Report 2019-113 Recommendation 8 Responses

Report 2019-113: The University of California: Qualified Students Face an Inconsistent and Unfair Admissions System That Has Been Improperly Influenced by Relationships and Monetary Donations (Release Date: September 2020)

Recommendation #8 To: University of California

To better ensure that implicit bias in the evaluation of applications does not affect applicants' chances at admission, the Office of the President should remove potentially biasing information from the application information that campuses can access.

1-Year Agency Response

Responses to basic and necessary data fields in the application - e.g. school name or location, personal insight essays, and awards and activities - can be construed as potentially biasing information, but serve as helpful and important admissions context. The removal of this information would be detrimental to UC's ability to enroll students from diverse and/or under-resourced backgrounds and severely damage the University's ability to consider admissions characteristics in context. Certain personal information furthers the effectiveness of UC's Comprehensive Review: Academic accomplishments in light of the applicant's life experiences and special circumstances. Many admissions factors are imperfect but, when used holistically and in context, the deficiencies are minimized and the benefits for achieving admissions policy goals are maximized.

Even if it were desirable to do so, it would be very challenging as a practical matter for UCOP to withhold application information from campuses as data - tied to the fields recommended for removal - are shared across many systems to support essential operations (e.g., financial aid, housing, general communications, etc.).

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Will Not Implement

The University continues to suggest that all of the potentially biasing information that it shows to application readers is necessary for those readers to perform comprehensive review. That is not correct. As we describe in the report, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and UCLA all allow readers to see freshman applicants' names and native languages. UC Berkeley and UC San Diego further allow readers to see applicants' genders, and UC Berkeley and UCLA allow readers to see applicants' birthplaces. None of this information is among the factors that BOARS allows campuses to use to evaluate and select applicants for admission. Thus, providing it to readers is unnecessary for the evaluation process. Although an applicant may disclose potentially biasing information about themselves in other fields, such as the personal essay, the University can still take reasonable steps to reduce the impact of implicit bias by removing unnecessary fields from reader view.

6-Month Agency Response

Academic Affairs continues to evaluate the implementation of this recommendation.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

The Office of the President is currently evaluating the implementation of this recommendation.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2019-113

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.