National Press Club
Washington, DC
June 2, 1999
(Following the Chancellor's address, news reporters and others in attendance submitted questions to Chancellor Berdahl. This session was moderated by National Press Club President Larry Lipman. A transcript of the questions and answers follows.)
MR. LIPMAN: What is the principal difference between affirmative action and merit? You touched on both.
MR. BERDAHL: Well, I think that affirmative action is based upon the principle that there are categories in our society, defined by race, to which equal access has not been typically provided, and therefore one can use race as a factor in developing an admissions policy.
In the Bakke decision by Powell, he saw race as one factor in achieving what he saw as an overall compelling interest on the part of universities in achieving a diverse student body. That thus is a form of admission which, in the sense that it categorizes people by racial among those groups.
A merit system, such as we are now required to employ in the wake of 209, really looks at the individual applicant in a much more complete fashion and argues in favor of the evaluation of individuals as individuals, looking at all of the opportunities and how they have seized those opportunities.
I think that the merit system that we are employing at Berkeley and that is, I think, becoming more recognized certainly in universities where affirmative action, either by -- in Texas, where the Hopwood decision has banned the use of race as a factor in the admissions process, or in California, where 209 has, or in Washington, where Proposition 200 has passed -- I think we will see the effort at defining merit in terms really of evaluating students on the basis of the hand that they have been dealt and how they have played that hand. And that's how we have tried to do it at Berkeley, so that it is not simply on some kind of numerical scale. It is looking at students from backgrounds of social and economic deprivation, but who have nevertheless faced that challenge, overcome it in significant ways, and within the context achieved a great deal, giving evidence of drive and determination and an effort to succeed that gets rewarded in that process, so that it is not simply students who have gone to privileged schools and who may have had a fairly indifferent record at those privileged schools, but looking at students in the context in which they have performed.
I think that this system -- I'm very proud of it, actually. I think that as I have sat through the norming sessions, I have seen people struggling to really evaluate students as individuals in ways that I think we never did it in the past and in ways that I think are very, very promising for the use of true merit criteria, not simply test scores or GPAs, in the future.
MR. LIPMAN: George Washington University Law School Professor Paul Butler views the attacks on affirmative action and the lawsuits alleging reverse discrimination as a "back-to-the-future movement to reestablish white male privilege." Hasn't white male privilege in fact been reestablished in the schools of higher education in states like Texas and California, which have abandoned affirmative action?
MR. BERDAHL: Well, I certainly don't think that white male privilege is what has been advantaged in all of this discussion. Berkeley has more women students than it has men students. We have fewer white students than we have Asian students. Forty-four percent of our student body is Asian. Thirty-five percent -- a little less than 35 percent -- is Caucasian, so that I don't think that we have seen this system simply advantaging white male students.
And if you recall the statistics that I indicated about the composition of a freshman class at Berkeley, with 25 percent coming from families with incomes less than $30,000 a year; 30 percent coming from families with no -- neither parent having prior higher education or an advanced degree; and 20 percent being immigrants' children, it is, it seems to me, a fact that even in the wake of affirmative action being banned by 209, we have a remarkably diverse student body that certainly I would not characterize as having advantaged white males.
MR. LIPMAN: Two related questions. When you evaluate students as individuals, doesn't this become very subjective? How do you measure such merit? And if you're admitting people for overcoming adversity, are there any academic standards remaining?
MR. BERDAHL: Academic standards still remain the basic premise upon which students are evaluated, but they are evaluated not simply in terms of, as I said, test scores or grade point averages. They are evaluated in terms of the kind of curriculum with which they challenge themselves. If a student attends a high school that has a significant number of advanced placement classes but refuses to take those classes, that student has not challenged himself or pushed herself as hard as she ought to. If, on the contrary, that student has attended a school which has far fewer advanced placement classes, one that we might consider to be a disadvantaged environment, but that student has taken all of the advanced placement classes, all of the challenging honors classes the school has to offer, that student, it seems to me, should be given credit for that. We also look at the context of the school. What is the average SAT, what is the average GPA of students from that school? How does this student compare with that? How does that student then rank in both of those against other students admitted to Berkeley, the typical profile of a Berkeley student? How is -- what is the socioeconomic profile of that school? Has that student had to work while that student is in high school and provide support for a family? All of those things, it seems to me, are matters that pertain to merit and they have bearing upon the achievement the student has in their high school and they will have bearing upon the kind of performance that a student will have when they come to college, as well.
So, I think that merit is not merely a subjective kind of a judgment. It is a very carefully, I think, structured effort to evaluate students on the basis of the opportunities they've had and the degree to which they have seized those opportunities and benefited from them.
