The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has laid the groundwork for schools to skirt the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that banned affirmative action admission policies.
While several universities saw a rise in Asian enrollment and a decrease in black and Latino enrollment following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 ruling that banned the use of race as a factor in college admission decisions, UCLA saw an unprecedented rise in “diversity.” The university has openly boasted of its method of outreach toward nonwhite students and change in the admissions process that allows the school to reach its desired ratio of students.
“[T]here is abundant evidence that, since 2007, UCLA’s undergraduate admissions office has been using significant racial preferences in admissions, in direct violation of the California Constitution (as amended by Proposition 209 in 1996),” Richard Sander, a UCLA law professor and Co-Director of the UCLA-RAND Center on Law and Policy, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The school’s behavior has become more brazen over time, and is indeed inviting a legal challenge.”
California’s Proposition 209, the Prohibition Against Discrimination or Preferential Treatment by State and Other Public Entities amendment, banned affirmative action policies in the state far before SCOTUS’s ruling. This has given UCLA several decades to perfect its loophole, testing methods of outreach to nonwhite students in order to increase their enrollment at the university.
UCLA’s latest incoming class demographic report reveals the university welcomed some “of the most racially, ethnically and socioeconomically diverse” students in the university’s history, according to data released in November. Black enrollment at the university increased by 5%, making up a total of 8% of the incoming class. Latino enrollment increased by 4% for a total of 26% of the incoming class.
In a press release following SCOTUS’s affirmative action ruling, UCLA boasted that it had found a way to increase diversity despite California law and maintained this to be of high importance to the university.
“Ensuring that UCLA’s student population reflects the diverse population of California is a goal inextricably tied to the campus’s role as a public university,” the statement said. “It is a foundational principle of the institution that UCLA serve the public and enhance the greater good, which means that the campus community should be inclusive of, and welcoming to, a population as diverse as the state’s.”
UCLA’s method includes using students, staff and alumni to personally reach out to minority students, hosting events for “underrepresented groups” and viewing applications in a “holistic” fashion instead of in separate segments, according to the university.
“As UCLA admits, its ‘holistic’ model was intended to increase the percentage of certain racial groups on campus, and it achieved that result,” GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told the DCNF. “This is the same goal and the same result that Harvard achieved with its ‘holistic’ model, which was just a way to hide that it discriminated against Asian and white applicants.”
Many universities, such as Brown and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), saw a significant increase in Asian enrollment and a decrease in black and Latino enrollment following the Court’s decision, as was expected. Yale, Princeton and Duke, like UCLA, saw the opposite trend, prompting questions regarding their compliance with the ruling.
“The incoming leaders at the Department of Education should compel UCLA and dozens of other competitive schools to provide specific, granular details about their new admissions policies,” Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions, the group that prompted the Supreme Court case, told the DCNF. “It is likely that many colleges are using illegal racial proxies rather than racial classifications and preferences.”
With UCLA setting the standard — and openly sharing its method — other universities may follow suit.
“UCLA’s example was indeed a blueprint for other UC schools,” Sander said. “And it certainly makes it easier for other university administrators to argue that one can cheat without consequences.”
Yale recently announced an “expanded commitment” to increasing diversity in 2024 in response to the affirmative action ban, hosting multiple summer programs aimed at drawing in students from “underrepresented backgrounds,” according to the Yale Daily News. Other universities have considered asking students to submit diversity statements or elaborate on how their race has impacted their lives.
With the incoming Trump administration, however, UCLA’s method of admission may begin to see legal pushback.
“College admissions is a zero-sum game, every spot given to a favored racial group is taken from a disfavored group,” Canaparo said. “The Supreme Court forbids that sort of racial gerrymandering, and UCLA has made itself a prime target for private litigants and President Trump’s Department of Justice.”
UCLA did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screen Capture/Supreme Court of the United States)
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