UC-CHP policy briefs provide short topical analysis of historical and contemporary issues in California higher education.
2024
2024.1: The Effect of Affirmative Action Bans on College Enrollment
Ten states banned affirmative action (AA) at public universities prior to the 2023 SFFA v. Harvard Supreme Court ruling that prohibited race-based preferences in US college admissions. This brief summarizes the short- and medium-term effects of AA bans on flagship public universities’ freshman racial composition. Bans cause immediate 20-50 percent declines in Black and Hispanic (URM) enrollment shares at only very-selective universities, though some regain 10-20 percentage points of their URM enrollment share within three years. AA bans do not systematically reduce Black more than Hispanic enrollment, and only UC Berkeley saw disproportionate declines among one gender (women). Declines in URM enrollment are generally (but not always) proportional to selectivity. The brief concludes by discussing recent data releases following the SFFA decision.
2020
2020.1: Grade Inflation at More- and Less-Affluent High Schools
If more-affluent high schools inflate their top students’ grades more than less-affluent schools over time, then grade inflation could exacerbate socioeconomic stratification across universities. This brief describes trends in top-performing students’ weighted grade point averages at more- and less-affluent California high schools between 2003 and 2011. While top students at more-affluent schools earn higher average grades, the gap between top students’ grades at more- and less-affluent schools actually shrank during the period, and the persistent gaps across schools can be wholly explained by test score differences. GPA-inflating AP and IB course enrollment, however, has long expanded faster at more-affluent schools. The evidence suggest that grade inflation has likely not recently hindered lower-income students’ access to selective universities.
2020.2: Increasing Bias in SAT Test Scores? A Variation on Simpson’s Paradox
Geiser (2015) documents a potentially-alarming increase in the correlation between University of California (UC) applicants’ SAT scores and their socioeconomic characteristics–ethnicity, parental income, and parental education–since 2000. This brief decomposes the increase into three possible explanations: increased SAT testing bias, increased educational stratification, and changes in the composition of UC applicants. About one-third of the increase can be explained by cross-school differences in California high school quality, with the remainder explained by increased UC applicant heterogeneity. The results manifest a variation on Simpson’s Paradox: while student socioeconomic characteristics explain an increasing within-high-school share of applicants’ SAT scores across the nine UC campuses, there is no such increase among applicants to any one UC campus.
2020.3: College Major Restrictions and Student Stratification
Many selective universities restrict access to high-demand majors using grade minimums and competitive internal applications. Difference-in-difference estimation around the implementation of 24 major restrictions at three universities since the 1970s shows that the restrictions are binding and differentially impact underrepresented minority (URM) students and students with absolute (not comparative) academic disadvantage, generating within-school socioeconomic stratification. A case study of Economics majors suggests that these effects are largely explained by URM and low-income students’ lower pre-college academic opportunity and measured preparedness, which lead to poor performance in introductory classes. The same universities that intentionally admit and recruit disadvantaged applicants to promote economic mobility appear to prevent many of those students from earning their most-lucrative degrees.
2020.4: Proposition 209 and Affirmative Action at the University of California
2020.5: Mismatch at the University of California before Proposition 209
Much of the academic literature on affirmative action has focused on the Mismatch Hypothesis, which holds that more-selective university enrollment harms some lower-testing students. Arcidiacono et al (2014) and Arcidiacono, Aucejo, and Hotz (2016) present evidence of mismatch in the context of the University of California’s 1990s affirmative action policy, while Sander and Taylor (2012) argue that Proposition 209 — which banned affirmative action at UC starting in 1998 — reduced mismatch among Black and Hispanic UC enrollees. However, Bleemer (2020) shows that ending UC’s affirmative action policy did not improve the educational outcomes of Black and Hispanic UC applicants, implying that the Black and Hispanic students targeted by UC’s affirmative action had not been mismatched. This brief reconciles each prior study with Bleemer (2020)’s baseline findings.
2018
2018.1: Approaching a Tipping Point? A History and Prospectus of Funding for the University of California
In its first four decades, UC depended largely on income generated by federal land grants and private philanthropy, and marginally on funding from the state. The year 1911 marked a major turning point: henceforth, state funding was linked to student enrollment workload. As a result, the University grew with California’s population in enrollment, academic programs, and new campuses. This historic commitment to systematically fund UC, the state’s sole land-grant university, helped create what is now considered the world’s premier public university system. However, beginning with cutbacks in the early 1990s UC’s state funding per student steadily declined. The pattern of state disinvestment increased markedly with the onset of the Great Recession. As chronicled in this report, the University diversified its sources of income and attempted to cut costs in response to this precipitous decline, while continuing to enroll more and more Californians. Even with the remarkable improvement in California’s economy, state funding per student remains significantly below what it was only a decade ago. Peering into the future, this study also provides a historically informed prospectus on the budget options available to UC. Individual campuses, such as Berkeley and UCLA, may be able to generate other income sources to maintain their quality and reputation. But there is no clear funding modelor pathway for the system to grow with the needs of the people of California. UC may be approaching a tipping point in which it will need to decide whether to continue to grow in enrollment without adequate funding, or limit enrollment and program growth to focus on quality and productivity.
Other Products Using UC-CHP Data:
2018: The UC ClioMetric History Project and Formatted Optical Character Recognition
In what ways—and to what degree—have universities contributed to the long-run growth, health, economic mobility, and gender/ethnic equity of their students’ communities and home states? The University of California ClioMetric History Project (UC-CHP) extends prior research on this question in two ways. First, we have developed a novel digitization protocol—formatted optical character recognition (fOCR)—which transforms scanned structured and semi-structured texts like university directories and catalogs into high-quality computer-readable databases. We use fOCR to produce annual databases of students (1890s to 1940s), faculty (1900 to present), course descriptions (1900 to present), and detailed budgets (1911-2012) for many California universities. Digitized student records, for example, illuminate the high proportion of 1900s university students who were female and from rural areas, as well as large family income differences between male and female students and between students at public and private universities. Second, UC-CHP is working to photograph, process with fOCR, and analyze restricted student administrative records to construct a comprehensive database of California university students and their enrollment behavior. With one university complete, this paper describes UC-CHP’s methodology and prospects for future research.
UC Berkeley Foodscape Map and Report
This research shows how UC Berkeley’s food and agriculture coursework has changed over time, and how diversity, equity, and inclusion have factored into Berkeley’s pedagogical approach to food and agriculture studies.