It was no surprise when the Supreme Court judgement against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina's "ended affirmative action." Their finding asserted that considering race in admissions decisions violated the 14th Amendment - equal protection under the law. Those who opposed affirmative action celebrated while diversity advocates were already looking for ways to consider criteria related to disadvantages prospective students faced before attempting to enter higher education. Some even suggest that the Supreme Court's action could help return affirmative action to its core purpose - reparations in admissions. The irony is that the strategy examined in the case, the "Harvard Plan," purported to offer opportunity to prospects of broader socio-economic means but it most likely couldn't be applied at institutions of lesser means. In the end, a Brookings Institute study concluded that the Supreme Court decision won't have much impact because most students of diverse cultural backgrounds don't enroll at elite institutions anyway.
As institutions reassessed the legality of race-based scholarships, understanding the prohibition of affirmative action was muddied when the Supreme Court declined to consider a case brought against West Point. Included in the decision was the majority opinion offered by Chief Justice Roberts that "potentially distinct interests" could be a rationale for considering race in academy applicant selection. The West Point decision was followed by the Supreme Court passing on a Virginia case alleging discrimination at a magnet school. An unrecognized repercussion of reversing affirmative action is alienated donors who funded race-based scholarships for the University of Missouri system.
There was pervasive confusion after the Supreme Court decision on Affirmative action but the Biden administrations guidance began to chart a way forward. The real parameters of the Supreme Court decision were anything but clear, with some educators fearing that the decision would be pushed into more than just admissions decisions, resulting in over-correction that the affirmative action decision didn't justify. A "new blitz" of lawsuits based on the Supreme Court decision will continue to stir up many questions of what the decision actually meant. The question is if the assertion that race-based decision making is exploitation or over-correction. The University of North Carolina chose to extend the Supreme Court's judgement to hiring practices. Inside Higher Education compiled "The Ruling Explained..." to assist educators as they sorted out the implications of the Supreme Court decision while legislators and regulators continued to squabble over the practical implications.
The Biden-Harris Administration stayed stalwart in providing ways to sustain access and inclusion in higher education. "This work builds upon the historic efforts of the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure all students have the opportunity to access higher education, including securing a historic increase in the Pell Grant, fixing the broken student loan system, and supporting HBCUs, MSIs, and community colleges." Presidents of higher education institutions broadly condemned the Supreme Court's decision and predicted steep declines in enrollment of under-represented students. However, 86% believe that their institutions will maintain their current diversity of enrollment. Public opinion is a different matter with 68% of Americans believing that eliminating affirmative action was a positive change.
Students for Fair Admissions, the group that launched the Harvard and UNC lawsuit, sent an email notice to 150 public and private institutions directing them to comply with the Supreme Court's findings. Higher education associations publicly challenged the assertions of the communication with David Hawkins, chief education and policy officer of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, saying that colleges and universities should not rely on SFFA for guidance but turn to their own legal counsel and governance bodies. "Interpretive overreach" could result in more drastic limitations for institutions striving to increase diversity on their campuses. The president of UNC's carefully worded statement indicates intent to comply with the Supreme Court ruling while still serving the diversity of the state's citizens. When admissions staff and college placement counselors met, conversations focused largely on how to retain commitments to diversity while responding to the Supreme Court's ruling.
Yale University avoided litigation of its affirmative action case by Students for Fair Admissions. Agreement between litigants and the University included adding training to prevent preferential use of race in admissions decisions; disallowing access to prospects' racial identity, prohibition of creating reports that include racial profiles of the student population, and ensuring that race in not included in financial aid determinations. Yale also added new measures to expand outreach and create more of a sense of belonging among students. Duke University abandoned a targeted scholarship named after its first Black student body president, revising the selection to socio-economic rather than race criteria.
The first class to be recruited after overturning affirmative action is struggling with what they now have as options. HBCUs anticipate that applications may surge as students from minoritized backgrounds consider their higher education futures. In addition, summer preparation programs for minoritized students may now be targeted as the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision ripples through higher education. One way of avoiding reference to race is to highlight first-generation status, which acknowledges systemic blocks to access and class. By the summer of 2024, reports indicated that student applicant strategies had not changed as a result of undoing affirmative action.
The new criteria for "disadvantage" is likely to be some indication of socio-economic status. In fact, minoritized groups in the U.S.A. for the most part make significantly less than white citizens. Minoritized groups also cluster in residential areas so that a prospective students' zip code could even be an indication that an applicant is from a diverse background. So, race or color would be the driving force but would be incidental to a student's economic background or place of residence. Addressing economic status or "class" to offer more educational opportunity beyond privileged populations could be challenging. Economic status is critical because graduate rates at more selective institutions are almost double those of less selective, and lowered resourced, institutions. For those who thought that preferences for athletes helped minority students, it actually advantages students from high-income families to a much larger degree. Access for wealthy students has increased in general across many institutions. In addition, youth sports corruption "turned play into one more scramble for advantage" that resulted in early identification with specific sports and "devastating physical injuries and emotional despair."
