On Oct. 31, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in two cases regarding race-conscious admissions, also known as affirmative action. While waiting for the decision, two local college administrators spoke to LehighValleyNews.com about the importance of holistic, race-conscious admissions.
- The Supreme Court is deciding whether race-conscious admissions can continue
- Experts from around the country weigh in about the importance of holistic admissions
- Administrators from Lehigh University and Muhlenberg College also contribute
What is the Supreme Court deciding?
“So the last couple of years, or really, maybe the last decade and a half has seen a flurry of litigation around what's called race-conscious admissions,” said Julie J. Park, associate professor for student affairs at the University of Maryland, on a webinar for the Education Writers of America (EWA).
“So that's basically the ability of a college or university to know what an applicant's race/ethnicity is and to consider that just in understanding who an applicant is and what their context for opportunity may have been. It does not mean admissions is race-based at all,” she said.
Students for Fair Admissions, an organization headed by Edward Blum, has filed a pair of cases that have made it to the Supreme Court, “Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College” and “Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina.”
“In particular, the Harvard lawsuit, and I should say upfront that I served as a consulting expert, and on that case on the side of Harvard, so anything, here's my own opinion, that case is somewhat unique, because it makes a claim of intentional discrimination against Asian Americans by Harvard.”
The Supreme Court heard arguments for approximately five hours on Oct. 31, according to The Washington Post’s live coverage. SCOTUS’s decision could mean the upholding or abolishing of race-conscious admissions, in any number of degrees. Decisions are expected to be published in the summer, but colleges are already researching what this means for the future.
“I think all of us are bracing, if you will. We've been here before.”Donald Outing, Lehigh University vice president for equity and community
How are local colleges preparing?
“I think all of us are bracing, if you will. We've been here before,” said Lehigh University’s Vice President for Equity and Community Donald Outing.
“One of the reasons we're always preparing is because we really do believe that the value proposition of a residential college experience is the development and the learning that occurs not just in the classroom, but also outside the classroom, when our students are interacting with one another, both in the classroom, but in their dormitories, or in the dining halls or on the fields of friendly strife,” Outing said.
Muhlenberg's representative agreed about the importance of holistic admissions and racial diversity on the college's campus.
“Muhlenberg currently does practice holistic admissions, and we will continue to do so,” said Megan Ryan, vice president for enrollment management. “Race is currently one piece that we use in making admission decisions, when a student chooses to include that as part of their application.”
Looking Back
The University of California and other public universities in California have been barred from using race in admissions for more than 20 years. In the early years of the ban, the University of California (UC) system struggled to recruit and retain students of color, especially Black students.
On the education writers webinar, one of the experts who spoke was Lisa Przekop, director of admissions at University of California, Santa Barbara.
“While we have the diversity in the state of California, we don't necessarily have the historical experience of those families attending college,” Przekop said. She spoke to building an eligibility pipeline by building enrichment and outreach programs as early as kindergarten and getting aggressive in eighth grade.
“We have a program that's called ‘eligibility in the local context’ by which we look at who are the top graduates at each California school so that we can make sure, geographically, students from across the state have access to the University of California,” said Przekop.
Przekop also emphasized the importance of a varied and robust financial aid system in allowing students of all backgrounds to attain higher education.
The difficulty of all this outreach and support is that, frankly, it can be prohibitively expensive. However, Przekop believes it is crucial to recruiting and retaining students from underrepresented backgrounds, whether racial or otherwise.
What’s next for local colleges?
“The reality is that Muhlenberg has been committed to increasing our diversity of our students, of our student body, for several years,” said Ryan. “And so the fact that we are a different institution than we were several years ago, because our students of color have been a growing population for several years, is also part of our strengths, as well as recruiting additional students who are coming from different backgrounds.”
For Lehigh University, Outing stressed that much of this community outreach is already in place. “We've been doing some things all along, and that is building up our relationships with organizations that help prepare students for college.”
Outing mentioned multiple programs that Lehigh works with, including the Posse Program, which provides both scholarships and leadership training to students from diverse backgrounds.
Other Solutions
Teresa Watanabe, staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, said in the EWA webinar, “I did interview the Pomona College president who was very passionate about the issue. She said that they will think about eliminating any even optional testing requirements, standardized testing requirements, they may get rid of letters of recommendation, any tool that is now being used that has been shown to have a disproportionately negative impact on underserved students.”
Muhlenberg has already partially done this, according to Ryan, who said, “There used to be a question on the Common Application about it if you received any disciplinary issues in high school and your criminal record questions. And the data backs it up that it disproportionately disadvantaged students of color.”
Muhlenberg checked its own data and removed the question. As for recommendation letters, due to the close-knit nature of the institution, it looks like those aren’t going anywhere any time soon, but Muhlenberg is also test-optional.
Lehigh is also test-optional, but as for changing any other admissions policies, Outing emphasized that nothing has been ruled out as of yet.
Where does this leave us?
One thing emphasized by all the experts on the education writers panel was that race-conscious admissions doesn’t cause anyone to “lose,” rather it allows students of various backgrounds and lived experiences to have those factors considered so they might get the education best suited to them.
However, recruiting a diverse class is not enough, according to the panel. Institutions must also support students from underserved backgrounds in order to achieve diversity at every level.
“ I can find tremendous diversity if I walk into a sociology class, but I typically will not see that same level of diversity if I walk into an organic chemistry class. So for me, diversity means diversity across all of our academic disciplines,” said Przekop.
“We believe that a diverse student body provides educational benefits for all students,” said Outing. “Allowing race to be considered as just one factor of the many in the college application process provides us and other universities and colleges with the flexibility to create an environment in which students can pursue the educational benefits of having a diverse student body.”
