Nothing is more essential to the academic quality of a university than a diverse intellectual community, and the only way to develop and sustain that diversity is by providing access to the full range of people in the society that supports the institution. In their book, Beyond the Crossroads: The Future of the Public University in America, James Duderstadt and Farris Womack, president emeritus and past-chief financial offier of the University of Michigan, respectively, argue that “the first and vital step” in long-term academic planning at Michigan “was to link diversity and excellence as the two most compelling goals for the institution, recognizing that these goals were not only complementary but would be tightly linked in the multicultural society characterizing our nation and the world in the future” (p. 50).⁹

Higher education has an obligation to increase participation by members of racial, ethnic and cultural groups that are not adequately represented among students, faculty and staff. Fundamental issues of equity and social justice must be addressed if public universities are to keep faith with national values, responsibilities and purposes.

Important as these ideals are to the social function of public universities, for Duderstadt and Womack it is the direct connection between these ideals and the educational goals of the research university that makes diversity central to all academic planning: “Perhaps most important in this regard is the role diversity plays in educating students,” they say. “To prepare these students for active participation in an increasingly diverse society, universities clearly need to reflect this diversity on their campuses. Beyond that, there is ample evidence from research to suggest that diversity is a critical factor in creating the richly varied educational experience that helps students learn” (p. 46).

Understood in these terms not only as a pedagogical opportunity but also as a foundation for teaching and research in the broadest sense, diversity becomes a principal factor in determining the academic quality of the public research university. Conversely, the issue of diversity directly links the quality of academic programs in the research university to the socioeconomic health of that public, as demonstrated by the correlation between level of education and lifetime earnings:

The economic effect of graduate education is so great that it can compensate to some extent for the social inequities characteristically associated with ethnic and racial difference, at least in terms of lifetime income. One’s level of education determines financial success even more than do racial or ethnic origins:¹⁰

This connection between the educational objectives and the social ideals of the public research university makes the issue of access a crucial part of academic planning. Yet of all the factors determining the quality of academic institutions, it has been most resistant to significant improvement. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE) claims that in 2003 “the major burden of reductions in state higher education budgets was borne by students and families in the forms of reduced college opportunity, steep tuition increases and increased debt,” and they estimated that “at least 250,000 prospective students were shut out of higher education due to rising tuition or cutbacks in admissions and course offerings.”¹¹ Reduced budgets have eliminated many federal programs for low-income students, and even those that remain, such as the Pell Grant, are less effective than in the past. In 1980, Pell Grants covered more than 90 percent of tuition but only 50 percent of tuition in 2000, and by 2010 Pell Grants are projected to cover only 25 percent of the costs of attending a public university.¹²

Compounding this effect of budget reductions is a nationwide shift in the focus of financial aid from need to merit, including more funding for programs that serve middle-class families such as federal grants and loans to parents and tax credits. “Merit-based programs are a real challenge to access,” says Joni Finney, NCPPHE vice president, “because you’re spending money on students who’d go to college anyway.”¹³ Duderstadt and Womack argue that this trend represents a fundamental shift not only in terms of funding for public education but in the very sense of who that “public” is:

... by shifting student financial aid first from grants to loans and then from loans to tax credits that benefit primarily the middle and upper classes, federal policy has shifted away from the view that higher education is a public good and toward the view that education benefits primarily the individual… . It also clearly suggests that middle-class votes have become more important to federal leaders than the access of low-income students to educational opportunities. (p. 40)

... if colleges and universities continue to increase tuition to compensate for the imbalance between societal demand for higher education and rising costs, on the one hand, and stagnant public support, on the other, millions of Americans will find a college education priced beyond their means. (p. 124)

The consequences of these changes are especially acute in California, where the number of high school graduates from lower-income families is projected to increase rapidly compared to growth in the higher-income groups. Given the shift in higher-education funding toward middle- and upper-income students, disproportionate growth in the lower levels suggests that even greater numbers of California’s students may confront restricted access to the University of California than in the past. Exacerbating the effect of these disparate growth rates among economic groups on the diversity of the university are even greater discrepancies among projected growth in Hispanic and African American populations, which correlate with the lower-income segments of California’s population. From 1980 to 2040, for example, the following broad demographic shifts for the general population are predicted by the California Department of Finance:

Compounding the economic barriers to access facing the fastest growing segment of our population is a significant and persistent gap in high school graduation rates among these groups. The national graduation rates for these groups are closely reflected by the situation in California and in the largest school districts of the two counties from which UCI draws most of its students.¹⁴

Not surprisingly, differences among these high school graduation rates are reflected by differences in the pursuit of higher levels of education.

The shift over the past decade from need-based to merit-based aid, the rapid growth projected for the Hispanic population in the state, and a pronounced disparity among graduation rates thus conspire to make access an increasingly remote ideal for many people in our state, even while the educational aspirations of all these groups remain strikingly similar.¹⁵ The more intractable the problem becomes, the more tempting it is to separate access from academic quality and to emphasize the latter as more appropriate to strategic planning within the university. It is all the more important, then, that UCOP has repeatedly declared access to be a primary focus of long-range planning in the University of California: “This gap between the educational aspirations of our fellow citizens and their actual educational attainment will be a principal issue facing California, its elected officials, and its schools and colleges in the decade ahead.”¹⁶

Some of the economic obstacles to access are relieved by federal Pell Grants. As noted above, the percentage of costs covered by Pell Grants is diminishing rapidly, but they do support 30 percent of UC students systemwide (and 32 percent at UCI). For better and worse, that means the University of California remains one of the most accessible major public research universities in the country for lower-income students supported by federal aid.

In addition to Pell Grants, other forms of financial aid have been made available to students as fees have risen over the past decade. Together, these increases have moved UC a bit closer toward the high-fee/high-aid funding model that some believe is actually more equitable than the extremely low-fee model characteristic of UC through the 1980s.¹⁷ Increases among all sources of financial aid over the past decade are evident in the following chart from UCOP.¹⁸

As a result, UCOP says, “Even though our fees increased sharply in the early 1990s, we do not believe that there was an impact on access to UC for low-income students because of our financial aid policies.”¹⁹ Consequently, while still remaining a profoundly difficult challenge, the relative success of the University of California in mitigating some of the economic obstacles to access for lower-income students gives us an advantage over the most elite public research universities (and the best private universities in the state). Enrolling students from a wider socioeconomic range expands the university’s access to more, and more varied, intellectual talent than it might otherwise attract, and that in turn enhances the educational experience and scholarly work that are the primary measures of academic quality in a research university.

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Last Updated: January 22, 2007