Audit shows UC admission standards relaxed for out-of-staters

Parents Forum
401

@ucbalumnus as far as the UCB COE CS vs. UCB LS CS study - I linked that study as well. I am not really sure, though, that I completely agree with Mr. Kwan’s (a UCB CS alum '16, I believe) conclusion/characterization of the data.

in UCB COE CS&E for 2007, 204 women applied, 58 were admitted, 23 SIRd. (Yield of 39%)
in UCB COE CS&E for 2014, 937 women applied (4x), 101 were admitted (2x), 32 SIR (1.5x). (Yield of 31%)
For UCB COE CS&E the yield has only gotten as high as 45% and is usually below 35% for women.

for UCB LS CS in 2007 36 applied, 17 admitted, 5 SIRd. (yield of 29%)
for UCB LS CS in 2014 470 applied (13x), 126 admits (7.5x), 62 sir (12x) (yield 49%)
For UCB LS CS the yield has not dropped below 35% since 2009 and only gotten below 40% once since then.

So, by 2014, UCB LS CS, despite only 470 applicants, accepted 126 women and enrolled 62. For that same year, UCB COE CS&E received 937 applicants (2x LS CS), accepted 101 of them, and enrolled only 32. Twice as many applicants, half the number enrolled.

Despite starting lower the yield quickly became consistently higher in UCB LS than in UCB COE. After 2009, yield was constantly higher. (and on a general upward trend.) UCB COE (the first number) yield has been flatlined - and even dropped a bit.)
2007 - 39 v. 29
2008 - 20 v. 25
2009 - 46 v. 42
2010 - 35 v. 43
2011 - 30 v. 36
2012 - 26 v. 43
2013 - 25 v. 42
2014 - 29 v. 48
2015 - 32 v. 49

I think those difference are quite interesting.

402

Re: #400

Remember, since EECS admits to major, the target number of matriculations does not change. (There is probably some unused capacity on the EE side, so in theory that could be used to slightly expand total enrollment if EECS were formally split into an EE and a CSE major, but that seems unlikely.)

However, since L&S CS is just part of L&S, which does not admit by major, and is much larger than even a (now-)large major like L&S CS, there is no limit on the target number of L&S (intending CS) matriculations other than as part of the overall target for L&S. So that is why frosh admissions for L&S (intending CS) students can rise rapidly as applicant demand rises. However, such students must now face an additional GPA hurdle after enrolling to get into the L&S CS major, which is now at full capacity (probably despite expansion).

403

@ucbalumnus

Nonetheless, if you look at the acceptance rate, yield rate, etc. it has remained static for COE despite a huge increase in raw numbers.

On the LS side, there has been a much greater increase.

Your post and these numbers suggest the same thing: there is a structural issue in UCB COE admissions that constrains women admits and yield.

in a similar program administered with very different parameters, but by the same institution, the outcomes are fairly dramatically different over a short period of time.

Hence my sense that the system of admissions for the UC engineering schools serves to artificially (intentionally or not) restrain female admits.

This sense is supported by the surprisingly consistent admit rate at COE, despite rapidly increasing raw applicants.

Couple this with the UCSD GPA numbers and it appears that the UC engineering schools might actually be lessening their overall quality by artificially restraining female enrollment. Not to mention the fact that, as I posted above, the UCs have repeatedly stated they were dedicated to ameliorating the problem.

The LS CS was able to do a better job in a shorter time, whatever the reason. That’s fact and should be looked at seriously. If they can do it, engineering should be able to as well. After all, they’re engineers!

404

It constrains all admits in order to stay within capacity.

The structural issues are that:

(a) The capacity limitation for L&S CS is not enforced at frosh admission (where listing one’s major when applying to L&S does nothing but show an intended major for advising purposes; all L&S frosh enter undeclared); it is enforced when declaring the major (which is why there is a 3.3 GPA minimum to declare the major).

(b) CoE is far smaller than L&S, so even if it went to the same “admit everyone as undeclared, then require high GPA to enter popular majors” model that L&S has, it would not be able to expand “intended EECS” admissions as much. (There are also dependencies on the capacity of other departments like physics.)

