Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action

[Langue_doc]

Pardon the double post, but here is a "guest essay" from the NYT.

I Teach at an Elite College. Here's a Look Inside the Racial Gaming of Admissions.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/opinion/college-admissions-affirmative-action.html

[apl68]

Claims that universities have quotas are false, and back in the day when they *did* have quotas it was to *favor* white Christinas by limiting the number of racial and religious minorities they admitted to a token amount.

I know it's a typo, but that would be a delightfully specific affirmative action quota!

Here's a naive question...having never worked the admissions side of things, how is/was affirmative action actually operationalized?

Where I am (semi-selective state flagship with a 55ish% acceptance rate) it's done in the context of a holistic review:

People are viewed based on a GPA/rigor of schedule/test score scale that takes into account the record of their high school as a whole
Offers are made to some subgroups using models that reflect the yield rate for students in that subgroup and our targets (ie, out of state students yield at a lower rate, so if we want a certain % of the final class to be out of state students, we make offers that the model says will yield our desired result — and I think some of the models take race into account)
For edge cases, when we have a giant sea of "acceptable" students and we can only accept a fraction of them, race and  ethnicity is one of the things that can tip the balance (along with things like being from a county in the state that is underrepresented or a state in the country that is underrepresented, since we would like to have students from every county in the state and every state in the US if we could)

Claims that universities have quotas are false, and back in the day when they *did* have quotas it was to *favor* white Christinas by limiting the number of racial and religious minorities they admitted to a token amount.

I know it's a typo, but that would be a delightfully specific affirmative action quota!

Which would be terribly unfair to a black Christina in our church, who would make a great college prospect, if she hadn't already been through college.

[apl68]

The very liberal Daily News: https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-edit-racial-preferences-college-supreme-court-20230629-knpmxmhikrbh7mxabrrkim46ny-story.html

An affirmative reaction: After Supreme Court ban on racial admission preferences, colleges should focus on family income levels and end the legacy boost for connected kids
By Daily News Editorial Board

New York Daily News
•
Jun 29, 2023 at 12:00 pm

The Supreme Court has spoken, invalidating racial preferences in college admissions as was widely anticipated. The six-justice conservative majority deemed the boost that universities give some applicants purely on the basis of their ethnicity or skin color incompatible with the U.S. Constitution's promise of equal protection under the laws.

There is plenty we disagree with in the reasoning as articulated by Chief Justice John Roberts. He — and a concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, tapped for the court by George H.W. Bush in part, let's be honest, because he is Black — gives too-short shrift to the educational benefits of diversity. Colleges seeking to give their students a well-rounded education and mint future leaders have very good reason to go out of their way to admit all types of people from different walks of life and backgrounds, including different racial backgrounds.

We cannot, however, dispute that racial preferences that disadvantage Asian-Americans are in tension with, if not at odds with, the same principles that seek to guarantee equal opportunity for all, including Black and Latino Americans. They could never last forever, so the imperative is for colleges to find a better way to uphold high academic standards and comprise diverse academic classes.

The first thing to do: give applicants a boost based on their income-level or whether they'd be the first in their family to attend college. As liberal Richard Kahlenberg has written in these pages, class-based preferences can just as successfully produce varied student bodies that honor the American promise. Colleges public and private should follow that advice.

Simultaneously, the schools should do away with the widespread practice that is the single worst offense against the American promise of fairness: legacy admissions, whereby the sons and daughters of alumni get easier entry based solely on the fact that their parents happened to attend. That practice privileges the privileged, and it should end.

Progressives furious at the court should redirect their energy to sculpting productive class-based admissions programs — and helping extinguish legacy admissions once and for all.

Now that sounds like a potentially productive response.

[kaysixteen]

The future of AA seems clearly to be a class-based program, yes.

Someone should now launch a case designed to force schools to get rid of patrician forms of AA (alumni and donor preferences, scholarships for squash players, etc), esp at state schools, and see whether SCOTUS will be consistent.

[Wahoo Redux]

From Newsweek, Supreme Court Affirmative Action Ruling Puts Legacy Admissions in Spotlight

How Many Colleges Have Legacy Programs?
A report released last October by Education Reform said that 787 colleges and universities provided some type of legacy preference in 2020. However, colleges described as highly selective in their admissions processes were more prone to providing advantages for legacy students.

About 80 percent of the 64 four-year colleges and universities that admit less than 25 percent of applicants were among those higher education institutions.

Also, IHE: Creating a Legacy of Fairness in Admissions

A recent poll showed that only 6 percent of admissions directors at public universities said that legacy status is a factor in admissions decisions at their institutions. Nevertheless, it's a practice that is at odds with public universities' commitment to fairness.

