Quick Hits

Today, the United States Supreme Court, in a divided opinion, upheld as CONSTITUTIONAL a provision of the Michigan Constitution that is very similar to Proposition 209.  (New York Times story on the decision)  Notably, Michigan's Proposal 2 was a reaction to the Supreme Court's decision in 2003 upholding the University of Michigan Law School's use of race as a factor in admissions. 

But we also have some other interesting developments in California. 

First, according to data released by the University of California, Latinos has passed whites as the second largest group of admitted students this year.  (OC Register story)  Here's the link to the UC's Summary Fact Sheet and here's the link to Table 3, which gives the campus-by-campus and universitywide diversity break-down.  Again, these are ADMISSIONS numbers for Fall 2014, not applications and not actual enrollment.  I prefer looking at the Universitywide numbers because they are not duplicated numbers (more than one campus can offer a particular student admission) and they reflect the overall systemwide effort to create a diversity across the entire system.

For Asian Americans, in 2012 the percentage was 36.3%, in 2013 it was 36.0% and in 2014 it is 36.2%.  No change.  There was also no change in all the other groups EXCEPT whites (from 28.2% in 2012 to 28.1% in 2013 to 26.8% in 2014) and Hispanic/Latino (from 27.3% in 2012 to 27.6% in 2013 to 28.8% in 2014). 

The other interesting news is that the percentage of non-resident students admitted (international and out-of-state), as a percentage of the admitted class, ROSE.  UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks said, in a written statement, that non-resident students pay more in tuition and that additional revenue is necessary to maintain the programs at UC Berkeley.  Moreover, the plan, Chancellor Dirks explained, was to increase the total percentage of non-resident students from 20 percent to 23 percent in the next three years.  So, one could say, that the bigger threat to Asian American students comes not from SCA-5 (which is currently dead) but from the UC System's need to enroll non-resident students for economic reasons.  That is a greater threat to California's Master Plan to educate Californians.