Colleges Fear Affirmative Action’s Demise
A pending Supreme Court ruling could be more impactful than many realize.
NYT reporter Stephanie Saul argues, “If Affirmative Action Ends, College Admissions May Be Changed Forever.”
In cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court is widely expected to overturn or roll back affirmative action in college admissions. Many education experts say that such a decision could not only lead to changes in who is admitted, but also jeopardize long-established strategies that colleges have used to build diverse classes, including programs that are intended to reach specific racial and ethnic groups for scholarships, honors programs and recruitment.
Those rollbacks could then help spur colleges to end other admissions practices that critics say have historically benefited the well-heeled. Some schools have already ended their standardized test requirements and preferences for children of alumni. There is also pressure to end early decision, which admits applicants before the general deadline.
This is wildly speculative, in that we don’t know how expansive the ruling will be, much less its argument. But I guess that’s the nature of a piece predicting fallout of an opinion that won’t be issued for months.
Offhand, I’d say eliminating legacy admissions would be a good thing and that I’d prefer class-based or geography-based rather than race-based admissions. I don’t have a strong opinion on early admissions.
College officials warn that there is no way of knowing how sweeping the court decision will be. But the ruling, expected by June, is likely to have a broad impact on a range of schools, according to Vern Granger, the director of admissions at the University of Connecticut.
“Most people are thinking about the admissions process at selective institutions,” he said, “but I would say that this decision is going to be far-ranging and it’s going to be expansive.”
At less selective institutions, my first thought was that the ruling would be largely immaterial in that pretty much anyone who applies and has a high school diploma is admitted. But it turns out to be more complicated than that.
The cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, first filed in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group, argued that the universities discriminated against white and Asian applicants by giving preferences to Black, Hispanic and Native American students. The universities said they use race-conscious admissions because diversity is critical for learning, a claim that drew skepticism from the court’s conservative supermajority during the October hearing
While I’ve grown more supportive of affirmative action over the years, I find the idea that race, which is a self-selected category, is an exact proxy for diversity unpersuasive. There are more effective, if harder, ways of achieving that goal.
If the court rules as expected, the class admitted for the fall of 2024 will look quite different, education officials said.
“We will see a decline in students of color attending college before we see an increase again,” said Angel B. Pérez, the chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “We will be missing an entire generation.”
Mr. Granger, who also serves as president of the association for college admission counseling, expects changes even at the community college level. Citing drops in applications following statewide bans on affirmative action in Michigan and California, he said that some students from underrepresented groups may simply not apply.
At first blush, that just doesn’t make sense. The cases before the Court are about preferential admission, not recruitment. But, as we’ll see, there are real fears of a sweeping opinion.
The institutions most likely to be dramatically affected are the 200 colleges and universities regarded as “selective” — meaning they admit 50 percent or fewer of their applicants. And for smaller, highly selective liberal arts colleges, like Wesleyan, the impact on college culture could be particularly noticeable, as professors on these tightly knit campuses say their small classes thrive on interactions by a diverse group of students.
A group of 33 of these schools submitted a brief in August to the Supreme Court. Some of them had graduated Black students even before the Civil War.
“The probability of Black applicants receiving offers of admission would drop to half that of white students, and the percentage of Black students matriculating would drop from roughly 7.1 percent of the student body to 2.1 percent,” the brief said, predicting a return to “1960s levels.”
So, again, there are plenty of ways to solve that problem. Aside from coming up with race-neutral measures of diversity, such as region or socioeconomic status, there’s always a lottery system. Simply come up with neutral minimum standards and then select the desired number of students at random for those who meet said standards.
Some schools, including Wesleyan, said they hope increased outreach to underserved communities would offset some of the impact of a Supreme Court ruling. But they may be limited in what they can do.
The court could prevent colleges from purchasing lists of potential applicants that focus on race and ethnicity, a common practice used in recruitment, Dr. Pérez said.
“Fly-ins,” in which certain students are provided expense-paid visits to campuses, could also be on the chopping block. So could scholarship programs designated for students of color, which many rely on to afford tuition.
“Fly-in programs, scholarship programs, partnerships with churches and community-based organizations, where does it end?” Dr. Pérez asked.
If the ruling were so sweeping as to end these programs, I would be shocked. Presumably, the ruling would be on the basis of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. I can’t imagine an interpretation that would simultaneously wipe out efforts to attract poor students that wouldn’t also wipe out everything from subsidized school lunches to Medicaid to the Earned Income Tax Credit.
