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AB-233 Public postsecondary education: University of California: admissions.(2021-2022)

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Date Published: 05/24/2021 03:39 PM
AB233:v97#DOCUMENT

Amended  IN  Assembly  May 24, 2021
Amended  IN  Assembly  March 25, 2021

CALIFORNIA LEGISLATURE— 2021–2022 REGULAR SESSION

Assembly Bill
No. 233

Introduced by Assembly Members Boerner Horvath and McCarty

January 12, 2021

An act to add Section 66206 to the Education Code, relating to public postsecondary education.


LEGISLATIVE COUNSEL'S DIGEST


AB 233, as amended, Boerner Horvath. Public postsecondary education: University of California: admissions.
Existing law establishes the University of California, under the administration of the Regents of the University of California, and the California State University, under the administration of the Trustees of the California State University, as the 2 segments of public postsecondary education in the state generally authorized to grant baccalaureate degrees. The Donahoe Higher Education Act sets forth the missions and functions of the segments of postsecondary education in this state. Provisions of the act apply to the University of California only to the extent that the regents act, by appropriate resolution, to make those provisions applicable. A provision of the act expresses the intent of the Legislature that, in determining the standards and criteria for undergraduate and graduate admissions to the University of California and the California State University, the governing bodies of the segments develop processes that, among other things, strive to be fair and are easily understandable.
This bill would urgently request the regents to require the Office of the President of the University of California to establish specified systemwide protocols for admission processes by April 15, 2022, to be effective in the university’s admission cycle beginning August 1, 2022. These protocols would include a requirement that campus staff involved in making or informing admissions decisions report all attempts to influence admissions decisions, regardless of source, to their supervisors or to the director of undergraduate admissions. These protocols would also generally require the development and implementation of systemwide standards and procedures to promote an equitable admissions process for the campuses of the university, including processes to improve the proficiency and consistency of application readers. The bill would also urgently request the regents to require the Office of President of the University of California to submit an annual report to specified committees of the Legislature on prescribed topics related to the university’s admission process and related practices of the campuses, commencing on or before July 1, 2023, and on or before July 1 annually thereafter.
Vote: MAJORITY   Appropriation: NO   Fiscal Committee: YES   Local Program: NO  

The people of the State of California do enact as follows:


SECTION 1.

 Section 66206 is added to the Education Code, to read:

66206.
 The Regents of the University of California are urgently requested to do all of the following:
(a) Require the Office of the President of the University of California to establish systemwide protocols for admissions processes by April 15, 2022, to be effective in the university’s admission cycle beginning August 1, 2022. These protocols shall accomplish both of the following:
(1) Require staff involved in making or informing admissions decisions to report all attempts to influence admissions decisions, regardless of source, to their supervisors or to the director of undergraduate admissions.
(2) Establish a culture of ethical conduct in admissions by providing regular training to admissions and development staff, conducting reviews of admissions decisions, and monitoring the admissions office’s communications about applicants to ensure no inappropriate factors influence admissions activities.
(b) Require the Office of the President of the University of California by, April 15, 2022, to be effective in the university’s admission cycle beginning August 1, 2022, to require all campuses of the university to take all of the following actions:
(1) Document and implement a selection methodology that describes how it will choose applicants for admission, particularly when the applicants have received similar ratings from application readers. The selection strategy should specify the reasons why a campus may choose an applicant with a low or uncompetitive rating instead of an applicant with a higher rating.
(2) Develop and implement processes to use when selecting applicants for admission for identifying applicants whom it has selected for admission and who are not eligible for admission to the university, and record their rationale for admitting those applicants despite their ineligibility.
(3) Establish acceptable levels of application reader proficiency, and maintain training and monitoring programs that ensure that a campus’s readers attain and sustain those levels.
(4) Annually report to the Board of Admissions and Relations on the efforts by the campuses to maintain acceptable proficiency in their application readers, and on the consistency level of those application readers, including the frequency with which the readers’ ratings align with campus guidelines for rating applications.
(5) Require each campus of the University of California that does not admit all eligible transfer applicants to ensure that two application readers review all transfer applications applications from all eligible transfer applicants to assess the competitiveness of those applicants for admission and to ensure that the second reviewers cannot see the ratings of first reviewers for both freshman and transfer applications.
(c) Require the Office of the President of the University of California by April 15, 2022, to be effective in the university’s admission cycle beginning August 1, 2022, to require the undergraduate admissions office of each campus of the University of California to do all of the following:
(1) Identify all other campus departments that participate in or provide information that affects admissions decisionmaking.
(2) Obtain, evaluate, and approve a description of the criteria and processes that these departments use in rating and selecting applicants to recommend for admission.
(3) Annually obtain a roster from each of these departments of the individuals who will participate in admissions decisionmaking and their roles and ensure that no single individual is responsible for such decisions in any given department.
(4) Ensure that each individual whom a department includes on the roster it submits has received training on appropriate and inappropriate factors on which to base admissions decisions and has agreed to abide by the campus’s conflict-of-interest policies with respect to admissions.
(d) Require the Office of the President of the University of California to submit a report on or before July 1, 2023, and on or before July 1 annually thereafter, to the budget, appropriations, and education committees of both houses of the Legislature. This report shall comply with Section 9795 of the Government Code, and shall include, but not necessarily be limited to, specific information on the policies and campus-specific standards for admissions, with respect to all of the following subjects:
(1) The established process the University of California Office of the President uses to monitor campuses’ admissions processes to detect and prevent unfair or inconsistent practices and how effective these processes are for identifying applicants who do not meet eligibility criteria.
(2) The criteria used by campuses for identifying and evaluating an applicant’s eligibility for admissions based on the university’s admissions policies.
(3) The proficiency standards established by campuses for application reviewers and how the reviewers’ ratings are monitored for consistency.
(4) The campus oversight processes that academic departments use when evaluating applications for majors in their departments.
(5) Any attempt by a campus to influence the admission decisions and the university’s response to these attempts.
(6) The selection methodology used by each campus for how it will choose applicants for admission, and the selection strategy for how campuses will select applicants with similar ratings.