MR. LIPMAN: You talked about the earlier grades. Will or should America's most elite public university, Berkeley, expand its focus from winning Nobel Prizes and luring Ivy League professors, to contributing more to reversing the deterioration of basic education in its own state? Should universities, the cream of U.S. education, be reaching down to rescue the distressed elementary and high schools?
MR. BERDAHL: Well, I certainly thank the author of that question for recognizing that Berkeley is the most distinguished of the universities in America. (Laughter.) It may have been an alum who is here. (Laughter.) But I would also say that I don't think the effort to attract the very best faculty, the most outstanding faculty that we possibly can, to a place like Berkeley is inconsistent with the idea of the university working very hard to serve and help improve the quality of education in the public schools. Berkeley, I think, remains the strongest public university, and arguably the strongest university, in the United States. We are currently involved in 50 schools in East Bay and in San Francisco. We have thousands of students going out each week, in working with pupils in those schools, in the Berkeley Pledge Program. We have Interactive University with public schools online in San Francisco, whereby those students have access to class materials. They can correspond through chat rooms or through e-mail, with faculty and graduate students at Berkeley, who are also assisting in developing some of the curriculum in which they are involved. We have a vast array of programs in 50 schools in the area. I think we will be moving more heavily into Oakland in the years ahead, to try to help address some of the problems of that school system.
I don't see any inconsistency between that objective and the objective of being the leading public institution and research institution in the United States. In fact, I happen to believe that our future depends upon our ability to do that.
We have to begin to see education as a seamless web, one that extends from kindergarten through graduate school, because the products of the public schools, and the local schools in California and throughout the United States, are the students with whom we will be working once they reach college age. And to have the best prepared students coming to college is certainly in our interest at the university, as well.
MR. LIPMAN: Can you tell us what the percentage of black and Hispanic students is at Berkeley now and what it was before Proposition 209 went into effect?
MR. BERDAHL: It was slightly over 20 percent before 209 went into effect. In the first year after 209 went into effect, that freshman class, percentage of black and Hispanic students dropped to about 10.5 percent. This year's class will be at about 13 percent. So I think we're moving back toward a greater representation of underrepresented minorities in our student body without using race as a factor in the admissions process.
Our hope certainly is that with outreach, with the effort to improve the public schools, our student body will reflect more the population of the state. But I think it will be some time before that happens.
MR. LIPMAN: Texas Governor George Bush, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, is hailed as the "education governor," despite a shocking drop in the number of blacks and Hispanics admitted to Texas medical and law schools. Isn't a rising tide of educational opportunity supposed to lift all boats? Where did Governor Bush go wrong? And if George W. Bush were elected president, what would his education policies be, based on your experience at the University of Texas? (Scattered laughter.)
MR. BERDAHL: Well, I'm not sure I should try to speak for George Bush about what his education policies might be were he to be elected president. George Bush is, I think, a part of a national movement on the part of many governors -- it certainly was true of Governor Wilson in the last years of his administration; it has been true of Governor Gray Davis in California -- to see education as a high priority. And so I think that there are a number of governors around the country that are awakened to the issue of education.
Governor Bush invested, I think, substantial effort in improving the quality of reading of students and bringing students in Texas public schools up to grade level in terms of their reading. The focus, as least during the period that I was in Texas, was heavily on elementary and secondary, much less the case on higher education.
I think California is working very hard to improve the conditions in public schools, though they have a long way to go, while it has maintained a reasonably strong investment, though it has slipped as a percentage of our budget, as I indicated, in higher education.
But I don't think that Governor Bush is unique among governors, in seeing education as a very high priority.
MR. LIPMAN: You mentioned corporate financing of research. Do you fear that corporate financing of university research may overly influence the nation's research agenda? And is America losing an independent perspective and an independent critic of corporations and a source of research and knowledge for the public benefit?
MR. BERDAHL: Well, let me answer the last part of the question first. I don't think that universities will cease to be critics of the society in which they are imbedded. Certainly, Berkeley hasn't seemed to have lost its verve -- (laughter) -- for criticism, even though we have engaged more research from the private sector.
I don't think that it necessarily follows that the independence of the research need to be compromised in arrangements that are made with support from private enterprise. That hasn't been compromised; I am persuaded by the Novartis arrangement that we have entered into. There is no more reason to believe that private industry would bend the direction of research than that the federal government would bend the direction of research.
But it is something that, it seems to me, we have to be conscious of; it is something that we have to be aware of. And I think that universities have to be careful of prohibitions or delays in the publication of findings. I think that we have to be attentive to whether or not support from the private sector changes some of the culture in which research laboratories operate and whether it affects the kind of free inquiry that we hope graduate students will engage in as young researchers.
