The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly last week rejected a proposal to implement a one-semester ethnic studies course required for freshman UC admission.
The April 23 meeting agenda highlighted concerns over the gap between the $50 million allocated and the $276 million annually needed to implement the proposal across the state.
“Resource-strapped school districts could struggle to comply, potentially leaving up to 5 percent of students—about 20,000 annually—unable to meet UC admissions criteria,” it said. “Ethnic studies as a graduation requirement, rather than an admissions requirement, would avoid unfairly penalizing these students.”
The proposal defined ethnic studies as a critical, interdisciplinary study of formations of race, ethnicity, indigeneity, and structures of power.
“Grounded in a structural critique of racism and a commitment to social transformation, ethnic studies is aimed at producing critical knowledge about power, inequality, and inequity as well as the efforts of marginalized and oppressed racialized peoples to challenge systemic violence and the institutional structures that perpetuate racial injustice,” it said.
The proposal was first approved unanimously by the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools in November 2020 and was later advanced by the Academic Council in July 2024, after revisions, for Assembly consideration, according to a UC Senate Review.
If approved, the proposal would have gone to the UC Board of Regents for further consideration.
The proposal would not have increased the current number of 15 minimum required courses, but would have required students to take a one-semester (one-half unit) ethnic studies course, according to the agenda.
The current so-called A-G requirements are two units of history/social science, four units of English, three units of math, two units of science, two units of a language other than English, one unit of visual and performing arts, and one unit of a college preparatory elective.
A separate proposal to make the ethnic studies course a California high school graduation requirement was passed in October 2021, commencing with the class of 2030, and requiring schools to start offering ethnic studies courses in the fall of 2025.
The California Department of Education estimated that creating this new required course would cost $276 million annually, according to the UC Senate review. This estimate assumes that more than 1,600 new teachers would be needed at an average salary of $83,000, plus benefits, and includes indirect costs of $37 million and instructional materials costs of $54.3 million.
The Academic Senate confirmed that the ethnic studies graduation requirement will take effect only if the California Legislature provides funding for implementation, according to the UC proposal meeting agenda.
The uncertainties surrounding funding were discussed in a Dec. 12, 2024, UC Faculty Assembly meeting, where members postponed the ethnic studies proposal vote until this month, when these issues “could be more fully addressed.”
According to surveys administered by the UC High School Articulation team in February, of the approximately 2,300 California public schools with the A-G course list, 57 percent currently have at least one ethnic studies course.
The Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay Area regions, the two most populous in the state, skew this average with 75 percent and 72.6 percent, respectively.
Of the 640 California private schools with the A-G course list, 33 percent have at least one ethnic studies course.
