The University of California, San Diego, is coming up with creative ways to implement a form of affirmative action for admittance into its engineering programs.

Affirmative action was illegal in California long before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that colleges and universities could no longer consider an applicant’s race when admitting him or her.

To circumvent this, UCSD has developed a creative way to undermine its ability to graduate the best engineers and scientists by updating its policies for admitting students to a “selective major.” These majors are fields of study that require students to be accepted into them after they have begun attending the school.

Selective majors are a common practice at universities that typically ensures only the most qualified students are admitted to programs that require a more rigorous course of study or have a limit on the number of students due to space constraints. Nursing, engineering, and education are typically among the programs that accept a limited number of students each year.

But in a bid to change the type of student entering these programs, UCSD has implemented a unique set of criteria for students who wish to declare these “selective majors.” Instead of simply selecting the most academically qualified students, the university is using a points system that will prioritize certain students over others primarily based on characteristics out of a student’s control.

“[Students will] be considered for the major using a point system that awards one point each for having a 3.0 GPA or higher in the major screening courses; California residency; Pell Grant eligibility; and first-generation college status,” the university website says. The affected majors include electrical engineering, data science, mechanical and aerospace engineering, public health, biological science programs, and computer science.

This novel approach to selecting students for these undergraduate programs will no doubt ensure that a student who would otherwise make an excellent engineer or scientist is cast aside in favor of a student from a less “privileged” background.

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For example, a student from a middle-class family whose parents went to college, has a 3.5 GPA, and lives in California would only get two points under this criteria. But a student with a 3.1 GPA from California whose parents are millionaire high school graduates would receive three points, ensuring that the student with the better academic record is left out of the program and possibly forced to seek his or her education at another institution.

Instead of playing games with its selective majors, UCSD should prioritize the students with the best academic track record, not those who fit certain criteria that have no bearing on academic success. Otherwise, it will continue to promote a system designed to pick winners and losers.