College Admissions at a Crossroads
IN THE WAKE OF THE SUPREME COURT’S AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RULING, THIS IS WHAT COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES NEED TO DO NEXT.
In June, the US Supreme Court’s conservative majority ruled in a blockbuster case that race-conscious admission programs at two elite universities — the public University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the private Harvard University — were unconstitutional and, therefore, unlawful.
In making its ruling, the court overturned more than four decades of settled law, beginning with the 1978 Regents of University of California v. Bakke decision and later confirmed in a 2003 ruling that held that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest in the context of university admissions” provided the methods of doing so are “narrowly tailored.”
In the wake of the court’s decision, many colleges and universities were quick to issue statements redoubling their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, even as they declared they would abide by the law. But given the end-of-term timing of the ruling, administrators have had precious little time to recalibrate admissions programs because their plans to bring in next year’s classes were largely already underway.
Chief Justice John Roberts seemed to offer a glimmer of hope for those institutions seeking to remain committed to their diversity objectives when he wrote, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”
Yet, he also added a warning: “Universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
Where does that leave these institutions and their students, who are such an important part of the fabric of Greater Boston and beyond? Justice Roberts’ opinion offered little in the way of clear guidance. So “it’s complicated” is an honest answer, yet also an unsatisfying one. The stakes are far too high to settle for that .
THERE’S NO WAY TO OVERSTATE THE COST the court’s ruling will exact on students of color. It will undoubtedly lead to less racially and ethnically diverse student populations, which, in turn, will have a significantly adverse impact on the day-to-day experiences of students of color, increasing their isolation in and out of the classroom. Some may apply to historically Black colleges and universities, in search of a greater sense of belonging. Additionally, it is likely to have a chilling effect on prospective students who formerly would have applied to our nation’s most academically elite colleges and universities.
The loss of diversity from elite campuses would be tragic for every student, regardless of background. During my time as president of Emerson College, I saw every day that colleges can only serve their students and society when they bring together people from varied backgrounds to share and learn from differing ideas. By broadening our intellectual universe beyond our personal experience, we have the opportunity to become better students, better colleagues, and better people.
Looking to the future, the precipitous loss of students of color graduating from these elite programs will negatively affect future generations of America’s leaders. “Leadership positions in the US,” Harvard and Brown economists note in a recent study, remain “disproportionately held by graduates of a few highly selective private colleges.” It is virtually impossible to imagine what America would be like today if those who benefited from affirmative action were to completely disappear from the leadership positions they now occupy in government, business, the arts, education, and on the Supreme Court itself. And yet that unimaginable scenario may be very much what the future will hold if we don’t act now.
Many have been quick to suggest how academic institutions could continue to admit the diverse classes that our society needs. For instance, the White House urged higher education to adopt race-neutral admission practices that give serious consideration to the adversities applicants have overcome, or to their family income, or where they grew up and went to high school, as well as to their personal experiences of hardships or racial discrimination.
Several civil rights groups encouraged public universities to guarantee admission to graduates with the best grade-point averages from each high school within the state where the college or university is located. It’s a program the University of Texas has already implemented – but one that is effective only in states with highly segregated school systems. Others advise that institutions should eliminate any reliance on standardized testing, which studies have shown unfairly disadvantage students of color and those from underserved communities, and should increase pipeline agreements with community colleges.
Colleges and universities that can afford it will cast even wider recruitment nets than they do now to increase the likelihood of enhancing the economic, social, and racial diversity of their students. Unfortunately, however, these programs are exceedingly expensive, and there is already evidence from schools such as those within the University of California system and the University of Michigan that show they have, to date, produced disappointing results.
Admissions offices will certainly need to become more, not less, reliant on the admissions essay and may encourage all students to discuss or provide diversity, equity, and inclusion statements as part of their admissions applications. In doing so, the essay will become a more meaningful, prominent, and complex component of the application process, although institutions will have to remain mindful of Roberts’ warning.
Earlier this month, Harvard began substituting its longstanding three optional admissions essays with five required short-answer questions. One of them asks: “Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body. How will the life experiences that shape who you are today enable you to contribute to Harvard?”
Efforts like these are an important first step in working within the new legal reality. But Roberts’ mandate to not use essays to re-establish “the regime we hold unlawful today” lays bare an essential fallacy of the court’s ruling: That is to say, it is not possible to untangle one’s race from the experiences that their race has imposed on them. Race is not merely a concept, but an experience shaped, in large measure, by how you experience yourself, and how others experience you through a racial lens. Any attempts to detach race from the experience of race are naïve, at best.
TO IMPROVE FAIRNESS, colleges and universities must also look carefully at the outsized influence of wealth and connections on admissions, and many already are. Among the reactions to the court’s ruling, the most significant have been the rebukes to elite colleges and universities that give an admissions edge to the family of alumni (so-called “legacy admits”) and, apparently, to wealthy donors (both actual and prospective). This summer, the US Department of Education announced it was opening a civil rights investigation in response to complaints from several advocacy groups that Harvard’s admissions preferences for these two groups illegally discriminated against Black, Hispanic, and Asian applicants in favor of wealthy white students who were less qualified.
It is too soon to predict the outcome of that investigation, but some institutions are already reviewing their legacy programs. In late July, Wesleyan University announced it was ending its program — about 5 percent of a given class reportedly had legacy connections, compared with an estimated 12 percent at Yale — because it was not in line with the school’s diversity efforts.
Wealth and privilege are structural and systemic; they are woven into the fabric of American life. So, it is no surprise that they also are woven into the admissions pipelines of elite colleges and universities — beginning with expensive middle and high school tutoring programs, standardized test prep activities, and enrollment at elite private and boarding schools, which have very favorable student-teacher ratios, unparalleled college admissions counseling programs, and the kind of robust recommendation systems largely absent in America’s public schools.
In an opinion essay published in The Washington Post, Lawrence Summers, a former president of Harvard University and former US Treasury secretary, wrote that, in the wake of the court’s
Wealth and privilege are structural and systemic; they are woven into the fabric of American life. So it is no surprise that they also are woven into the admissions pipelines of elite colleges and universities.