Economic status as an indication of hardship happens to also be related to another issue in higher education as the cost of attendance has risen over the last 50 years - taking out loans to attend college. Again, the Supreme Court blocked the path to leveling the financial playing field by overturning President Biden's debt-relief plan. Of course taking out a loan to attend college isn't always done by low socio-economic status students. Privileged families have been known to take out loans for college attendance as a form of "cheap" cash flow. The difference, poor students are challenged to pay back their loans and privileged families jot off a quick check when the loan terms are no longer advantageous. The Biden administration immediately forged ahead with a debt-relief plan to address the debt of lower income students and families, but other measures are likely to emerge as Biden continues to push for meaningful strategies to help relieve debt.
The law suit filed July 3, 2023, challenges legacy admissions at Harvard University, where 70% of its donor-related or alumni applicants are white. The legal challenge appears to be solidly on popular ground since the majority of students oppose the advantage granted to legacies, with students of Asian backgrounds perhaps most profoundly impacted. The law suit asserts, and a recent report by Harvard researchers confirms, that legacy priority is essentially affirmative action for privileged applicants based on one's connections and family heritage, a reality also confirmed by three California private institutions that admitted unqualified legacy applicants. Wesleyan was the first to abandon legacy admissions, a practice its president opposed for years. The reversals at Amherst, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Wesleyan, University of Minnesota, Occidental College, and Virginia Tech continued to dismantle the six times more likely admission of legacies at the most elite institutions. The University of Virginia moved its legacy window to the essay prompt "personal or historic connection to UVA" and legislation subsequently proposed the elimination of legacy admissions at all state institutions, a move confirmed by the Virginia House and signed into law. Wake Forest University devised another strategy to encourage early action for first-generation students. As Raj Chetty, one of the authors of a Harvard study of admissions at elite universities said, "The key point is that we don't need to put a thumb on the scale in favor of the poor. We just need to take the thumb that we - perhaps inadvertently - have on the scale in favor of the rich."
The Supreme Court striking down affirmative action has opened a flood-gate of legislation to end legacy admissions and Senators Markey, Warren, and Sanders urged the Education Department to end legacy admission. Connecticut law makers are considering a ban on legacy admissions at all the state's public and private institutions, with four other states considering similar bans. Even though none of its public institutions offer legacy admission, Illinois state law now prohibits it. The reality is that legacy preference has been challenged before and survived. Some defenders of legacy admission claim that it adds to the sense of community unique to U.S. institutions that contributes to alumni loyalty and generous giving.
The Harvard and UNC case and the challenge to legacy admission confronts the very interesting juxtaposition between the myth of merit and the myth that affirmative action has been harmful to Asian Americans, pitting Asian American against African American prospects. Unfortunately for Asian and Asian American prospective students at elite institutions, many families and students have largely bought into the idea that merit is measurable and related to a specific set of abilities. As a demonstration of the impact of what is perceived to be "measurable merit," research from five admissions cycles beginning in 2015 demonstrated that considering only standardized scores and extracurricular activities would result in substantial increases in the number of East Asian and South Asian admits. Some critiques opine that merit is no more than image, reputation, and social ties that is constructed by students and then sanctioned through admission to elite institutions. Grinnell College's vice president for student enrollment asserted that legacy admission at high-resourced institutions helped fund scholarship for diverse students. Whether the Supreme Court will eventually take up legacy privilege will be interesting since it directly addresses the core issue of affirmative action - ability to pay for educational advantage that comes with a hefty economic benefit.
Some educators are already talking about the importance of the essay in college applications, the essay providing a way for applicants to assert life experience as central to their higher education aspirations. David Hawkins of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling advised, "so long as the methods and assessments are race-neutral, colleges should feel free to continue their efforts to derive contextual information from essays and interviews as part of the college application process." The essay can include anything, including identity struggles, hardship, and other disadvantages. The essay may help truly disadvantaged applicants but we can anticipate that college admissions coaches (who are paid handsomely by privileged families) will soon be creating ways to claim how difficult life is when the student has experienced the sheltered existence of a private school or a neighborhood dominated by students who are better in sports, music, or other ventures a student would have liked to pursue. My humble opinion is that this is leading to some very bad places and it's thanks to a Supreme Court that evidently didn't think through the full implications of their decision.
