Today the University released its enrollment numbers for the Class of 2012–the first class whose entire admissions cycle took place after Proposal 2 has gone into effect.
>>Minority enrollment declined slightly from 10.8% last year to 10.5% this year.
>>There was a 7.8% increase in women applicants from last year; the number of women admitted dropped by 8.2% from last year.
>> Women make up 50.9% of the admitted applicants, up from last year’s 50.6%.
While no one is claiming victory over Prop 2, and a decline in minority enrollment (no matter how slight) is no celebratory matter, the numbers released today come to the relief of University officials who had expected the drop in minority enrollment to be far more significant.
At least for now, UM averted the ill effects that schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA experienced after the passage of proposition 209 in 1996, a proposal near identical to Prop 2. UC Berkeley and UCLA had significant declines in minority enrollment after Proposition 209, and they still have yet to recover to their pre-proposition 209 enrollment levels.
The maintenance of a 10.5 percent minority enrollment can be largely credited to the efforts and commitment of University President Coleman and the admissions staff. Since the passage of Prop 2, UM has built-in more programming at its
The University has also increased its level of outreach to admitted minority students. As in the past, President Coleman, faculty and staff members make personal phone calls to admitted students to persuade them to come. More phone calls were made to minority students during this admissions cycle in particular.
And since the passage of prop 2, the admissions office uses a software called DescriptorPLUS, which was developed by the College Board. The software has demographics and socioeconomic data on neighborhoods and high schools across the nation; and enables the University to better focus its outreach to high schools and communities that haven’t historically sent many students to the University.
In a meeting today with the President’s Commission on Women’s Issue (PACWI), President Coleman voiced that the University is not only interested in maintaining the current level of minority enrollment, but making sure that this number increases in the future. A difficult and daunting task in the face of proposal 2, but I wouldn’t say it’s out of reach.