If you want an accurate comparison, you need to track from frosh application to declaration of the L&S CS major in order to include only those successful at getting into that major, rather than those who enroll but are then “weeded out”. Note: about 1,900 students enroll in CS 61A every year. About 300 of them are EECS majors. That means that 1,600 other students take CS 61A, but only about 300 eventually become L&S CS majors. Of course, not all actually intended to become L&S CS majors, but it does mean that, among those who enter L&S intending to major in CS, many are not successful in getting into the major.

405

@ucbalumnus

But it constraint female admits in the face of administrations stated goals of increasing their enrollment.

If UCB COE even just increased the yield of female admits, it would help their problem (that, again, they have said, over and over, they want to address.)

If the admins were happy with the 20/80 split then that would be one thing.

But they aren’t.

There are some things they can do that have been shown to work at other schools. The question has to be where is the will to attempt structural changes. Or where is the resistance.

I think the response by some posters to this discussion who claim to have association with the UCs clearly shows how some who have association with these institutions balk at even the suggestion of change.

Perhaps that too is part of the problem.

406

Who has claimed to have any current or recent employment (other than typical on-campus student jobs), contracting, or policy/political association with any UC?

407

@ucbalumnus Plenty of folks around here claim to be UC alums, have kids at UC, etc. Of course, since it’s an anonymous board, who knows if what anyone claims is true. But plenty of posters make the claims.

Again. I keep saying there are structural impediments in the COE (and other UC engineering programs) that artificially constrain female enrollment and yield, despite UC’s stated desire to change the lack of female (and more importantly, URM) students in engineering. And you keep giving me structural reason those structural impediments can’t be addressed.

I’m a complete civilian. I just became aware of this intractable and persistent distortion in admission and enrollment numbers in the engineering schools recently. I’ve tossed out a number of changes that I think could help the situation that UC Regents, Presidents, Chancellors and Deans have stated they want to address - and you, a UCB alum who seems to have some insight into the UC admission and enrollment process, keep giving me structural reasons why the ideas can’t be implemented.

But you don’t, interestingly, seem to have any ideas on how to fix it yourself. You seem to be perfectly sanguine with the status quo. But your Deans, President, Regents and Chancellors are not and have not been for over a dozen years, or so they claim. So what is the problem? Are they inept - incapable of affecting the change they have promised, or perhaps dishonest? It’s pretty perplexing really the number of times Dean Sastry, for instance, has vowed to address the issue, and how little progress has been made.

408

The insight into the UC admission and enrollment process is nothing special, as all of it is from publicly available information. However, it appears that you have not taken it upon yourself to look into it before making claims and attacks that are based on incomplete information.

In terms of increasing female engineering enrollment, what you have suggested is a far more involved (and not necessarily effective) change than the simplest way to increase female enrollment in engineering, which is to put a thumb on the scale to favor female applicants to engineering majors (or a heavier one if there currently is one). It is about the easiest thing to implement, and is probably what some super-selective private schools or engineering divisions at private schools do (and which probably accounts for the yield issues among female engineering admits who are likely have more other choices among such private schools than male engineering admits have). Given that the engineering applicant pool at UCB and UCLA is pressed up against the top end of the academic scale already, there would not be a noticeable change in admits’ academic quality (this may not necessarily be true at less selective campuses like UCM).

But then there would probably be a political fight to wade through. They would probably get an earful of anger from every male engineering reject complaining about this type of thing, even if such rejects were no-hope applicants anyway. Private schools can blow off this criticism easily, but it can be more of a political problem for a public school. (However, back in the 1980s, when UCB admissions was on a point system, there was a small number of points added for female applicants to CoE majors, so it is not unprecedented.)

409

@PurpleTitan That’s precisely what CA residents should do but they should also look in the mirror. Dating back to the 70s, CA voters have been adopting tax propositions that have damaged not only their public universities but also their public libraries, support for the arts etc. I personally think Michigan voters–and the Regents of the University of Michigan–were more intelligent. They realised that state support was declining and so (1) increased the number of OOS students and (2) embarked on a major fundraising campaign to raise the university’s endowment. UM now has the resources to attract the best and brightest students from across the country and their FA for OOS has gotten better every year. And it is far less dependent on the vagaries of state support.

