Dynes, now UCSD chancellor, will succeed UC President Richard C. Atkinson on Oct. 2. Dynes came to UCSD in 1991 as a physics professor and succeeded Atkinson as chancellor in 1995. Previously, Dynes spent 22 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Dynes was interviewed Aug. 22 by members of the Union-Tribune's editorial board.

Question: What is your sense of how you leave UCSD?

Answer: I'm very proud of the condition of UCSD. It is a remarkable place. By various rankings it is certainly in the top 10 research universities in the country. I think it's even better than that. What it doesn't have is the 200-to 300-year tradition and the thousands and thousands of alumni which carry the tradition longer than it's deserved of some of the other institutions in the country. When I go around the world, people say to me how did you do it? The answer is I didn't do it. I'm just a caretaker. UCSD has a reputation in the academic community of the world, which is far beyond what I think people in San Diego appreciate. Fiscally, I'm very proud of the way I'm leaving UCSD. It's sound. It is, of course, facing financial stress like everybody else in the state of California. But we're prepared for it. And we've planned for it. We have put revenue streams in place that will help us through this difficult time.

Is UCSD involved enough in the community?

It never is involved enough in the community but is it involved? You bet it is. Did you know, and I want an honest answer, that UCSD has three free health care clinics in San Diego?

No.

OK, I rest my case. We are deep into this community and people don't know. And I have spent seven years in San Diego and Imperial County digging UCSD roots into this community. People know of one or two things. Virtually nobody knows of the hundreds and hundreds of programs that we have in this community. We're all over the place in health care, in adult education, in preschool.

Isn't it important that the community know that you're involved in all of these things?

For our 40th birthday, what we chose to do to celebrate was to take presents to the community. That involved my traveling to various parts of San Diego and Imperial counties and meeting with citizen groups and describing what we are doing in their specific communities. And I went with UCSD students who came from South Bay or North County or East County and students who grew up who went to Sweetwater and elsewhere. And described their experiences at UCSD. And then alumni and representatives who live in those communities described the programs that we have there.

We have some clinics in San Ysidro that are just dynamite. We have something called UC Links, where we have agreements with the community colleges and the feeder high schools throughout San Diego and Imperial counties to help the kids find a different avenue to UCSD rather than through the freshman door.

In the wake of Proposition 209 (the 1996 initiative that banned racial preferences in public education, contracting and hiring), there was concern about access. (Outgoing UC President Richard C.) Atkinson was criticized by 209 proponents for trying to end run this dismantling of UC's policy on getting students in. What is your view?

The University of California must prepare the next leaders for California. And those leaders are going to come from everywhere. They're going to come from all backgrounds, all races. And there are bright, young, motivated people everywhere. Our job is to find them, prepare them for their inevitable leadership roles. Would I like affirmative action as a tool? Yes. But I'll obey the law. Now that having been said, since Prop. 209, we have been forced into and now enthusiastically and aggressively pursue what I think are far more creative programs to identify the best and the brightest.

I cite the Price School as something that happened as a result of Prop. 209 and I could give you five other examples. Those students were selected not on the basis of race but on the basis of motivation and their lack of preparedness. And it has a single motivation, which is college prep. This year we will graduate the first graduating class and I assure you that we're going to have to compete like hell to get them into UCSD because they're going to have opportunities throughout the country. And there was no race base in that, there was just an identification of good people.

Transfer programs from community colleges. With UC Links, we've written an agreement with every community college in San Diego, Imperial County and East Los Angeles College, and the feeder high schools. The community colleges join with us in recruiting bright young people. And they get bright young people at their community colleges. We have advisers who make sure these kids are taking the right courses in high school and then at community college. If they take these courses and maintain averages, we guarantee that they will be accepted as juniors at UCSD.

If you look at the demographics of those students, they're rather different than the demographics of the freshmen. If you look at their academic performance at graduation, it isn't different than those who have come through the freshmen doors.

How would Proposition 54, the initiative on the Oct. 7 ballot to prevent state and local governments from collecting racial data, impact your efforts to attract the best and the brightest students?

Insofar as we could not identify and measure on the basis of race, it surely would. I'm a scientist, which means that I pore over data. If I don't have data, it locks one hand behind my back. As a scientist, my mentality expects to try experiments and some work and some don't work. And one of the marks of a good scientist is his or her ability to identify which ones work and which ones don't work. Those that don't work you abandon. If you don't have measurements to determine whether something is working or not, you're in trouble. So I'm a measurer.

Why do you worry about the state of education in California?

