I suppose this is the antithesis of "legacy schools", whose practices of prioritizing children of former students serves to maintain and preserve privilege structures instead of disrupt them.
That's one way of looking at it. But it's not just about alumni of UCSD. This is about privileging kids whose parents didn't go to college over kids whose parents went to any college.
More important is the impact. The GPA cutoff is very low, just 3.0. Who gets into UCSD with less than a 3.0? And the vast majority (75%) [1] of UCSD students are in-state. So the only factors that actually matter are Pell and first-gen college. So CS and other majors will be enriched with students who check these boxes. Will they succeed? Some will. But based on existing research we know that students who are admitted with lesser credentials transfer out of STEM majors at a higher rate. This applies to both AA admits and legacy admits. It likely also applies to Pell/first-gen students, whom the UC system prizes and privileges.
I see two possibilities. Either students will wash out in years 2 and 3, or so much of the majors will be made up of these students that there will be pressure to dumb down the courses so that students can pass. Either way, it's a bad outcome for these kids. And it's a bad outcome for the kids who were rejected from the major and who can't shift into it after slots open up later.
I think it might be a leap to assume first gen and Pell students are low performers or likely to drop out. Is there anything to back that up? It'd be just as easy to argue that they perform better because there's more at stake compared to a student with larger social safety nets.
I wouldn't assume this if UC didn't make such a big deal about how they are boosting their Pell and first-gen admits. I think first-gen is now over 40% of UC freshman, which seems disproportionately high.
Time will tell. Let's check back in a few years and see if policies like these have aged well. It didn't take long for the SAT-blind policies to be reversed.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 22.2 ms ] thread1: https://students.ucsd.edu/academics/advising/majors-minors/s...
More important is the impact. The GPA cutoff is very low, just 3.0. Who gets into UCSD with less than a 3.0? And the vast majority (75%) [1] of UCSD students are in-state. So the only factors that actually matter are Pell and first-gen college. So CS and other majors will be enriched with students who check these boxes. Will they succeed? Some will. But based on existing research we know that students who are admitted with lesser credentials transfer out of STEM majors at a higher rate. This applies to both AA admits and legacy admits. It likely also applies to Pell/first-gen students, whom the UC system prizes and privileges.
I see two possibilities. Either students will wash out in years 2 and 3, or so much of the majors will be made up of these students that there will be pressure to dumb down the courses so that students can pass. Either way, it's a bad outcome for these kids. And it's a bad outcome for the kids who were rejected from the major and who can't shift into it after slots open up later.
1: https://ir.ucsd.edu/stats/publications/21_22_StudentProfiles...
Time will tell. Let's check back in a few years and see if policies like these have aged well. It didn't take long for the SAT-blind policies to be reversed.