At the University of Connecticut, Mr. Granger said that a diversity leadership program, UConn Summer Lead, which hosts mostly students from underserved groups, might have to be revised.
Kenneth L. Marcus, an education official in the Trump Administration, said that many admissions practices that benefit certain racial groups may already violate some provisions of the Civil Rights Act.
To avoid legal challenges, many of these programs broaden eligibility — to applicants, for example, who would be the first in their families to attend college.
But even under these criteria, he said, “Middle-class white students would, as a general rule, be excluded from such programs on racial grounds.”
We have been trending going back to the Bakke decision way back in 1978, in the direction of banning the use of race-based criteria by the state. It was able to hang on by a thread because centrist Republicans like Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy went along with using race as one criteria among many to achieve equity goals—but with notice that the exception came with an expiration date. We’re closing in on six decades since the 1964 Civil Rights Act formally ended Jim Crow.
The Supreme Court’s decision could further clarify the legality of these programs, said Mr. Marcus, who is now chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Colleges are planning behind the scenes for the court ruling, though they are reluctant to release plans, worried about potentially opening themselves up to legal action.
“We don’t want to get ahead of the court, and we don’t want to give the court any ideas,” Dr. Pérez said.
That’s a weird position to be in, to be sure. But understandable.
But some have made pre-emptive moves. Standardized tests, for instance, have long been criticized for handicapping poor students and students of color, partly because they may not have access to expensive test preparation classes.
And Students for Fair Admissions relied on test scores to try to prove that Harvard and the University of North Carolina discriminated against white and Asian applicants.
Now “test optional” policies, which grew exponentially during the pandemic, are becoming the new normal. More than 1,800 four-year colleges say they do not require SAT or ACT scores. And the number of students taking the SAT dropped to 1.7 million in the high school class of 2022 from nearly 2.2 million in the class of 2020.
The irony is that the SAT was supposed to have the opposite effect: opening up opportunities to previously-discriminated-against groups (notably Jews) and those from lower socioeconomic status families with high intellectual aptitude. But, for a variety of reasons, the results have long skewed in favor of White (including Jewish) and Asian students.
Given longstanding evidence that the tests can be gamed and that they’re not terribly predictive of success, I won’t mind seeing them go. But they make it harder to identity talented kids who, for whatever reason, underperform in high school.
Anthony A. Jack, a professor at Harvard’s graduate school of education, predicted that the court decision will “remove the stranglehold of the SAT.”
Julie J. Park, an education professor at the University of Maryland, said that students from underserved backgrounds are less likely to submit their standardized test scores when they apply.
“It tells me something that half of Black and Latinx students are saying, ‘I don’t want to submit my test scores,’” Dr. Park said, adding that research shows that test-optional policies have a small but positive impact on enrollment of underserved minority students.
The College Board, which administers the SAT, said in a statement that, in the class of 2022, nearly 1.3 million U.S. students had scores that affirmed or exceeded the level of their high school grade-point average, suggesting that for some students, the test could open doors to college.
Smart kids in bad home environments will surely be further disadvantaged by this trend.
While the biggest impact of a ruling overturning race-conscious admissions will fall on students of color, many white and wealthy students may also feel repercussions.
At Scarsdale High School, in an affluent New York suburb, the director of counseling, Oren Iosepovici, recently warned parents in a meeting that the move to “test optional” has changed the competition and forced a rethinking.
Colleges may now emphasize different qualities in students, he said, questioning whether credentials long-considered critical, such as Advanced Placement tests, will remain important for some students.
“This isn’t just something that colleges are grappling with,” Dr. Pérez said. “I think it will change the way high schools advise students.”
Again, though, we’re really talking about a small sliver of the college-going population. Outside the most competitive national universities, and perhaps even state flagships, most universities—and pretty much all regional teaching colleges and community colleges—admit the vast number of applicants.
Some opponents of affirmative action have argued that preferences should be based on socioeconomic class rather than race, and they have also opposed special considerations that benefit the affluent.
I’ve been persuaded that structural barriers disadvantage Black and Hispanic students over and above the effects of economics and language barriers. They’re damned near impossible to quantify, though.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, an education consultant and writer who advised plaintiffs in the Fair Admissions case, said that early decision programs may be vulnerable. Early decision attracts wealthier applicants because students are asked to commit to attending that school, frequently before they can review financial aid packages.
