Colleges Worry That Court Could Make Diversity Harder to Maintain
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The news that the Supreme Court is revisiting the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions, just nine years after upholding it in a University of Michigan case, has admissions officials worried about maintaining diversity and confounded that the question is being reconsidered so soon.
"Nine years, when you're talking about a decision of this magnitude, it really took me aback," said Tom Parker, the dean of admissions at Amherst College. "What happens with the next president, the next Supreme Court appointee? Do we revisit it again, so that higher education is zigging and zagging? If the court says that any consideration of race whatsoever is prohibited, then we're in a real pickle. Bright kids have no interest in homogeneity. They find it creepy."
While a handful of states have laws banning affirmative action, most colleges and universities seeking a diverse student body do consider race in admissions, said Ada Meloy, general counsel of the American Council on Education.
"You can't give extra points or say you're looking for three more black students," she said. "That would be dangerous. But reviewing the entirety of an application, colleges and universities that use holistic admissions talk about, 'Here's this person, from this part of the country, who went to this kind of high school, is of this ethnicity and would bring these qualities.'Â "
And if they could no longer be allowed to do that, admissions officials say, it would be impossible to maintain their current level of diversity.
"We do focus on socioeconomic status and other factors, and they're helpful, but without race-conscious admissions, I don't think we could get the same results," said Stephen Farmer, vice provost at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
"I don't think any school has ever found a way to remain as racially diverse as it already is in the absence of the practices outlined in the Grutter case," he added, referring to the Supreme Court's 2003 decision that public colleges could take race into consideration.
First Published February 22, 2012 12:01 am
