2001 was 56.1% white, 17.4% Asian American, 14.4% African American, 11.1% Hispanic, and 1% American Indian (Staff Ethnicity, Office of Human Resources: at link, search for aaeeo/profile, then click on UCB Staff Work Force Demographics). Policies are guided by a Staff Affirmative Action Plan that sets goals for women and minorities by job group, and the campus is striving to increase the numbers of minorities and women in higher classifications. Recruitment and retention of a diverse staff has been hindered in recent years by salaries that did not keep up with the private sector during the economic boom of the late 1990s, by exorbitant housing costs that have made it difficult for the campus to attract out-of-area candidates, and now by the current hiring freeze in response to large state budget deficits.

Curricular Diversity

This essay would be incomplete without a comment on the curricula. The 1986 report of the Task Force on Lower Division Education in the University of California, known as the Smelser Report (at link, the Executive Summary can be found under Background Reports), recommended curricular changes that would enhance international, multi-national, and global learning experiences. Among other commitments, the Quality of Undergraduate Education Assessment Project (QUEAP) tracks campus efforts "to provide expanded opportunities for American Multicultural Education and International Education." In 1989, the Berkeley campus instituted the American Cultures Requirement as one response to meeting this objective. Today, the campus offers 108 courses that are approved to fulfill the American Cultures breadth requirement. During the same period, the number of ethnic studies courses taught increased from 84 in 1988-89 to 165 in 2000-01. In 1990, the International and Area Studies Teaching Program was established at the recommendation of the Chancellor. International course offerings have increased from 162 in 1993-94 (the first year for which we have a data point) to 466 in 2000-01. Currently, fifty-five ancient and modern languages are taught on the Berkeley campus, placing us among the top five universities in the country in terms of the breadth of our language offerings. The richness of our offerings in multicultural and international education is an important component of the diversity and breadth of the campus's overall curricular offerings.

[Next Essay][Back to Top]

Relevant WASC Standard


Standard 1
Defining Institutional Purposes and Ensuring Educational
Objectives

• Institutional Purposes
• Integrity

The institution defines its purposes and establishes educational objectives aligned with its purposes and character. It has a clear and conscious sense of its essential values and character, its distinctive elements, its place in the higher education community, and its relationship to society at large. Through its purposes and educational objectives, the institution dedicates itself to higher learning, the search for truth, and the dissemination of knowledge. The institution functions with integrity and autonomy.