“It’s one of the inequalities built into the system,” said Mr. Kahlenberg, who has argued for class-based affirmative action.
Ostensibly, the goal of these programs was to relieve pressure on those vying for highly selective institutions. But that it advantaged kids from wealthy families is not a shocking development.
Alumni children may also lose their boost. Tufts University in Medford, Mass., is considering eliminating that advantage, according to Patrick Collins, a spokesman. That would place Tufts in a small group of highly selective private schools banning legacy preferences, including Johns Hopkins, M.I.T. and Amherst College.
Matthew L. McGann, Amherst’s dean of admissions, said the school has been planning for the Supreme Court decision: “We’re not waiting for that moment.”
I’m honestly not sure on what basis the Supreme Court would ban legacy admissions under the cases before them. But I won’t be sad to see them go.
Even so, those measures will not stave off a decline in underrepresented students if the Supreme Court overturns affirmative action, Dr. McGann said. Last year, nearly 20 percent of Amherst’s first-year students were Black.
Considering that only 13.6% of the US population and 7.5% of the Massachusetts population is Black, that’s rather remarkable.
If the SC decision is broad enough, it could upend college athletic recruiting. Which maybe a beneficial unintended consequence.
BTW, I’m periodically getting the warning that OTB’s security certificate is out of date.
Maybe I’m too cynical, but I wouldn’t be particularly shocked that the affirmative action programs would be ended by a bunch of privileged people in a position of ultimate power who are sold on the notion of preserving the status of
the elite“our betters” (i.e. conservatives). What would shock me is if they’d said “no, we should stay out of this.”Hmm, if geographical discrimination is legal then perhaps admissions can be restricted to only “residents of a House district in which the school has a recruiting center”. Finally a positive use for all that gerrymandering!
I doubt it will have any effect. Selective schools will admit who they want to admit, as they always have. Harvard used various “personality trait” scores – which are entirely subjective – to deny many Asian students admission. If affirmative action goes away, selective schools will just invent more bullshit criteria like that to ensure they get the students they want.
IMO, the federal government should just stop funding private, selective schools. There’s no reason places like Harvard, and other elite universities need federal subsidies at all, and without federal funding, the Universities could then do what they want with admissions.
A question should be whether or not affirmative action benefits institutions and societies. I.e., did getting rid of affirmative action in California — which saw the Asian population of some colleges double amid a relatively steep decline in white, black, Latino, indigenous admissions rates — improve the collegiate experience or not? That’s for staff and students to answer.
My observation is forced integration (affirmative action, bussing, etc) benefited us, and society now is moving backwards racially as we turn away from such measures. But I’m somewhat of an integration absolutist who believes racial diversity is ipso facto a legitimate goal. You don’t fix racism by ignoring race.
As a kid, my dream school was Stanford, my older sister’s alma mater. I got in. Also got into some Ivies. Ended up going instead to a big, less selective (back then) football school off my radar until I visited. I suddenly realized I did not want to spend four years with homogenous booksmart test score nerds. “I want to go to a collegey-college,” I told people. It was fantastic. Made friends from all backgrounds, folks who don’t just have SAT scores where their personalities should be.
@DK:
But the individual’s rights cannot be ignored. Lots of things which trample individual rights would be great for society. We could sterilize everyone with an IQ below 80 and you could argue that society would profit. I don’t see how we tell a kid who did all the right things that she’s not getting into Harvard because denying her is good for the institution and society.
This is not an easy thing balancing individual rights and aspirations vs. the larger society. I don’t think it’s possible to have AA without acknowledging that some individuals are receiving less than equal treatment based solely on their race which was, after all, the very thing we were trying to eliminate. There is a clear inconsistency here, a conflict between our ideals – all created equal – and our practical need to have a society less stratified by race.
And no, I don’t have an answer.
@Andy:
One note about federal funding is that it comes in many forms. So it’s worth looking at the case of Harvard as you note:
As loathe as I am to defend Harvard, I don’t think cutting federal funding for research is a particularly good idea for a variety of reasons. Harvard (or rather professors and graduate students who work there) aren’t just given that money (speaking as someone who unsuccessfully applied for a lot of grants over their brief academic career). It’s coming from a pool of funding that is competed for. And this is not an area where private industry can replace that funding for a variety of reasons (see, for example, the drug industry where the vast majority of private research money flows into profitable disease research).
Admittedly some institutions, like Harvard, have built-in advantages in applying for grants. And it would be great to address that issue to try and mitigate some of those advantages. But that’s an entirely different conversation.
