Criticism of the school's move appears to stem largely from an article by Aaron Sibarium published in the Washington Free Beacon. Other publications like Campus Reform have quoted from this piece.
It's true that, according to UCLA's first year student body profiles, the share of black students entering the student body rose from 3% in 2020 to 8% in 2023. However, the article distorts the severity of the consequences of this. Additionally, several factors call the original article's credibility into question. First, all sources cited in the Beacon article are anonymous. Second, according to a Los Angeles Times rebuttal, the article relies on complaints from only eight faculty members out of the school's 5,000+ total faculty. Additionally, the LA Times notes that Sibarium appears to misunderstand the distinction between the student admissions process and the entirely separate process of appointing medical residents—who are medical school graduates, many of whom received their education elsewhere.
One central complaint points to UCLA's fall from 8th to 16th place in U.S. News & World Report's research ranking as evidence that scientific rigor has declined due to affirmative action in admissions. However, this reasoning contains a fundamental flaw: the research ranking tracks faculty activities, not student performance, and therefore has no connection to the incoming class's academic record. UCLA Dean Steven Dubinett expanded on this to the LA Times, saying that the university has assigned more faculty to clinical education rather than research, naturally reducing the grant funding per faculty member—a key metric in the rankings.
Sibarium also claims that UCLA medical students' shelf exam failure rates have "soared" under diversity initiatives. This assertion omits crucial context: UCLA moved these exams a full year earlier in the curriculum in 2020, which naturally caused temporary lower scores as students took the exams with less preparation time.
The complete picture reveals stronger student performance than Sibarium suggests. By the end of their third year, students perform well, with average shelf exam grades above 90% in nearly every clinical discipline.