410

@ucbalumnus The UCs are prohibited by law from looking at gender. But one would think they could look at the issues and skills that contribute to the increased success of female engineering students at UCSD and other schools and look to weight those higher.

You keep avoiding or missing the central point:

The UC administration (and educators across the country) have stated over and over again that for the good of the state and the nation and the industry we must get more women into engineering.

There is no indication that men inherently do better than women in the high-achieving engineering schools. In fact, there is indication, using UCSD stats, that women engineering students have better GPA, better graduation rate and spend a shorter time in school.

The UCs are lowering the standards for OOS/international students at the expense of the children of taxpayers IN STATE.

We are selling our most valuable degrees at a discount (compared to similarly valued/ranked programs. UMich ME engineering, for instance, is ranked about the same as UCB and UCLA, yet UCLA and UCB “sell” their OOS/International seats for 10 - 15% less.)

“But then there would probably be a political fight to wade through…” There should be a HUGE political fight right now that 30-40% of our most valuable undergraduate degrees are going out of state/international and that 80% of the enrollment in our most valuable degrees are male. That 90% of the enrollment in our most valuable degrees exclude URMs.

That is the “fight” that we should be having. If it was males that were on the 20% of that 80/20 engineering gender split it would be a whole other conversation. Just the fact that males are slipping to 40 - 45% of overall college admits has people really flipping out. Yet the persistent, intractable, really disgusting inequity in the engineering admissions across the UC campuses is something that can’t be addressed because there might be some upset white guys? Oh no! Perish the thought! How will we endure the anger of dude # 81 when he doesn’t get to join the other 80 dudes who into a UC engineering because a 21st woman did? (or, in ME, Dude 86, who didn’t get in because WOMAN 16 did…)

Too many women in STEM are already slogging through classes with 85 guys to their 15 women, enduring the structural, deeply entrenched and well documented misogyny of the industry, that is clearly evidenced on these boards.

This is tax payer money and that inequity hurts the state, hurts our women and hurts our economy. After seeing how frantically people like you resist and flail against the possibility of change, I am more and more convinced there are two choices: the UC engineering must get serious about this issue or we must defund the UCs.

As far as the fight. Don’t worry UCBalumus. I think President Napolitano, Dean Sastry and I have got pretty thick skin. We’ll endure the wrath of the 81st Dude!

411

The challenge isn’t unique to the UC’s.

% of undergraduate engineering degree’s awarded to women in 2015:
UC-B: 21.4%
UCLA: 21.7%
UC-SD: 23%
UT-Austin: 22.3%
UM-Ann Arbor: 23.4%
UF: 23.7%
UW-Madison: 19.3%
GT: 26%
UIUC: 16.4%

412

Yes, lots of this is not unique to the UC’s. The IS/OOS/International debate is also not unique to the UC’s.

413

Calidad2020 I claim to be a UC alum and I currently have a kid at a UC. As a dad the best thing you can do is be extremely supportive of your daughter in a STEM field and if UCI didn’t work out to encourage her to try other alternatives. There have been lots of studies that indicate for women to be successful in engineering they need supportive families.

I have known some of the UC engineering people and they do desperately want more minorities and women in STEM and for a lot them it is not happening fast enough either

414

@Gator88NE

It is not unique to the UCs, but it is something that the UCs have repeatedly stated for years now they want to make better and yet they fail to. They have not come close to making the progress other elite CA schools or many other state schools have made.

Cal Poly SLO for instance had an incoming class that was 25.3 percent in 2014, up from 18.5 percent in 2010. A better percentage increase than the UCs.

Both UVa and NC State (as well as most top private eng colleges.) make top 20 in this survey from 13-14 - https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/14_11-47.pdf
Percentage of Bachelor’s Degrees awarded to women By school* 2013-14

  1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 42.5%
  2. University of Pennsylvania 38.7%
  3. Cornell University 35.2%
  4. Worcester Polytechnic Institute 33.6%
  5. North Carolina A&T State Univ. 32.8%
  6. University of Notre Dame 32.8%
  7. Southern Methodist University 32.7%
  8. William Marsh Rice University 32.5%
  9. Princeton University 32.5%
  10. Harvard University 32.3%
  11. Columbia University 32.2%
  12. Northwestern University 32.1%
  13. Santa Clara University 30.6%
  14. University of Southern California 30.2%
  15. Duke University 30.1%
  16. University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez 29.5%
  17. Carnegie Mellon University 28.9%
  18. University of Virginia 28.8%
  19. The Johns Hopkins University 28.7%
  20. Stanford University 28.6%

Michigan Tech reports 26.7 women engineering students.

