“Less Qualified” Students Can Succeed in Science

or Numbers Do Not Tell the Whole Story  //

Should “less qualified” students with lower SAT scores and lower high school GPAs be admitted to our colleges and universities and allowed to participate in our science diversity programs?

 
The answer is “no” according to many.  Merit based admissions and “by the numbers” selection for program participation is the popular view held by many both on and off campus.

Why should we admit or work with the less qualified at our colleges and universities and in our science diversity programs?  As conventional wisdom would have it, if you have limited admission slots or program slots, they should be filled by the “deserving” who have a real chance of succeeding.  As UC Regent John Moores has said of students with lower SAT scores being admitted to the University of California at Berkeley, “It is outrageous. They do not have any business going to Berkeley. …I question whether people are really being honest of what the chances are of students being successful.”

However, the success of so-called “less qualified” underrepresented minorities in the Biology Scholars Program (BSP) at UC Berkeley suggests otherwise.

BSP is a diversity program in Berkeley’s Department of Integrative Biology.  Funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, its goal is to increase the diversity of Berkeley students who succeed in biology majors and careers.

Over the last 14 years, of the 1000 BSP graduates, 60% are ethnic “minorities” (African American, Hispanic, and American Indian), 70% are women, and 80% come from low income backgrounds and are the first in their family to attend college.

As compared to majority (white and Asian) students not in BSP, minority BSP members entered UC Berkeley with 1) lower high school GPAs and 2) lower SAT scores.  Although “less qualified,” BSP minorities graduated with biology degrees 1) in the same percentages and 2) with the same final UC GPAs as their majority classmates. (see Matsui et al (2003) Cell Biology Education  v.2, 117-121)

By their success in biology at Berkeley, BSP minority graduates have attained “parity” by closing the minority-majority performance gap.

So, what is the take-away message?  Admitting individuals into our universities and diversity programs based primarily on GPAs and SATs turns a blind-eye to the circumstances that contributed to those numbers in the first place. Beyond the numbers, we need more comprehensively to assess individual motivation, preparation, aptitude, and intelligence as we consider who can most benefit from our institutions, majors, and programs.

Debating about who is more or less “qualified” gets us nowhere.  As the success in biology of minority BSP students at Berkeley illustrates, excellence and diversity are both possible at a highly selective university and in a highly competitive major.  The cost of BSP is relatively small – $5.00/student/day.  The cost of continuing our misdirected debate is large – the loss of potential contributions to society from large segments of this country’s diverse population.  Let us stop wasting public and private money and get to work on making our universities and science diversity programs more accessible and effective for all of our citizens. Beyond the politics of numbers lies our real work.

Contact:    John Matsui, Ph.D.

Director, Biology Scholars Program

Department of Integrative Biology

UC Berkeley

510.643.9768

[email protected]