UPI Western Regional Editor

LOS ANGELES, March 19 (UPI) -- The long-running disagreement over ethnic diversity and academic purity at the University of California system boiled over this week in the form of an unprecedented public reprimand of the president of the Board of Regents.

The Regents themselves voted 8-6 to sharply slap the wrist of President John Moores over an op-ed piece he penned in Forbes magazine a month ago where he expressed exasperation at what he saw as the system's "discrimination" against the best and the brightest.

"As I see it, hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on encouraging poor -- often minority -- high- school students to apply to UC even if they have very low SAT scores," Moores wrote. "But the outreach programs have had perverse consequences. The victims are the kids who should have gone to one of California's outstanding community colleges, where they might have had the possibility of success and a chance to grow intellectually."

Moores' column charged that UC administrators were encouraging minority kids to apply and then finessing them into UC schools in a fashion he alleged was "thwarting the law" that was approved by the voters in 1996 specifically to do away with use of race in giving one applicant preference over another.

The regents who voted to ding Moores on Thursday told reporters they took the action in order to make it perfectly clear that his view of the admissions policy was illegal was not the board's official stance.

"It is the question of who believes that article was not damaging to the university because it was a partial argument," said George Marcus, one of the three authors of the resolution. "We have an obligation to enhance the reputation of the university."

Reputation, however, has become a blessing and a curse for the vaunted UC system, which includes such nationally known campuses as UCLA, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and UC Davis.

Public higher education is broken down into basically three tiers in California: the California State system, the UC system, and the community colleges. The brightest gravitate toward the UC system due largely to its academic reputation and the fact that it includes medical and law schools as well as some top-notch business schools; six of the system's nine campuses placed in the top 50 on the well-read national university rankings annually published by U.S. News & World Report.

The change in enrollment policy in 1996 was aimed at mollifying conservatives who abhor racial quotas of any kind, and the white and Asian parents who feared their offspring might some day be aced out of a UC admission in order to make room for African-American, Native American or Latino teens whose SAT scores weren't as high as their suburban children's.

Moores' article sounded as though he had bought into the patronizing argument that there might be too many big words used in UC classrooms for the students allowed in as "SAT charity cases." They might indeed be happier and more productive back at the more pedestrian junior college level with their own duller kind.

But the law is the law and Moores was correct in stating that there appeared to be some book-cooking going on in admissions practices that could lead to serious legal trouble down the road.

According to a system report issued this week, nearly 400 students were admitted in 2002 -- despite having SAT scores below 1000. Another 600 were rejected even though their SATs were 1500 or above. A perfect SAT score is 1600 and the UC campus median is 1300.

"Nobody believes that the SAT is a perfect predictor of academic success, but it's silly to pretend that very low-scoring applicants should be admitted to one of America's premier universities with the expectation that somehow these students will learn material that they missed in K-12," Moores complained.

Because it is state supported, the systems' fortunes tend to rise and fall with those of California's state government.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed 2005 budget includes a $372 million cut in the UC's share of the sour budget pie. It translates to a 10-percent cut in the size of the overall freshman class -- a loss of about 3,200 openings.

System officials, who have had their budget hacked in each of the past three years pledged to "work with" the Legislature to spare the inexorable pain.

"The continuing trend of reduced state funding for UC makes me deeply concerned about our ability to deliver on the promise that the University of California has always represented for the people of California," UC President Robert C. Dynes said in a statement.

Schwarzenegger may tout California's universities as a cornerstone of the state's business climate, but making friends in the Democratically-controlled Legislature may not be so easy when the head of the Board of Regents carries on about his campuses being sullied by undeserving students -- a stance that he must know could easily be misinterpreted in a politically-charged atmosphere as meaning students from, shall we say, the "wrong side of the freeway."

Moores said in Forbes that his beef was with the liberties that he feels admissions officials have been taking to flout a state law that insists upon a color-blind standard.

"The university's admission process should be legal and fair, and the criteria for admission should be transparent to the public," he maintained. "Students should understand that the path into UC is pretty straightforward: Work hard, take demanding courses and demonstrate academic success."

But with money tight and demand for admissions as heavy as ever, the Regents need to remember that the UC system exists for the benefit and at the largesse of the taxpayers and isn't a privately-endowed Ivy League of the West that can surround itself with the elite and shut the door on everyone else -- regardless of what the law says.