IRVINE : Changing Face of UCI Freshmen Class

The number of Asian, Anglo and black freshmen is up at UC Irvine, which posted a record 16,761 students this fall, campus officials said Thursday.

But the number of Latino and American Indian freshmen has declined for undetermined reasons, according to final enrollment statistics.

UC Irvine is the only University of California campus whose enrollment of black freshmen has risen slightly this fall, despite a 10% decline in black high school graduates last spring, said James E. Dunning, UCI’s director of admissions.

The actual increase of black freshman may seem negligible--100 this fall versus 99 last year--and proportionally, black freshmen now represent only 3.5% of the freshman class, down from 4.2% last year.

But, Dunning said, this comes at a time when the number of black freshmen have dropped significantly at most of the eight other UC undergraduate campuses.

“I have to attribute it to strong outreach programs,” he said. “Especially the early outreach programs. We are seeing people who have been in developmental programs starting in junior high school. They have been tutored, motivated, stimulated for four, five or six years.”

Asian students, who have been the largest ethnic population at UCI for the last several years, now represent nearly 45% of this year’s 2,845 new freshmen, university records show. About 34%, or 975, of the entering freshmen described themselves as Anglo.

Latino students are the next largest group, comprising nearly 11% of the freshman class. But just 303 Latino students enrolled this year, down from 313 in the fall of 1989.

Only 18 new freshmen described themselves as American Indian, down from 22 last fall.

About 5.8%, or 166, of the entering freshmen declined to list their ethnic background.

Three-fourths of UCI’s freshmen come from Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to enrollment statistics for fall, 1990. About 41%, or 1,180 students, gave home addresses in neighboring Los Angeles County.

A third, or 963, list Orange County as home. About 22% are from elsewhere in California, with only 2.7% coming from elsewhere in the United States or a foreign country.