The number of Latino freshman enrolled in UC Berkeley this year reached its highest level since 1997, according to the latest figures, which also show black students posting modest year-over-year gains.
The selective university has been struggling to boost enrollment of those students, whose lagging college-going rates led campus Chancellor Robert Birgeneau to suggest last month that California is approaching “educational apartheid” because of a 1996 voter initiative that banned affirmative action programs.

It seems that at UC Berkeley, even without the assistance of affirmitive action, there has been an increase in Latino enrollment. That doesn’t mean that the same can be said about all of the the schools in the University of California system. The news may sound positive but in reality it is negative because in 2005 Latinos are just getting to the levels that they were at back in 1997. I am positive that if affirmitive action programs were still in place the number of Latinos at UC Berkeley would be significantly higher.

Final enrollment numbers released Wednesday show that 426 Latino freshman attended University of California, Berkeley in the fall. That is up from 340 last year and is the most since 1997, the last year affirmative action was used and 469 Latino and Chicano freshman enrolled. In 1998, 271 Latino freshmen enrolled at UC Berkeley, according to UC data.

Via / Inside Bay Area