‘Keeping the Faith at UC’

As a regent of the University of California and a member of the Commission to Review the Master Plan for Higher Education in California, I have been centrally involved in the issue of whether the University of California will be able to continue to offer admission to all high school graduates in California who are eligible to attend the university and who choose to do so. At the Master Plan, the commission split and eventually finessed the issue of whether such high school students should be “entitled” to go to the University of California, or whether they should be included in an eligibility pool from which the university would select. I have strongly advocated the former. I agree with you that the incentive provided top graduates that they can go directly to the University of California is an essential one. Indeed, I think it has become not only an expectation on the part of students and their parents, but a commitment on the part of the state.

The commission did recommend that CSU and the community colleges should set standards and be funded in ways that enable them to offer programs that will attract more high school graduates who are eligible to go to UC.

I certainly agree that we need to find other ways to avoid the choice between expansion of the UC system and rejection of candidates. However, in the final analysis, particularly given the difference in cost between public higher education in California and private education--education at UC has to be by far the best bargain in higher education in the world--we can expect ever increasing numbers of qualified students to want to come to the University of California. Our responsibility to them and to the future of the state is to make that possible.

HAROLD M. WILLIAMS

Los Angeles