More California high school students are taking steps to prepare for college but a smaller percentage of them are satisfactorily completing all the courses and tests required for admission to the state's public universities, a new study shows.
Those mixed results released Monday startled state educational leaders who set eligibility standards for the University of California and California State University systems.
"It's very confusing," said Warren Fox, director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which surveyed 1996 high school graduates. "You have more students attempting to be college bound, but they didn't make it. And we don't know why."
Educators are not sure if students are failing to pass required courses, dropping the tougher classes or are simply unaware of all required Scholastic Aptitude Tests.
To answer those questions and others, commissioners have agreed to join UC and Cal State officials to probe more deeply into the extensive data gleaned from surveying 15,352 transcripts from the 1996 high school class.
The commission's study of university eligibility--the first conducted since 1990--is designed to determine if the state is following its master plan for higher education.
Under that plan, UC is supposed to accept the top 12.5% of the state's public high school graduates and Cal State takes the top one-third.
But only 11.1% of 1996 high school graduates were eligible for UC and 29.6% for Cal State.
Compared to 1990, the drop in eligibility was steepest among African Americans: Only 2.8% of black high school graduates were eligible for UC, compared to 5.1% six years earlier.
That 45% drop, along with slight backsliding among Latino high school graduates, pointed out the difficulty for California's educators to fulfill their goal of sending more black and Latino students to public universities without the use of affirmative action.
"We were tremendously disappointed in the drop in black eligibility," said Dennis Galligani, UC's assistant vice president for student academic services. In contrast, he was encouraged that Latino UC eligibility had dropped only 0.1% over six years to 3.8%, but said that the percentage was still far too low.
Moreover, Galligani said the new statistics show that it is "even more critical" for UC and others to step up their "outreach efforts"--after-school enrichment classes and other programs intended to keep disadvantaged students on track for college.
