RETHINK ADMISSIONS?

First, because such a university selection system effectively incorporates into itself the distortions and tragedies of the flawed K-12 system, aren't we, through lack of imagination, letting our likely success in the university's mission be held hostage to, or at least be compromised by, the K-12 crisis? With more care in our selection system, and specifically more intentionality designed to correct for the K-12 talent-labeling errors, we could better advance our own mission. Don't pretend the pipeline is delivering the best and brightest. Engineer a workaround. Innovate or fail.

One obvious workaround, race-sensitive affirmative action, is permitted by the U.S. Constitution but prohibited to us since Prop. 209. Our admissions officers therefore have one hand tied behind their backs as they try to cope with a broken K-12 system and compete with California's private institutions and with public and private institutions outside the state. So we fall further and further behind the demographic imperatives.

Another workaround is more fundamental. Consider: Despite how well it worked for me, I'm wondering whether the heavy emphasis on the quantitative scores of 17-year-olds is a sensible way to ration access to elite educational opportunities, given our true mission and the evolving needs of the state and nation. Too much true potential is excluded, especially given K-12 misfires. In my service with the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science, I've spent a great deal of time over the past decade working with experts in the science of psychometrics. The quantitative measures we use to identify the "top 12.5 percent" are imperfect measures of academic achievement. Sure, they're better than height or a lottery, but they just aren't the sine qua non for excellence. These measures are even worse as indicators of true potential, and worse still if we are willing to construct effective on-campus support systems to draw out underdeveloped academic talent. That's the approach taken so successfully by the University of Texas at Austin when it implemented its "Ten Percent Plan" granting eligibility to the top performers in every high school. (UC adopted its own "Four percent plan," but it self-evidently isn't making enough of a difference.)

So, given both Prop. 209 and the pipeline problems, isn't there some more fundamental reform of our admissions process-going, perhaps, to the Master Plan scheme itself, and still without reference to race-that would be better for the future California wants? I have been surprised, since landing on this planet two short years ago, by how little interest there appears to be, despite the crisis of exclusion, in rethinking some fundamentals. I knew Clark Kerr. Clark Kerr was a friend of mine. (Sort of.) But what made sense decades ago may not make sense now. Californians must imagine something different, before it's too late.

IS IT OUR JOB TO FIX THE PIPELINE?

We shouldn't pretend the pipeline is delivering the best and brightest, but neither should we assume there's nothing the university can do about K-12 failings. Even if available, affirmative action is just a temporizing strategy until the deeper problem is solved.

Increasingly, universities mount mentoring, tutoring, and similar pipeline efforts, or sponsor charter schools. (Cal does it all.) These are good and important deeds, but in my judgment they promise very modest contributions to campus diversity. Moreover, these activities are not a systematic strategy for the thoroughgoing structural improvements needed in the state's vast K-12 enterprise. Think of it this way: California has ten UC campuses but almost 2,000 comprehensive and alternative public high schools serving more than 1.8 million students.

So we must do more. When the nation faced a mortal security threat, scientists at this university raced their Nazi and Soviet competitors to give us the nuclear weaponry that ended World War II and prevented World War III. Now, UC scientists are at the forefront of critical contributions to challenges ranging from global climate change, to stem cell research, to nanoscience.

We must similarly be the premier source of intellectual capital and research-based policy prescriptions on how to improve K-12 education and, especially, equal opportunity. Why? Because no human problem is more difficult or more important, and no community has as much at stake in finding solutions than this diverse state. We need -- California and the nation need -- a declaration of war by the ten UC campuses against the frightful specter of another generation of poor and minority children relegated to struggle in yesterday's economy with yesteryear's skills. That way lies a multihued, deepening despair, and it will not be quiet.

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