Really?
Ending affirmative action has been a huge effort of the GOP for years.
This SCOTUS seems determined to satisfy all of the Republican desires.
In this context many years ago I saw a bit on network news, or maybe 60 Minutes. A girl was suing Harvard or someone over being denied admission. Her grades and test scores were excellent, she was a standout in sports, she was a gorgeous blonde, it was taped at what one presumed was her parent’s home which oozed wealth. She felt it was terribly unfair. My thought was, “Jeez, kid, you hit the birth lottery big time, leave something for somebody else.”
I happened to recently read Picketty on this sort of thing. I tend to agree with his position that anti-discrimination is absolutely necessary but should be done along economic, or geographic, or whatever lines, not ethnicity. His argument is that using ethnicity hardens ethnic identities, which is the opposite of what we want to happen.
@gVOR08: I often wonder why so many people think that there is an objectively best (or 987th best) candidate for anything, and why they think they are it.
It might be better to take all the applicants, shuffle them up in a bag, pull them out one by one and assess whether they would be likely to succeed (a very hard step, steeped with bias, to be sure). And then accept the first N that were pulled out of the bag and passed that threshold.
Make luck a very clear part of the process, and not just the happenstance of birth. Give more people the opportunity to be lucky at different times.
Aside: one of my coworkers at a previous job was complaining about the work visa lottery and that we needed to go to a merit based system (which he assumed he would be selected with). I explained that America doesn’t want the best people, we want the luckiest people.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
I think it quite likely that considering race as a factor in state college admissions is going to be ruled unconstitutional. But the issue has always been weighting race (usually in favor of Black and Hispanic applicants) in such a way as to “reverse discriminate” against other (historically White but in recent years also Asian) applicants. Going so far as to ban the sort of affirmative action that even conservatives always though reasonable, such as simple outreach to underserved communities to let people know about the schools, subsidizing visits by less fortunate students, etc. would seem to come out of nowhere.
@Michael Reynolds:
Given a lot of the people who have come from Harvard, Princeton and Yale (see the Federalist Society, Ted Cruz, Josh Harley, etc), I’d say that a lot of them really needed a big smack across the head with the proverbial Clue-by-Four. They needed that a lot more than a Harvard Education, but they only got the latter.
A lot of people assume that because they “did the right things” and succeeded that anyone who hasn’t succeeded didn’t do the right things and is inferior. The classic “born on third base, walked into home plate, think they accomplished something” mindset.
If this hypothetical person really did all the right things and is qualified and would succeed at Harvard, she will do great wherever. Fuck her. Give the opportunity to someone where it will make a difference.
In fact, I’m going to say that would be a better criteria than “best qualified” — who would this opportunity make the most difference for?
(In kid-lit circles, you’ve not been surrounded by people who benefited from the luck of birth and the “meritocracy” and thinks it gives them merit. In software at some of the FAANGs, I’ve been around those people my entire career. They’re insufferable and need to suffer. They also can’t write worth shit. Need to replace one round of coding questions in the interview with an essay question)
(I’m not anti-intellectual, I just think it needs to be balanced by some exposure to hardship and/or failure or else terrible things happen, like a fondness for Libertarian “thinking”)
@James Joyner:
And banning them has the additional advantage of making an economically disadvantaged student less likely to decide risking a costly admission application ($50+ last time I checked) on a school said student hasn’t been able to visit. Win-win!
@Gustopher:
An entire ecosystem has been built around that notion. A relative handful of schools are elite and within the elite tier some are touted as better than others. Because slots are artificially scarce (indeed, most of the elite schools have strenuously avoided increasing class size despite a vastly larger pool of qualified applicants), they set up the illusion that only the best of the best get in, using a set of objective criteria (standardized test scores, GPAs, extracurriculars, etc.). So, naturally, when people spend 18 years competing for that, fail to get in, and find out that there are categories of people who get in who are objectively less qualified under the announced criteria, they’re going to be upset.
As noted in the OP, a lottery for those who meet a threshold criteria would fix much of that. But would also shatter the illusion that those who got in are winners of a meritocratic competition and thus deserve all the good fortune that come with it for a lifetime.
@Michael Reynolds:
Nobody has a right to go to Harvard, and no is perfect or “does all the right things.” If we are telling kids they can all go Harvard if they do X, Y, Z then we should stop doing that. Harvard has limited admissions spots.
