In the context of heated conflict about specific strategies for
implementing the principle of equality for all, it is important from time to
time to return to the foundational principles that form the basis for how our
society should be structured. Even though our country has not always lived up
to the principle of equality or upheld each person's unalienable Rights, these
foundational principles are something that we can all agree on.
The current chapter in the fight to neutralize past inequalities
unfolded this past June in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The
Supreme Court upheld the legality of universities considering race in their
admissions decisions. However, the Supreme Court narrowed the scope of
race-conscious admissions policies by requiring that the consideration of race
be used only as a last resort to maintain a critical
mass of minority students. The decision to uphold the use of race hinges on
sociological evidence that student body
diversity is a college dimension that leads to a host of desirable academic
outcomes for all students. Therefore, the Supreme Court has deemed that is
permissible to admit less qualified
minority students in order to maintain a critical
mass of minority students on campus.
In its idealized form, affirmative action does not advocate any
specific strategy for increasing diversity. Instead, affirmative action is a
generalized principle regarding the importance of taking proactive steps to
eradicate the vestiges of legalized discrimination:
“Affirmative
action does not mean entitlements to proportional representation. It means
action to eliminate discrimination: creation of more adequate talent pools,
active searches for talent wherever it exists, revision of policies and
practices that permitted or abetted discrimination, development of expectations
for a staff whose composition does not reflect the impacts of discrimination,
provision of judicial process to hear complaints, and the making of decisions
without proper regards to sex, race, or other origin.” (Reed, 1993, 1-2)
In this idealized form, it is difficult to rationalize opposition
to the idea that as a country we should eradicate the effects of past
discrimination. Unfortunately, the implementation of affirmative action in
higher education over time has devolved into and become equated with
race-conscious admissions policies.
The term affirmative action was first introduced by
John F. Kennedy in 1961 as an executive order mandating that all government
contracting agencies hire and treat employees without regard to race, creed,
color, or national origin. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson built upon JFK's executive
order by requiring all government contractors to
document the affirmative steps they have taken to increase representation of
women and minorities in the workplace. In 1969, Nixon went a step further by
requiring federal contractors in Philadelphia, and then other cities, to meet
specific quotas for hiring African American employees, which became known as
the Philadelphia Plan.
Universities followed the lead of the Philadelphia Plan and began
setting aside specific slots in the admissions process for minority students.
For example, the medical school at the University of California - Davis set
aside 16 out of 100 medical school slots for minority students. A medical
school applicant, named Allan Bakke, sued the university when he was denied
admission (Bakke v. Regents). In 1978, the Supreme Court
found that setting quotas was unconstitutional, but did not strike down the the
idea that universities could consider race as a goal. The idea of
race-conscious admissions policies was challenged again in the case of Grutter v Bollinger, which was decided in 2003. The Supreme
Court upheld the idea of using race as one consideration among many in the
admissions process, but made clear that the consideration of race should no
longer be necessary in 25 years.
There have been a variety studies investigating the relationship
between race-conscious admissions policies and the resulting levels of
desegregation on college campuses.
- A recent study found that the long-term enrollment trends for black and white students have shown increasing tendency towards integration, which suggests that race-conscious admissions policies are working. However, most of the increased integration occurred during the era of specified quotas prior to Bakke v. Regents. Since the early 1970s, the trend has shown gradual increase, but has mostly been stagnant. In fact, the same study suggests that states that have banned race-conscious admissions policies at public universities have seen increased integration.
- When examining income disparity, socioeconomic data show that the representation of upper income students has increased at selective colleges since the late 1970s, while the representation of lower income students has remained stagnant. Therefore, the most economically disadvantaged minority students are not benefiting from race-conscious admissions policies.
- Some have argued that current forms of race-conscious admissions policies mainly benefit descendants of recent immigrants or children of biracial couples, not children whose four grandparents are descendants of slaves. It is “students like these, disadvantaged by the legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions.”
- In the wake of the Grutter v Bollinger decision, a group of researchers explored the likelihood that race-conscious admissions policies could be eliminated by 2028 as suggested by Justice O'Connor in the Grutter decision. Projected decreases in income gaps between families of black and white students as well as increased K12 school integration will have small effects on the ability to eliminate race-conscious admissions policies. The biggest hope for eliminating the need for race-conscious admissions policies by 2028 would be reducing the test score gaps between black and white students.
In all of this historical effort to defend the constitutionality
of race-conscious admissions policies, there seems to be little discussion
about the effectiveness of the strategy. Taking the long-term view, there seems
to be very little impact of these policies on creating a sustainable trend to
reverse the effects of discrimination. The tragedy of the legal fight around
race-conscious admissions policies is that the legal arguments on both sides
continue to reinforce the idea that test scores are what defines qualification
for college entrance. The opponents of race-conscious admissions policies argue
that test scores should be the primary determinant of college entrance.They
believe that using race to trump test scores should be unconstitutional. The
proponents of race-conscious admissions policies concede that tests are the
primary determinant of college qualifications, but argue, and the Supreme Court
agrees for now, that race should be allowed to trump test scores as a means for
overcoming past injustices.
In contrast to the central role that test scores play in the
fight to eliminate past discrimination, test scores play a minor role in
predicting actual student outcomes. By design, ACT and SAT scores are meant
only to predict a student's first year GPA. At the
very heart of the college entrance decision is estimating the level of
performance of first year students in large, introductory survey courses. These
are the same courses that have been shown to negatively correlate with
important qualifications for high quality medical and engineering practice. The same can be said of
the LSAT legal entrance exam. Any important
quality of legal practice that is not predictive of first year law school
grades has been eliminated from the LSAT test.
Even when we narrow our focus on what the entrance exams are
designed to do, it becomes troubling to think that they play such a central
role in the debate around race-conscious admissions policies. Studies that have examined how well students
at selective schools performed in their first year courses based on their test
scores have only been able to account for about one-third of the variability in
first year GPA. That means that two-thirds of the reasons why students do well
or don't do well in their first year classes is explained by other factors. The
impotency of college entrance exams is amplified when attempting to predict
overall college performance and eventual career outcomes.
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's
"I Have a Dream" speech, it is useful to
juxtapose the history of the SAT that is at the core of thwarting King's
dreams. The first SAT was administered in 1926; nineteen years before
the first computer (1946); twenty-five years before the cognitive
revolution which challenged the very foundation of the SAT (1950s); twenty-eight years before Brown v.
Board of Education (1954); and 37 years before the March on
Washington (1963). In the face of technological, social,
and psychological revolution over the past 87 years, the SAT has merely tweaked
its name and its scoring methodology, but fundamentally remains the same test
that was developed during the heart of our discriminatory past.
It is had for me to believe that such a vestige of our troubled
past will ever be the road to fulfilling King's dreams. Instead, I firmly
believe that if we scrapped the entire admissions process and built a new one
from scratch with modern ideas of the American dream and taking advantage of
modern technology and modern cognitive science, we would have a fundamentally
different system that would end the need for affirmative action and give
everyone one an Equal shot at a high quality of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
of Happiness. That is my dream.
