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OAKLAND — University of California officials are proposing a new road to admissions that could bring in more black and Hispanic students, provided they’re willing to take a detour through community college. 

The proposal, which requires approval by faculty and regents, would expand offers of guaranteed admission from the current top 4 percent of each high school to the top 12.5 percent at each high school. 

The additional 8.5 percent would not get immediate entry to UC, but they would be simultaneously admitted to UC and to a community college and told what courses they need to complete to transfer to UC. 

Because students would transfer as upperclassmen, the new program doesn’t take away freshman seats. UC officials say they have the capacity to handle up to 3,500 new transfers expected from the new program by 2005. 

The new approach could boost enrollment of black, Hispanic and American Indian students, whose numbers have fallen since UC scuttled affirmative action five years ago. The program could make up to 12,700 more students eligible for admission. Of those, up to 36 percent are Hispanic, black or American Indian, the three groups considered underrepresented minorities at UC. By contrast, underrepresented minorities make up 12 percent of the current pool of UC-eligible freshmen. 

“Clearly, it will have an impact on the number of underrepresented minorities,” UC President Richard C. Atkinson said at a news conference Thursday. He said the new program won’t violate Proposition 209, which forbids affirmative action in public education because it doesn’t select by race. “But the sheer fact that we will be reaching out to these low-performing high schools will guarantee that kind of additional increase.” 

UC now accepts the top 12.5 percent of all high school students, which means high-performing schools send lots of students to UC campuses while low-performing schools send few or none. 

If the new program is approved, students will be identified at the beginning of their senior year on the basis of student transcripts and invited to apply to the program.  

Once in, UC would maintain individual student Web pages to help keep them in the program. 

Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who is also a regent, called the plan “a good step toward re-establishing the UC’s commitment to providing equal access.” 

But Regent Ward Connerly, who wrote UC’s new race-blind policies, said he’d need some assurance UC’s academic quality won’t slip under the proposed change. 

He also wishes officials weren’t running demographic breakdowns of the potential new students. 

“If the intent is to somehow influence the number of underrepresented minorities, then I think that’s breaking the law,” he said.