I would be surprised if you were the type of person who tells kids just because they “do all the right things” it means they should get everything they want. Given your commentary here, I’d assume your style is much more no nonsense.
In short, we need to tell kids what we’ve always told them: grow up. Your individual “rights” are not the only thing that matters, sometimes you don’t win, sometimes others deserve to win just as much as you think you do, and you can’t always have it your way. C’est la vie. Do your best then try harder or try another strategy if the chips don’t fall your way. But feeling entitled is not it.
@Andy: Harvard and other private schools are less likely to be impacted, since they don’t fall under the 14th Amendment. They might be subject to Federal legislation, though, on the basis of receiving lots of Federal grant money.
@Gustopher:
Sure. But you seem to ignore what some people say is the greatest advantage going to Harvard grants–inroads into the network of movers and shakers that decide who gets various placements available. The so-called old boys network that was one of the issues that caused first wave feminists to say “no, going to a Seven Sisters school IS NOT the same as going to an Ivy; we want the same advantages men get.”
Surely you can’t be in favor of denying the son or daughter of a nouveau (or even old guard) elite his or her place on third base awaiting ball four, can you? Well, clearly you can, but search your heart and you’ll see that you’re wrong. [eyeroll]
Its been a while since I looked at funding for private colleges but I dont think they get much if any subsidy in the form of no strings attached money. I think it is nearly all tied to research.
I would second others in that I think a class based or a lottery using minimum criteria should be used for the elite schools. At present you have lots of kids with grades and test scores that are just as good as those attending the school who do not get selected. So you have admissions officers trying to decide if trips to Belize are as good as trips to Ghana in determining who gets accepted. Largely not an issue elsewhere.
Steve
@James Joyner: We can’t be messing with the meritocracy, true enough. Still, I suspect that if we did go to a lottery system for elite schools, a lot of situations would simply be shifted to people who have the right last names with the acknowledgement that graduating from State U is not an impediment to someone of their “caliber.”
@Gustopher:
I find that idea attractive. I’ve applied it myself on occasion. It would be revolutionary, certainly. Also paternalistic, unfair, impractical and easily corrupted. So, pretty much like the present system.
To be clear, I avoid those people. I live with a writer, but that’s the extent of my involvement with that community.
@DK:
True. No one has a right to attend Harvard. They do however have a right to aspire to it, and pursue it, and to have a reasonable expectation that they would be judged by criteria other than, ‘good of the institution.’ We’re pulling a bait and switch – do X, Y and Z and you get Harvard. That’s what we’ve told them. We as a society, not including myself – I have too much respect for random chance and free will to think anything is X, Y, Z.
As to what we tell kids? We lie to them, don’t we? We tell them they can be whatever they want to be and of course that’s nonsense. Should we start telling kids the truth about things? Yeah, we should. I’ve made a nice career out of not bullshitting kids.
@Michael Reynolds:
It seems to me, to believe affirmative action is inconsistent with our ideals, you’d need to believe identitarian bias no longer exists as an outsized problem. I don’t believe affirmative action conflicts with our ideals. It gets us closer to where our ideals would have us but not for the interfering, deleterious effects of systemic bigotry.
If a person believes all are born with equal value and worth, how can they assume that those who got the job or admission spot over them — who’ve also spent years learning and gathering experiences — are less worthy? Why are they so certain their test scores have more inherent merit than what others bring to the table?
My encounters with individuals at and from these so-called elite institutions leads me to believe most of them/us are average: whether we got there based on privilege, networking, legacy, affirmative action, hard work, or pure merit. It’s rare to find super elite writers, orators, creative, thinkers, gladhandlers etc. among any in these cohorts. So I just don’t buy the idea that there’s this big group of perfect candidates who’s “rights” are being stymied by affirmative action for others. I just think we don’t like admitting we’re not as special as we think we are.
I also don’t buy that getting rid of affirmative action results in any improved experience.
On the other hand, we already know how racism, sexism, homophobia etc. limit growth, hurt society, and curtail individual rights. Been there, done that. We also know how diversity and integration benefits people and institutions.
So if I’m running a college and have to balance competing interests, I’d err on the side of robust diversity rather than a population of test score drones + legacy admissions and scholarship athletes.
Affirmative action exists for a reason. Many of those reasons will be collecting paychecks and pensions for decades yet. I predict there’s going to be some regret with the consequences of turning our backs on desegregation policies. It’s an unforced error.