Certainly you can strongarm the public universities into ending legacy admissions, but what can you do about private colleges which want to admit the rich offspring of their rich alumni?

[downer]

Are there any stats on how many schools practiced any kind of affirmative action?

I have no idea whether one of the schools where I work has done so. From its talk about its commitment to diversity, I would guess so.

When will this start to affect the enrolling student population? Would it be as soon as this summer?

[Puget]

Are there any stats on how many schools practiced any kind of affirmative action?

I have no idea whether one of the schools where I work has done so. From its talk about its commitment to diversity, I would guess so.

When will this start to affect the enrolling student population? Would it be as soon as this summer?

The decision applies immediately, so it will apply to all admissions going forward. However, in practice most more selective places (where this would be an issue) do admissions in the spring, so the incoming class for fall is already set now, and it will be next spring's cycle that is affected. I think most admissions offices have already been working on contingency plans, given that it was pretty clear this was coming based on what justices said during oral arguments last year.

[Anselm]

The future of AA seems clearly to be a class-based program, yes.

Someone should now launch a case designed to force schools to get rid of patrician forms of AA (alumni and donor preferences, scholarships for squash players, etc), esp at state schools, and see whether SCOTUS will be consistent.

The big issue for me that is not being discussed is why getting into an elite school should even matter for someone's career.  A student who masters python programming and Diff EQ at compass point university is not any less capable than somebody who does the same at the elite patrician college.

[ciao_yall]

Should not be behind a paywall.

Why the champions of affirmative action had to leave Asian Americans behind.

Really good point:

If Harvard were truly committed to increasing access to an élite education, it could have invested a fraction of its fifty-three-billion-dollar endowment in free college-preparatory academies across America and guided hundreds of poor Black and Latino students through the university's gates.

[marshwiggle]

Should not be behind a paywall.

Why the champions of affirmative action had to leave Asian Americans behind.

Really good point:

If Harvard were truly committed to increasing access to an élite education, it could have invested a fraction of its fifty-three-billion-dollar endowment in free college-preparatory academies across America and guided hundreds of poor Black and Latino students through the university's gates.

Another interesting quote from the article:

But there were other legal factors that made the decision inevitable. Prior law dictated that race could only be used as a "positive" when it came to college admissions and not as a "negative," which was in line with the equal-protection clause. What "negative" meant was quite simple: your race could not harm your chances, nor could stereotypes be used to make negative assumptions about you.

What a wonderful square circle! If the incoming class size is fixed, then if someone is included based on belonging to Group A, then that means someone  was excluded based on not belonging to Group A.

It was only a matter of time until that contradiction caught up with them.

[downer]

Are there any stats on how many schools practiced any kind of affirmative action?

I have no idea whether one of the schools where I work has done so. From its talk about its commitment to diversity, I would guess so.

When will this start to affect the enrolling student population? Would it be as soon as this summer?

The decision applies immediately, so it will apply to all admissions going forward. However, in practice most more selective places (where this would be an issue) do admissions in the spring, so the incoming class for fall is already set now, and it will be next spring's cycle that is affected. I think most admissions offices have already been working on contingency plans, given that it was pretty clear this was coming based on what justices said during oral arguments last year.

That makes sense. Given that a lot of tuition-driven schools are hurting, they probably have been trying to admit everyone they can, even if they are somewhat selective.

So my follow up is this: will this SC decision really have much effect on higher ed? What proportion of schools are selective? How carefully do schools even document their admissions policies and their implementation? I'm speculating that it won't have a great deal of effect, except at the more selective schools.

[Hibush]

There is a tremendous graphic on the New York Times today that shows how many students are at schools of varying selectivity. The gift link will bypass the paywall.

The article itself is about the dominant role of non-selective colleges in educating white, black and hispanic students. A topic of considerable interest here at The Fora. The graphic shows also that there are a bunch of large schools with familiar names that dwarf the smaller schools at every selectivity level.

[downer]

There is a tremendous graphic on the New York Times today that shows how many students are at schools of varying selectivity. The gift link will bypass the paywall.

The article itself is about the dominant role of non-selective colleges in educating white, black and hispanic students. A topic of considerable interest here at The Fora. The graphic shows also that there are a bunch of large schools with familiar names that dwarf the smaller schools at every selectivity level.

Thanks. That article makes sense to me.

[jimbogumbo]

Legacy admissions may be next:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/03/harvard-university-legacy-admissions-civil-rights-complaint/

[jimbogumbo]

Legacy admissions may be next:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/03/harvard-university-legacy-admissions-civil-rights-complaint/

Non-paywalled version: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4079319-harvard-faces-civil-rights-complaint-over-its-legacy-admissions/