For 2015 Wm Marsh Rice claims to be awarding 37.7 of their engineering degrees to women. http://engineering.rice.edu/NewsContent.aspx?id=8589936969

At New Mexico tech, it is 29% women. http://www.abqjournal.com/661519/news/more-women-pursue-engineering-degrees.html

“UW Computer Science and Engineering School has doubled the number of women graduating with a major in that field in the last ten years. Now, 30 percent of their majors are women.” http://mynorthwest.com/11/2765909/University-of-Washington-solves-gender-gap-in-computer-science-degrees

UMich 2015 incoming class is 26% women.

UCLA UCEE was 23% female (ME 16%), 8.8% URM in 2015. In 2005 it was 19% female (14% ME), 8.8% URM.
UCSD engineering degree recipients 2001 22.2% female (with a .10 higher GPA), UCSD engineering degree recipients 2014 20.9% female (with a .12 higher GPA.)

The real shame is that the UC numbers have decreased or flat-lined in many cases since 2002 despite all the pledges from the deans, President and other admins to do better.

Why are the admins so poor at solving a problem that they themselves have identified?

But instead have somehow been able to increase OOS/international enrollment with no problem at all?

415

@proudparent26 Thanks for the advice. I think it is very important. We have told our D a number of times that it is much less important where she goes to school than that she finish school. We have encouraged her to select for fit as that will help ensure success.

I don’t doubt many people in the UC engineering would like to ameliorate this issue. We have heard from some of them. The question I have is why haven’t they? I was amazed to see how consistently the UCSD female engineering students outperform their male cohorts in GPA, graduation rates and time to graduation. At the very least you would think that UCSD would go well out of their way to increase the yield on their admitted female engineering students as the data shows they tend to pick female students better than they do male students and a better yield will increase the school’s quality and performance - but instead they have allowed their female enrollment as a percentage to slide since 2000. How can they do that? What possible logic allows you enroll less of the better performing students?

I guess some of the problem is simply “institutional culture.” As the surprisingly (and disturbingly) frenzied reaction of some on this board shows, there is still a deep-seated fear and resistance to the idea of change.

Really amazing (to me anyway) in this day and age.

416

I wa talking to a hiring manager yesterday, If a woman can write code, where she went to school is not important. Same with a man.

417

@dstark Of course, with a 17% CS&E female admission rate, she’s probably not learning to write code at a UC COE…

UCLA Samueli female enrollment 2014
CS - 82 total enrolled (16.9% of major)
CS&E- 36 total enrolled (14.9% or major)

Well, there’s 50 women a year going to get work for the next four years…

Oh yeah, another 106 at UCB COE CS&E! (18% of major) that’s 25 more jobs next year!

Just think, a full 75 of newly hired code writers next year could be female UCLA or UCB grads!

418

The 17 private universities in this top 20 list presumably have the freedom to put a thumb on the scale for female engineering and CS applicants. If the highly selective ones do that, that can be a reason for the lowered yield among female engineering and CS admits at UCs and other highly selective public universities that do not put a thumb on the scale for female engineering and CS applicants, due to more admission offers to choose from.

Also, NC State is not in this top 20 list. The three public universities in this list are #5 North Carolina A&T State Univ., #16 University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, and #18 University of Virginia. NC State’s percentage women is only 17.0% (216 / 1274).

Also, three universities that you listed previously as examples for UCs to follow, Washington, Penn State, and Michigan, have fairly ordinary percentages of women among engineering graduates at 23.8%, 17.7%, and 21.1% respectively. UCB, UCLA, and UCSD are at 22.5%, 20.6%, and 20.7% respectively. Overall is 19.1%.

So if Michigan’s incoming engineering class is 26% women, but its graduating engineering class is only 21.1% women, is that necessarily a good thing?

