Admissions officers have finally stopped matching by color and begun matching by ability.

The University of California recently released its admissions data for the fall 1998 freshman class, the first admitted under the color-blind mandate of the state’s Proposition 209.

Reports of a drop in the number of black and Hispanic students admitted to the two most prestigious campuses of the state system—Berkeley and UCLA—led proponents of race-based preferences to blast the new achievement-based system as exclusionary.

A lead editorial in The New York Times read, “Proposition 209 Shuts the Door,” and blasted the two top UC schools for “closing doors to black and Hispanic students at an alarming rate.” The real question posed by the results of the new achievement-based admissions process at Berkeley and the University of California, Los Angeles, is about the failure of the public schools to prepare students for these most elite universities.

The doors of opportunity were closed by the failure of those public schools, not by the university.

Unfortunately, that truth seems to be too uncomfortable for reactionaries complaining about exclusion.

They focus instead on the loss of a race-based preference program so blatantly unconstitutional that the state of California passed an initiative to ensure it never happens again.

A look back at the old system helps to put the current furor in perspective. Under the old system, admissions officers at Berkeley and UCLA judged students on both their test scores and their social-diversity category.

Under-Represented Minorities, or URMs (meaning African Americans, Chicanos, Latinos and American Indians), got admissions preferences over other candidates, to boost their presence on the Berkeley and UCLA campuses. Asian students were not considered minorities under this program.

By judging students on their race, the admissions program violated the civil rights of every applicant who did not fall into the URM category—all for the sake of proportional representation.

The Pacific Research Institute uncovered the reality of the process in our 1996 study “Ethnicity as Destiny: An Examination of Race-Based Admissions at University of California.”

For example, an out-of-state black student from a wealthy family had a better chance of admission to the state-funded Berkeley than a middle-class Vietnamese student born and raised in California, since Asians were not considered under-represented.

Sociological sputter glossed over huge disparities in test scores, while the initial warning signs of weak scores turned into significantly lower graduation rates.

At campuses like UC Riverside or UC Santa Cruz, the student body was almost entirely white and Asian, or “segregated,” since the top two schools snapped up any eligible minority students from the targeted groups.

But the racial reactionaries never complained. The lesser schools were beneath their notice.

To put a stop to this race-rigged system, UC Regent Ward Connerly, a multiracial businessman, drafted a resolution in 1995 to remove race and ethnicity from the admission process.

The statewide passage of Proposition 209 followed, banning the use of preferences based on race, ethnicity and sex in any state action.

In its wake, UC admissions officers were forced to throw out the racially rigged system and start treating students like individuals.

Which brings us to the latest news about admissions to the UC system. The group of high school seniors who just received letters of acceptance from Berkeley or UCLA is the first to be admitted under the new achievement-based system.

In fact, UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale called the incoming freshman class “the academically strongest class in UCLA history.”

Yes, the number of black, Hispanic and American Indian students admitted to UC Berkeley and UCLA dropped, but the 2,145 students from those groups who were admitted to one or the other university have the confidence of knowing their performance got them in, instead of their skin tone.

Meanwhile, black and hispanic admissions are up at the lesser known campuses like UC Riverside and Santa Cruz.

Though they may have a lower profile than Berkeley or UCLA, the other UC campuses are in the top tier of education in California and are more competitive than those in the 22-campus state university system.

The students who end up on these campuses next fall will find they are better equipped to succeed, since the system made a judgment based on their performance, not on their ethnicity.

While the editorial staff at The New York Times and the race-politics crowd at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund may rant about the fading rainbow in Berkeley’s student body, their concern reveals a weak understanding about the depth of opportunity in the California university system and a myopic view of the meaning of equal opportunity.

The new achievement-based admissions system is the best way to ensure a fair and productive educational experience for anyone with the qualifications to earn a degree.

Admissions officers have finally stopped matching by color and begun matching by ability.

Katherine Post, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, is director of the Alexandria, Virginia, based Center for Enterprise and Opportunity, a part of the Pacific Research Institute, San Francisco. Her views are not necessarily those of Bridge News.