SCA-5 Will Not Impact Asian Americans: An Analysis of UC Admissions Data From 1989 to 2013

In my "Numbers, numbers, and more numbers" post, I provided a link to the UC Admissions and Enrollment Data from 1989 to 2013.  I finally had some time to take a closer look. 

METHODOLOGY:
The University of California provided racial breakdowns for three areas: Applications, Admissions, and Enrollment.  I decided not to look at Applications, but anybody can apply.  It's just like anyone can sue, but it doesn't mean that the lawsuit has any merit.  I also decided not to look at Enrollments; there are all kinds of reasons why people choose not to enroll, including financial reasons or they chose to go to a different school (yes, shockingly, a UC is not always the first choice).  But if you're trying to determine if Proposition 209 affected the decision-making process of admissions officers, wouldn't you want to look at Admissions data?

Rather than look at every campus (I don't have THAT much time), I looked at the Universitywide figures.  When I did, I noticed that the total Universitywide admissions number rose from 31,764 in 1989 to 62,683.  So comparing the number of students in each racial group from year to year wouldn't work.  Instead, I chose to look at the percentages for each racial group for each year.  There were a couple of groups I didn't include at all because their numbers were on the smaller side (I'm using UC's abbreviations): Am Indian; E Ind/Pak; Filipino Am; Other.  Lastly, I combined the categories of Chicano and Latino.

FINDINGS:

Here's the chart I came up with:

Although Proposition 209 passed in 1996, the law did become effective until 1998.  Keeping that in mind, the two most unusual numbers from 1998 is the HUGE jump in category of "unknown" and the drop in "white."  "Unknown" eventually returned to it's pre-209 levels, but it took over a decade for that to happen.  As for whites, the 35.6% was an anomaly, but perhaps a sign of things to come as white admissions numbers have continued to decline year after year from 1989.  The passage of Prop 209 has done nothing to stop that.  African Americans have held steady.  Asian Americans have had a slight uptick.  But the only group that has increased year after year is Chicano/Latino, arguably at the expense of Whites.

So there's plenty of ammo that both sides can use in the Affirmative Action debate. 

Bottom line: if the adoption of Proposition 209 didn't change offers of Admission to Asian Americans, it is unlikely that the repeal of Proposition of 209 via SCA-5 will have a substantial change on Admissions to Asian Americans.

And in case you want to know what the current admissions criteria are for the University of California, click here.