419

@ucbalumnus Not sure where you are getting your Penn State % from but for 2015 they claim 21% female enrollemnt fwiw. http://www.engr.psu.edu/facts/undergrad-enrollment.aspx And of course, you are misquoting. I used Penn State as an example of a large public school who did not require engineering students to apply to the major when you claimed that was a problem for the UCs. (Why is it you seem to have so much trouble keeping that kind of thing straight?)

As to Michigan, again, you are failing to follow. (What did they teach you at UCB anyway?) You see, in college, you graduate 4 or so years AFTER you enter, so to compare the %GRADUATING you have to look at the %ENTERING four years ago… and if we look at the % enrolled in 2011 we see it is… wait for it… 21.4% (8823 total grads/1890 women) 2012 was 22.4%. 2015 was 25% female enrollment (UMich has a pretty robust co-op program so there could be a decent # of 4.5 or 5 year grads. Not sure the numbers.) Did you really think UMich had an 70 or 80 something grad rate for women engineers? Seriously? You need to google more. Lots of good numbers here. http://ro.umich.edu/enrollment/enrollment.php?limit=none#r101

See, what UMich is doing is what UCB, UCLA, UCSD and the rest of the UC “claims” it wants to do - upping its enrollment. That wasn’t hard, was it?!

And UMich has much, much better to do, btw. They and UWash have also come out quite strongly about the need to increase female representation in the engineering department (as have most schools of course.) But they still need to do a better job of putting their money where their mouth is. We have been very impressed with their outreach, I have to say. They have a very personal touch for a big state school. The UCs could do worse than take a page from their book (and, again, you don’t have to be admitted to the major.)

I do find it interesting that you once again try to (unsuccessfully) nitpick and cherry-pick the data while ignoring the big-ticket (and more important) aspects of the discussion, which I will, I guess, have to recap yet again:

  1. The administration, that we pay with our tax dollars, has stated repeatedly, over the past 15 - 20 years that the UCs need to do a better job increasing the number and representation of women and URMs in the UC engineering schools.

  2. Women, when they are admitted to the UC engineering schools, do no worse and, in the case of UCSD, consistently better than their male cohorts in GPA, graduation rate and time to graduate.

  3. The UCs, despite repeated pledges to do better, have increased female admissions, acceptances and yield to their engineering schools by paltry amounts, if at all. Most have flatlined and some have back-slid.

  4. Other schools, both State schools and “top-tier” privates have done considerably better.

  5. Despite the UC’s repeated and long standing vow to address the problem, many folks, including UCB alumnus, seem very hostile to the idea.

So the question remains. If Poly SLO can get a 7 percentage point increase in 4 or 5 years. UMich can get a 4% increase in 4 years. If UVa and NC State Agricultural and Technical can get in the top 20 - why can’t the very clever (one would assume) engineering types at the UC engineers design a fix for their problem?

That is what perplexes me.

420

From the numbers of women engineering graduates and total engineering graduates listed in https://www.asee.org/papers-and-publications/publications/14_11-47.pdf .

Because you claim that having this system, where students are weeded out of their intended majors if they do not meet potentially high GPA thresholds, is somehow better for female engineering students.

You are the one who is cherry picking data (and not always accurately, as with NC State), mixing graduation data and enrollment data and otherwise non-comparable data in #413. In any case, it is also clear that you also have difficulty making an argument without resorting to ad hominem insults, since you make poorly supported claims. Example:

A few other schools, most of which are private (17 private in the top 20 list you use – note that 2 of the 3 public ones are much less selective than most schools being referred to, so their situations and how they handle them may not apply to highly selective schools). Presumably, they can easily put a thumb on the scale in admissions to get whatever percentage of female admits they want. To the extent that they give female admits more choices, that negatively affects the yield at other schools.

Of course, the macro effect of admissions/yield based tactics is mainly that of redistribution of the same engineering students so that some go to different schools than they would otherwise (and the “displaced” ones go to different schools than they would otherwise). I.e. a zero sum game between various engineering schools competing for the same pool of students. A macro-level improvement would involve (a) increasing engineering school capacity, and (b) dealing with the issues in K-12 where female students are discouraged from going into high-math academic paths. These are certainly worthwhile improvements to aim for, but they are not the easy or cheap ones that you seem to think will fix the problem.