Since the press release didn't bother to, lets compare UC Berkeley's (UCB) admissions [1] to California's demographics (CAL) for 2018 [2], to see how much work on diversity they have left to do:

                    UCB %    CAL %   UCB/CAL
  Black              5.04     5.51   0.92
  American Indian    0.44     0.35   1.27
  Latino            28.93    39.29   0.74
  Pacific Islander   0.18     0.36   0.49
  Asian             42.43    14.52   2.92
  White             18.53    36.64   0.51

That's odd. The press release doesn't mention them doing anything about correcting the under-representation of white students, despite them being tied with Pacific Islanders for most under-represented. In fact, they're not even counted as an under-represented group (URG) in their tables [1].

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

[1] https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-plannin...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California

I suppose that might due to ideology, similar to how the 2nd and 3rd wave of feminism see things differently.

Do you want to ensure a fair future by enforcing equal treatment now? Or do you want to rectify past wrongs by temporarily discriminating in the opposite direction?

If the current student body was 90% white, then you'd need a very low white admission rate to get it down to 36% like the CA average.

It depends who you ask your questions. If it's a poor white guy with family who came here from Albania, maybe he shouldn't care about "past wrongs"?

Consequentialism on the back of young adults is a crime in my opinion. It tries but fails to justify discrimination. The reason might be different compared to other authoritarian regimes, but the sense of superiority is exactly the same.

Affirmative action in California is banned by Proposition 209, which passed in 1996.

Its great they are making an effort to boost diversity, but I don't see how a single year jump this large was accomplished without implementing affirmative action.

The UC system already has an ongoing lawsuit over affirmative action in their admission practices, it's a bit scary that they are now so blatantly violating state law.

Based on the article, this was done mainly through targeted outreach. Are you saying it constitutes affirmative action for a university to direct its outreach efforts toward one part of the state versus another? Note that average SAT, ACT, and GPA were unchanged from last year, so academic standards were not compromised one iota.

If targeted outreach can yield 40% gains in year, the admissions/outreach office has been screwing up big time for the past 30 years.

It's weird they defend this dramatic admissions change by saying the SAT scores are unchanged, yet at the same time, they're getting rid of SAT scores as an admissions criteria moving forward. Are they holding back URMs or not?

The UC system has a common application and students rarely apply to only one school. The impacts of any outreach effort should be seen across the entire UC system and not just Berkeley. Based on the data for the entire UC system, you can see that is not the case https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-plannin...

What has changed though is that UCB has a new admissions dean.

> The impacts of any outreach effort should be seen across the entire UC system and not just Berkeley.

You say this as if I'm just supposed to accept it, but I don't believe it. UCB, along with UCLA, are the top tier of the UC system. I don't think it's a big stretch to think that someone who might be applying to UCB wouldn't be applying to UCSD.

I'm not coming straight out and saying you're wrong here, but I am saying this is a statement that needs supporting.

Anecdotally, I applied to only 2 UCs: Berkeley and UCSD. Several of my friends that applied to (and some of whom who attended) Berkeley and UCLA also applied to UCSD, UCSC, or UCSB.

At the expense of how many Asian admissions?

There are enough competitive Asian-American US citizens for the the statement to not be a non-issue.