@Michael Reynolds: @Michael Reynolds:
Having a little bit of experience with college admissions (Steven could probably speak to this more), this type of kid really doesn’t exist. It’s easy to imagine that they do, but the reality is things rarely come down to this type of decision. And further, that kid’s situation is honestly no different than all the other kids who did “all the right things” and got rejected for any number of reasons including things as petty as a reviewer was having a bad day and that bled over into the way they read the applications.
I’ve seen the same thing with grad school, for that matter, where there’s a lot more time spent with each individual application. It’s not uncommon for people to apply to the same elite program two years in a row with little to no change in the packet. The first year they are rejected and the next year they get in–the only thing that changes is the reviewer panel.
tl;dr: These things are very rarely down to a binary choice. Or at least not in the way we think.
Aside on this–and something I think about from time to time–in a lot of respects I “won a lottery” with my Ph.D. program. I got into Cornell, which while not the University of Chicago or the University of Michigan is still a top-tier Anthropology program. So, I ended up taking the spot of another applicant who also “did everything right” (I forgot how many students applied that year for the 8ish positions, I think it was over 100). And then I flamed out pretty spectacularly and left the program. I often wonder what would have happened if someone else had gotten the chance I got. There’s a good chance they would have made it through.
I guess all of this is a lesson in the truism that life isn’t fair. That’s a good lesson to learn at some point, and probably the earlier the better.
@Michael Reynolds:
Thank goodness for no-bullshit parents. Mine were definitely the ‘there but for the grace of gawd, go I’ and ‘life owes you nothing’ types. We were urged to work hard and “do all the right things” to give yourself the best chance for success, but to know things could still go to crap, we could have bad luck or die at any moment in a freak accident, so we should stay humble and grateful.
I found it chilly growing up under that roof, but it served me well moving into adulthood. I certainly was under no illusion that I deserved to get into every college to which I applied because I was a straight-A student. My affable, zen, loving dad’s response to my rejection tears was along the lines of “Aren’t you the daisy? There’s millions of kids who deserve it just as much as you, son.” And I did finally get into some good schools, as do most hyperqualified students. Is Harvard the only place these kids applied?
@DK:
That’s easy. Virtue. They think they have superior virtue. And they think that because that’s what they’ve been taught. The incorrect belief in equality of opportunity strengthens the belief in virtue. I have what I have because I deserve to have what I have. Because I’m better. There’s no conflict between belief in an equal start and belief in an unequal end.
It’s all part of the American belief that hard work and success aren’t just related, but have a one-to-one, work-to-success ratio.
Preaching to the choir on that. Says the high school drop-out.
I think there’s an excellent chance you’re right. But I’m baffled whether we’re taking an optimistic or pessimistic view in hoping for a failure which must occur before it can be noticed.
I would prefer either some class based admissions and/or a lottery with minimal standards set. We are still going to miss some talented kids who grew up in a bad environment, but then we will also miss some actually talented kids who grew up in good environments.
I think you are correct that this is largely an issue for the highly selective schools, not so much for public schools. I also think Andy might be correct that those selective schools will keep finding ways around limitations, but I am not sure they receive a lot in subsidies. I do think they get a lot of research money.
Steve
@James Joyner: My issue with a lot of this is even a minimum set of criteria could be potentially unfair. We have 13 high schools in our system (Cincinnati) and 6 of those don’t even offer physics. Those high schools represent at a minimum 50% of our graduating seniors… who aren’t going to ever meet a minimum threshold that requires a credit of high school physics for admission to, say, an engineering college in the state of Ohio.
Ohio universities get around that now by offering summer bridge programs to otherwise qualified students (GPA/class rank/ test-optional test scores), most of whom are underrepresented. Presumably these summer bridge programs would go away under this kind of ruling, and those students who were using them to get into college since their high school did not offer physics through no fault of their own… don’t go to college? Or they go to a lesser community college that may or may not transfer credits? They’re going to pay more money and take longer, ultimately.
I mean, I don’t see how people say “everyone has the same opportunity” when they manifestly don’t.
And this is at a time when industry and business is telling us and our accrediting organization (ABET) that we have to formalize diversity and inclusion in our instruction because this is what industry wants & needs in our graduates.
Make it make sense!
@Matt Bernius & @James Joyner:
I’ll admit my ignorance here when it comes to places like Harvard and federal funding. In general, I don’t have a problem with the government essentially “hiring” Harvard to do research – I would likely be more skeptical of other types of financial support considering the size of their endowment.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’ve got a freshman in college and my second kid will start college in the fall.