So I think it bears careful watching. I don't think it should be sort of prohibited without -- just out of hand. But I do think it requires the kind of attention -- and that is why we treated this Novartis arrangement as an experiment.
MR. LIPMAN: I have a couple of questions about the cost of education. Why has the cost of college education run so much ahead of the rate of inflation? And what are you doing to make sure that a college education remains affordable?
MR. BERDAHL: I am sure that the question about why it has exceeded the rate of inflation is really a pressing question that many Americans face. And I think the answer is really the fact that our society has discovered the tremendous value that exists in intelligence and in a knowledge-based economy, so that the competition for the people who contribute to this is very high. And academic salaries have certainly, I think, improved substantially and are leading the curve on inflation, at least through the past four or five years, although they fell behind during the high-inflation periods of the late '70s and early '80s.
But I think we also have to recognize that universities are incredibly equipment-intensive, and require very, very expensive equipment. Max Planck once observed that each new scientific discovery costs a lot more than the previous one, and it does so because it's more difficult to solve than the previous one. We solve the easy problems first. And discovery depends upon more refined equipment, it depends upon, I think, much more careful and expensive investment in that kind of equipment. And when you think about your offices and the fact that the half-life of computers is very short and we are compelled to replace that kind of equipment at a rate of every three to four years within a university, and that it is essential for a modern university to be functioning with that level of equipment, with all of the infrastructure and the high-speed wiring that that involves, as well as addressing problems like we have at Berkeley that were neglected for a long period during very, very steep declines in public support -- problems like deferred maintenance or the unique problem of Berkeley, seismic vulnerability. We just have vast issues and problems that we have to invest in if this university is going to be the kind of strong university in the future that it has been in the past. So I think that we will see that -- that the cost of education will continue to be very high.
The other thing I would say is that you have to distinguish between cost and price. The cost of educating students has not gone up nearly as fast as the price has to those who are purchasing the education, and that is a consequence of the declining support from the public sector -- that I have already alluded to.
MR. LIPMAN: In order to counteract the drop in admissions of minorities to California's colleges and universities in the wake of anti-affirmative action victories, isn't California Governor Gray Davis advocating the admission of the top percentage of graduates across the board from that state's high schools? Will such an approach be adopted and, if so, would it work?
And a second part: Could it work to assure the representation of Hispanics and African Americans at California's law and medical schools as well?
MR. BERDAHL: Governor Davis, along with the other members of the Board of Regents -- and Governor Davis is a member of the Board of Regents -- passed a motion, a month or so ago at the board meeting, to approve admission of the top 4 percent, by high school, of high school students who otherwise met the distribution requirements and the other requirements for admission to the University of California. This would assure eligibility of the top 4 percent of students for admission to some campus of the University of California. It doesn't assure admission to any particular campus, and each campus continues to have its own admission standards, those being very high at Berkeley, as well as UCLA, and increasing across the system.
It does not -- the admission of the top 4 percent by school does not have any truly significant impact on the percentage of black or Hispanic students who would thus become eligible for admission to the University of California. So it does not ultimately yield a significant change in that overall diverse population, but it does have, I think, the real benefit of saying to a student, within the context of his or her high school: If you work hard and do exceedingly well within this context and graduate from the high school that you attend in the top 4 percent, you will be eligible for admission to the University of California. It holds that hope, so that a student does not feel as though they have been utterly barred from admission to Berkeley, or to the University of California as a whole, simply because they have had the bad luck to have to attend a weak high school.
MR. LIPMAN: Our last question: As you know, the Department of Energy's Los Alamos Laboratory, which is managed by the University of California, has been the center of a firestorm concerning the stealing of nuclear secrets. What is the University of California doing to address security concerns? And what is your view of the proposal to restrict the future access of foreign students to DOE facilities?
MR. BERDAHL: Happily, Los Alamos does not report to me as Chancellor at Berkeley -- (laughter) -- it reports to the office of the president of the entire University of California.
So I will decline to answer that question in any of the specifics, other than to say that I know that the maintenance of security at Los Alamos and the other national labs that are run by the University of California is a serious concern. And I know that the university is addressing its relationship to security, which is -- the security issue is really dealt with by the Department of Energy and the scientific issues by the University of California. But to the extent that we are capable, those issues, I'm confident, will be addressed by the president and the regents.
MR. LIPMAN: Thank you. I'd like to thank you for coming today, Chancellor. And I would also like to thank National Press Club staff members Leigh Ann Boren, Pat Nelson, Melanie Abdow-Dermott, and Howard Rothman for organizing today's lunch. Also, thanks to the National Press Club Library for their research. We're adjourned.