Statement on Comprehensive Review
Regent Ward Connerly
October 22, 2003

In the past few years, the University of California has taken a number of important steps to improve its admissions process. I have supported all of these efforts, including the use of a process that is known as “comprehensive review,” to better assess a student’s qualifications for admission to a UC campus.

When comprehensive review first came before the Board of Regents in November 2001, I supported the proposal after concluding that comprehensive review would not reduce prospective students to the color of their skin or ethnic background nor would it threaten the academic quality of the university. Rather, I was persuaded that comprehensive review would enable our admissions staff to consider the full measure of a person’s academic talents, accomplishments and potential without diminishing the consideration of actual academic achievement.

The University has now enrolled two freshman classes using comprehensive review and, at last month’s Regents meeting, we received the second annual report on how comprehensive review is working. As with any policy of this complexity, there is room to make improvements and a responsibility to ask questions.

Recently, the chairman of the regents prepared a preliminary analysis of comprehensive review outcomes at the Berkeley campus. This report has prompted a similar review at Los Angeles. The Regents will examine those reports as well as a broader, systemwide study by President Dynes that is currently being conducted. I strongly applaud Chairman John Moores for exercising his due diligence as a fiduciary of the university. In addition, I want to make it clear that I have no doubt that all of the students admitted through comprehensive review are very qualified students who have been subjected to an elaborate process of evaluation. We must not forget that fact.

But, any evaluation of comprehensive review involves extremely complex and very nuanced considerations that cannot be detected by a cursory examination, particularly the question of whether race and ethnicity have somehow intruded into the selection process. Contrary to a number of press accounts, some of which involve speculation on my part as well as that of others, I have not, and will not, draw any conclusion about some of the issues raised by the chairman’s report until all the facts are in. Comprehensive review is important to providing educational access and maintaining the quality of our great university, and it is the Regents’ responsibility to ensure that it works effectively.

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