The whole college admissions process is a big grift for even moderately selective schools. The criteria aren’t clear and it usually comes down to subjective BS like Harvard’s “personality traits.”
There are huge parent groups sharing info about the intangibles a kid may need to give them an edge, because almost all the kids are roughly equal in academics. The current system also promotes dishonesty, as the Varsity Blues scandal demonstrates. In most cases, you need highly successful and motivated kids, and highly successful and motivated parents who start pushing kids to check the boxes for elite colleges when they are in middle school.
I might have sold my kids short and hurt their chances to get in a better school, but I refused to do any of that, but they are getting into decent schools completely base on their own merits.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
This more or less has been empirically studied–people that achieve an offer of admission for elite universities but attend non-elite institutions have outcomes essentially consistent with the cohort of folks that attended elite institutions.
There is a lot more to succeeding in college than getting in. I was a first generation working class white kid who started at Cal Berkeley in 1966, when you could get in with a B average and 1000 on the SAT. My parents knew nothing about college and had no funds to pay for it, but there was no tuition and I commuted for the first two years, living on NDEA loans. My high school was half poor black kids, and a bunch of my minority friends got into the same college I went to on the Educational Opportunity Program with full scholarships, but most of them failed out in the first year because they didn’t have the educational or financial support to succeed in an uncompromising world class institution. My family was not wealthy, but my father had a union job and my parents went to bat for us at my violent and educationally mediocre high school. Still, though I graduated from the Cal college of engineering with a B average and went on to a lucrative engineering carreer, it was a struggle being a first generation college kid with no educational legacy. With today’s college situation, as a working class white kid, I would likely not have gone to college, at least directly out of high school. I support programs that help kids from non-college families bridge that gap, including sensible affirmative action, but we really need to be looking much more broadly than selective college admissions policy to fix this badly broken situation.
@Michael Reynolds:
Because “doing all the right things” doesn’t guarantee you a win in life. It’s not a magic spell wherein your follow all the steps and poof, easy street! If a million children get perfect GPAs, do all the right circulators and score perfect on all tests and criteria, you have a million people qualified for first place and only one place. At some point, society needs to assert facts and point out that through no fault of their own, someone might not get the brass ring no matter how hard they try. That kid didn’t get cheated out of Harvard anywhere but in her own head; she felt entitled enough to sue instead of going to a “lesser” college because she felt she deserved the best.
Simple facts of life: hard work will not make you a millionaire unless you are lucky, being the best student doesn’t mean you will go to the best college, having the “right” college degree will not guarantee you the high-paying job of your dreams. Society benefits more from giving more people access to higher ed and it’s associated perks then to limit it to those who race for the number one spot; one increases society’s bandwidth and one appeases overachievers who have the capacity for overkill.
Well, as we have seen, this Court is willing to tie itself in logical knots for its desired outcome, and stand behind a decision that makes no sense.
Still, they’re going to have to find their way around not just Brown vs. Board of Education in which the court mandated schools to take steps to be less segregated, and also “California Board of Regents v. Bakke” which got a lot of attention in my day, where the court said “no quotas”, BUT affirmative action got a pass. That’s how we got here.
First, I would be SHOCKED if this Supreme Court DID NOT issue a sweeping opinion to eliminate Affirmative Action.
Second, this is somewhat on-topic.
Affirmative Action is amost always presented as some White applicant somewhere who was somehow denied admission because other less qualified {beneficiary of Affirmative Action} applicants were admitted ahead of him/her/non-binary.
Q: Why is it never assumed that that person was denied admission because there were many less qualified White applicants admitted ahead of him/her/non-binary?
@KM:
Yeah, I get that. Now let’s tell the kids we’ve been lying to. Because it is some bullshit to on the one hand go on endlessly about the importance of good grades and the right activities and affiliations, and how it leads to the promise of an Ivy, then yell, ‘Gotcha! Fooled you, you stupid grind. Hah hah hah!’ And I say this as a man who never for a minute believed the education establishment propaganda and indeed dropped out of school. But just because I know bullshit when I hear it, does not mean some random kid popping fistfuls of Adderall so she can study 80 hours straight, does.
If I was emperor/god I’d find a way to break the status effect of education. Education is a good in and of itself. We turn it into a commodity because this is America where the value of absolutely everything is expressed in dollars.