UCLA is the new headquarters of a groundbreaking research center focusing all 10 University of California campuses on the development of policy solutions to disparities in public college admissions among students from diverse cultures.
The new center, UC ACCORD (All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity), has enlisted an impressive group of the University of California’s leading scholars in the areas of equity, achievement and educational opportunities. These researchers will engage a broader network of scholars, outreach professionals, K–12 and community-college educators, and policymakers in studying prevailing patterns of schooling inequalities and in proposing ways to establish equitable conditions for the state’s increasingly diverse student body.
“Through this all-campus effort, the UC system will make an important contribution to California’s efforts to understand problems and frame solutions related to equity and access,� said Richard Atkinson, UC president. “I am pleased that UCLA will serve in this vital coordinating role for an effort that will shape the educational future.�
The research center is headed by Jeannie Oakes, UCLA presidential professor. Scholars at the center will study how the technical, cultural and political dimensions of policies and practices promote or inhibit access to higher education for diverse groups of students.
“UC ACCORD will enable scholars to shape new equitable pathways for students — pathways of educational equity that lead to economic opportunity in California,� Oakes said. “Our goal is to infuse current and developing knowledge about access to college into policy and practice.�
The work of the consortium will move forward against a backdrop of shifts in California’s political and economic environment that make equitable access to higher education increasingly important.
Those shifts include a move from manufacturing to high-tech and service jobs that makes higher education a requisite for entry into the middle class, growth of the state’s
immigrant population and new race-neutral admissions policies that have curbed the number of African American and Latino students enrolling at the state’s most competitive public universities.
Additionally, UC ACCORD will support the development of a diverse new generation of University of California researchers, including junior faculty and doctoral students committed to advancing scholarship on educational equity and access, Oakes said.
Establishment of the center comes at the urging of UC campus chancellors, who requested a research-based inquiry into educational excellence and access.
UC ACCORD is intended to help the UC system understand problems and frame solutions related to college access, and become a reliable and credible source of information and recommendations for policy.
Its scope will range across studies of educational opportunities and experiences from pre-kindergarten through community colleges and the university itself. In addition to taking a close look at school-based and school-initiated opportunities, the researchers will pursue reliable knowledge of how K–12 schools work in combination with families, communities and the University of California to enhance college access.
Starting in July, the UC ACCORD Advisory Board will identify specific research and policy needs and provide grants to UC scholars to pursue these studies. Among the studies scheduled is one to monitor California’s progress toward reducing disparities in access and achievement.