The University of California is arguably the best public university in the world. It has the largest number of PhDs in any organization in the world. It is a testament to public education. It's under extreme (budgetary) stress. And yet it has through what I think are creative, innovative, entrepreneurial programs, continued to grow in its strength, in the quality of the faculty and in its impact in California and in the country. Then we have a K-12 system (in California) which is going the other way. And so there's this divergence. And the K-12 system is what feeds the University of California. That's unstable, and it worries me.

And you believe the K-12 system is actually deteriorating?

The measures suggest it is. If you look at the performance of the California K-12 system compared with the rest of the nation, it's ranked 40-something. That's not good when your university is ranked 1.

Students are not being prepared in the schools. Now, to some extent we don't see the worst of the worst because the University of California master plan anticipates that the University of California will accept the top 12.5 percent of the high school graduating class.

Is that 12.5 percent of high school students declining in quality?

I don't think so. I think the upper end, the education that students are getting in the premiere high schools is superb. There are two things you need in education. One is preparedness, the other is intelligence. And I don't want to lose the truly intelligent young people who because of the roll of the dice haven't been prepared.

Are you seeing evidence of grade inflation in incoming freshmen?

There's a wide variation of grades and what they signify depending upon the schools and the school districts. And that's why, for example, we don't use just GPAs. And that's why Dick Atkinson has really aggressively attacked SATs and wants SATs based on subject matter and not an ability to take tests.

There's also evidence that there is grade inflation at colleges and universities in the U.S., including some very good ones.

You mean Harvard.

Yes, and Yale and Stanford and others that have been cited. What about UCSD?

I've thought about that a lot. I actually thought about that as a professor of physics. I came here 12, 13 years ago. First thing I knew I walked into a class of physics 1B, electricity and magnetism for biology majors, and I delivered the course, set what I thought were the (appropriate) grades. Then I checked how the students did in other classes. It fit like a hand in a glove. So at that time I was pretty comfortable. Since that time, that was 1991, I've watched it. I've watched it now across the campus. And it would be untrue to say that there's not some variation from discipline to discipline but when I see the grade distributions at Stanford and at Harvard and the attitude is well if you get accepted you're an A student anyway, I've not see that inflation at UCSD. Students fail courses, have to take them again.

Do you think grade inflation is widespread now in American higher education?

I don't know that answer. The funny thing about grade inflation is when you graduate it may help you get your first job, but it won't help you perform in your first job.

How are you going to go about maintaining the quality and the reputation of the UC system given the state's current financial difficulties?

I'm spending the summer, aside from a magnificent scuba diving trip in Indonesia I just got back from, traveling around California talking to regents, chancellors, other administrators, and thinking about where my priorities are going to be, what I'm going to do. So you're not going to get any of that from me today because it's not there yet or if it's there you're not going to be the first to hear it. The quality of the University of California comes from the quality of the faculty. It's why we're as good as we are. And so we must maintain the quality of the faculty. And that's a complicated thing because really good faculty go to an institution because other really good faculty are there. It's a very nonlinear process. I came to San Diego because there were other people here at San Diego and I saw San Diego as being the most exciting place in the world. Money didn't have a lot to do with it.

The relationship between UC and the National Weapons Labs at Los Alamos is now threatened. How do you intend to deal with that?

I'm intimately familiar with these laboratories. I've worked inside these laboratories for a quarter of a century. All these issues that now are becoming prominent have been there for a long time. Also, the science is superb. The university has been the contractor for Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore labs for a long time. And I believe that the University should stand tall and be very proud of what it has accomplished. Still, the business practices at Los Alamos are a particularly glaring mistake that we weren't paying attention. We are now, I assure you. We've made a lot of people very uneasy and we've made some unemployed. But the science programs and the science-based weapons programs are the best in the world.

Looking forward, we are proceeding assuming that we will enter the competition to retain those contracts. I will reserve judgment on whether we do that or not until such time as I see the conditions that the Department of Energy puts forth for the contract. Running the labs is not our prime mission. If the conditions are such that they are not consistent with the mission of the university, we won't compete.

What qualities does the next chancellor of UCSD need to have?

The next chancellor has to value entrepreneurism. He or she has to be an academic. You might argue I'm not an academic but I am. Although most of my career I've been in industry. The next chancellor has to think in terms of academic excellence. There's an environment in a university which allows feeding of thought because you don't know where that's going to go. And nourishes excellent people to explore beyond the boundaries. I get to help choose so I guess I'm an influence on that.

Will they have to be as much of a fund-raiser as an academic?

I think no. Let me qualify that. I don't regard myself as a fund-raiser. I regard myself as a scientist and an academic. When you have a great story to tell, the fund raising comes. And UCSD has a great story to tell. When you consider the value of UCSD to the economic, social and cultural life here in San Diego I think we should appreciate that investing money into UCSD is an investment. It's not a gift. And I think that investment for people who have given in the past has clearly paid off.