Stats on Affirmative Action in Schools

I found some more statistics concerning affirmative action as it relates to education. The information goes along with an earlier post I made concerning the anti-affirmative action movement head by Ward Connerly. According to Consequences of Ward Connerly's Anti-Affirmative Initiatives (http://www.civilrights.org/issues/affirmative/remote-page.jsp?itemID=28328450):

• Connerly, a former member of the University of California Board of Regents, has led a series of attacks against affirmative action at the state level since 1995.
  
• Connerly is the key figure behind the 1996 enactment of California's Proposition 209, which eliminated the state's use of affirmative action in higher education, public contracting, and hiring.
  He was also the key figure behind Initiative 200 (I-200) in Washington State, where in 1998 voters approved the ban of the use of affirmative action in higher education, public contracting, and hiring.
• Language of Proposition 209 and I-200: "The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting"
• Initiatives designed to encourage the number of women to pursue fields where they have traditionally been underrepresented, such as math and science studies, were no longer permitted
• Further, pre-college programs that encourage underrepresented minority groups or girls to apply to college or pursue nontraditional academic courses were likely prohibited if targeted exclusively to women or minorities

Following enactment of Proposition 209, minority admissions at colleges and universities experienced a significant drop.

• For example, at the University of California at Berkeley, 8000 students were offered admission for the fall 1998 term. Only 191 students were black (compared with 562 students in 1997) and 434 students were Hispanic (compared with 1,045 students in 1997
• While the University of California system has made some gains in increasing the number of underrepresented minorities admitted to the colleges and universities, the numbers still fare poorly
• In fact, the overall percentage of enrolled underrepresented minorities declined at both University of California-Berkeley and UCLA, the two largest schools in the UC System. For example, at UCLA, the number of black students from California admitted dropped from 3.3 percent to just 2.8 percent in the fall of 2003.
• In addition, minority enrollment numbers in the UC medical schools and law schools still have not rebounded to pre-Proposition 209 levels, which were consistently higher than 20 percent. The enrollment percentage for underrepresented students in the first-year class for UC medical schools in 2002 was 16.5 percent. The proportion of underrepresented students in the law schools was 16.2 percent of the first-year class.