The US Supreme Court on Thursday denied racially conscious admissions in higher education at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reversing more more than 40 years of precedent.
Judgments in two cases give opponents of the action a major victory. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, found that admissions programs at both universities violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection provision.
Roberts writes that as “well-intentioned” policies at UNC and Harvard were, the universities failed to use them within the narrow limitations that earlier court rulings allowed.
Roberts also wrote that schools may still consider an applicant’s discussion of how race affects their lives, “whether through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” But not, he wrote, through a specific application essay or other means.
“This is a very serious cut to our ability to use racially conscious admissions policies,” said Dominique Baker, professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University. “This sucks. But it’s important to pay attention to the details, because those details are how we think about what institutions can do right now as they prepare to start enrolling.” for next year.”
In the Harvard case, the court looked at whether the school discriminated against Asian-American students in the admissions process. With UNC, the court considered whether the school used racially conscious enrollment appropriately. The conservative activist group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) behind both Harvard and UNC.
The ruling mainly affects a select few universities
There are nearly 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, and only a small fraction—a little over 200—have highly selective admissions, where less than 50% of those enroll. It’s just over 200 schools that apply judgment on the racially conscious admissions process that can make a significant difference.
However, despite how these policies actually affect student numbers, it is what happens at these elite institutions that matters.
They remain important gatekeepers to access at high levels of government and industry. Just as an example, currently eight of the nine Supreme Court justices attended law school at Harvard or Yale.
Recently, researchers from Georgetown University ran simulations to see what would happen if race were removed from college admissions. They found that the national ban would reduce the ethnic diversity of students at select universities, unless there was a “fundamental redesign of the college admissions system,” including remove legacy and sports recruiting, among other things.
In the simulations, excluding race and relying on different combinations of high school grades, test scores, or socioeconomic indicators did not yield more ethnically diverse classrooms.
Zack Mabel, professor of education and economics at Georgetown and author of the study, explained the findings as follows:
“In short: The more information you can look at about educational opportunities and the disadvantages an individual faces in their life, the better you as an admissions officer will understand. more clearly who would be a qualified student”. Candidate.”
Mabel said current admissions criteria reinforce the disparities in educational opportunity that exist in the K-12 system, and that research has shown that, at highly selective colleges, ” students who were admitted with lower scores were just as likely to succeed as the rest of them.” classmate.”
This echoes previous research done in several states that banned racially conscious enrollment on ballot measures. Statewide bans include Michigan since 2006California since 1996 (and reconfirmed in 2020) and Washington since 1998 (and reaffirmed in 2019).
Broader meaning in higher education
Experts say the court’s new decision could have implications beyond admission.
Baker, at Southern Methodist University, said: “We have to think beyond who gets involved and who gets registered. The ruling could affect financial aid decisions, including targeted scholarships and schools’ efforts to create communities of students from diverse backgrounds.
For example, she wondered if a program designed to increase the number of Black doctors — with support for completing pre-medical curriculum and entering medical school — would now be challenged.
Mitchell Chang, who studies diversity in education at UCLA, says that after statewide bans went into effect in Michigan, California and Washington, the changes to the goal are once again “learning to learn.” race-conscious scholarships, race-conscious programs, conscious hiring,” followed.
Today’s ruling “could have a much broader effect, in fact, than just admissions,” he said.
OiYan Poon, visiting professor of education at the University of Maryland, College Park, points out Early court filings from plaintiffs in the Harvard case, argued to end “any use of race or ethnicity in an educational setting” – not just in admissions.
But Liliana Garces, a professor of education at the University of Texas at Austin, insists that today’s perspective is limited to the college admissions race — and nothing else. “The only legal issue in court is the consideration of race in admissions.”
She said that now universities must exercise judgment in their practices and policies. However, she believes the decision does not explicitly prohibit racially conscious decisions in other areas, such as financial aid. “It’s important that organizations stand their ground and be able to engage in other activities that are completely fundamental to their mission.”
Baker agrees: “We want to make sure we don’t overstate what the legal limit is, because that can have a chilling effect when organizations restrict themselves more than the legal limit. ” She’s particularly interested in Justice Roberts’ majority opinion on how schools can still consider how race affects applicants’ lives.
“That tells me there’s some way forward,” Baker said. “But are those paths forward the most effective ways to try to achieve greater racial equity in college admissions? No.”
Universities have used other ways to diversify the student body – but they haven’t always worked
Using race in admissions isn’t the only way states and colleges have tried to diversify their upcoming classes.
After California banned racially conscious enrollment in 1996, the percentage of Black and Latino students at UCLA, one of the most selective schools in the state system, plummeted. By 2006, a decade later, there were only 96 black students enrolled in a freshman class of nearly 5,000. They are called “infamous 96.”
The University of California has responded to those numbers by rebuilding its admissions policies to take a more “holistic” approach that considers a number of factors including whether students are first-timers. whether or not the first family member went to college, what high school they attended, and their family’s income. . The university has spent more than 20 years and hundreds of millions of dollars in new programs and scholarships, in an effort to restore that level of diversity.
Other ideas to promote diversity on campus include admitting a percentage of the state’s high school students, like the University of Texas at Austin, which automatically admits Texas. students in the top 6% of their high school graduating classS. Lottery has also been proposed, in which highly qualified qualified students will be randomly selected for acceptance.
But so far, the researchers say, no alternative has been as effective as considering race.
“There’s nothing better than helping to enroll a racially equal class,” says Baker. “Nothing can do that.” “There are other tools, different ideas. But if race isn’t taken into consideration, those different kinds of techniques and tools won’t reproduce what racially conscious admissions policies do. race did.”
What happens next?
This opinion comes less than a decade since the high court last ruled on affirmative action. IN Fisher sues University of Texas IN 2016, the court ruled that colleges maybe racial considerations in admissions.
The two cases the court ruled today are Student fair admission v. Harvard And Student fair admission v. University of North Carolina.
Although very similar, the cases represent two very different admissions environments: UNC is an in-state public school that prioritizes students (it is only allowed to admit 18% of freshmen from out of state), while Harvard is a highly selective private school admit less than 5% of all applicants (that’s right under 2,000 students this fall).
In the amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court before the arguments in these two cases, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley, both acknowledged that their efforts to meet pluralistic goals their form, do not use race, has reduced.
But not every school says they’re having a hard time achieving diversity without racially conscious enrollment.
Oklahoma’s Attorney General file a summary on behalf of several states supported the plaintiffs in two cases: “For example, the University of Oklahoma is as diverse (if not more) today than it was when Oklahoma banned affirmative action in 2012.” The university’s main campus in Norman now has US undergraduate students students are about 60% white and 5% black.
Kelly Slay, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who studies affirmative action, expects universities to increase targeted recruitment, expand financial aid to include free college programs , and go check-optional, in an effort to maintain their ethnic and racial diversity.
However, she said, “we don’t have anything that works as effectively in creating and enhancing racial diversity as racially conscious affirmation. We have more than 20 years of experience. data and research on that.”
