Alternative Paths to Diversity: Exploring and Implementing Effective College Admissions Policies

Abstract

pic@ets.orgCopies can be downloaded from:www.ets.org/research/picThe views expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the officers and trustees of Educational Testing Service. About ETSAt ETS, we advance quality and equity in education for people worldwide by creating assessments based on rigorous research. ETS serves individuals, educational institutions and government agencies by providing customized solutions for teacher certification, English language learning, and elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, and by conducting education research, analysis and policy studies. Founded as a nonprofit in 1947, ETS develops, administers and scores more than 50 million tests annually-including the TOEFL ® and TOEIC ® tests, the GRE ® tests and The Praxis Series ® assessments-in more than 180 countries, at over 9,000 locations worldwide. R E S E A R C H R E P O R T Alternative Paths to Diversity: Exploring and Implementing Effective College Admissions PoliciesGary Orfield, Editor The Supreme Court has established the parameters within which universities can practice race-conscious affirmative action for college admissions in a series of decisions beginning in l978. The key issues concern the educational impact of campus diversity and whether or not it is necessary to give some consideration to students' race into order to produce a diverse student body in highly selective colleges. The most recent decision, Fisher v. University of Texas II, taken in June 2016, raised the question of whether there was a viable nonracial alternative policy that would produce the level of diversity for universities to realize the benefits of diverse learning experiences that are a central goal of the great majority of selective colleges and universities. This report explores the issues before the court and the continuing responsibilities of universities under the decision and introduces a series of new studies, most commissioned by a collaboration between the Civil Rights Project and ETS-three of which are included in this volume. The study concludes that the best evidence from the most recent social science studies and research syntheses show that the major proposed alternative policies are far less successful than affirmative action and thus do not meet the Court's definition of feasible alternatives. This conclusion led the Court to approve affirmative action.Keywords Affirmative action; college admissions; college diversity; civil rights; percent plans; SES diversityCorresponding author: Gary Orfield, E-mail: orfield@law.ucla.eduThe future of affirmative action and diversity in American colleges now hinges on the question of whether there is a practical college admissions process with no consideration of a student's race that would produce racially diverse colleges. The basic premise of colleges choosing affirmative action is that it is essential to produce diversity for highly selective colleges. Whether it can continue, however, depends on the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 196...

“Too Many to Count”: Experiences of Microaggressions for Latinx Students at a Predominantly White Institution in the Age of Trump

“…Consider legal action to reverse the state bans on affirmative action. In the first extensive and up-to-date review of alternative paths for racial diversity, leading scholars explore the most popular alternatives to affirmative action (top percentage programs, socioeconomic status as a proxy for race, and targeted pre-college training and recruitment outreach programs) and found, "that the alternatives are inefficient, cumbersome, and costly and that they do not accomplish the goal" (Orfield, 2017). We encourage the University of Michigan, and other leaders in the "Too Many to Count" 59 higher education community, to consider taking on a leadership role in this civil rights issue by being more active and overturning alternative systems that are ineffective.…”

Navigating the Quicksand: How Postsecondary Administrators Understand the Infuence of Affrmative Action Developments on Racial Diversity Work

“…Scholars examining the influence of cases like Bakke and Grutter, for example, show that the ability to consider race as one of many factors in admissions has helped increase enrollments of students of color at selective institutions nationwide (Bowen & Bok, 1998;Garces, 2012b;Welch & Gruhl, 1998). Conversely, studies examining the effects of state laws and policies that prohibit race-conscious admissions reveal a widespread decline of racial and ethnic diversity at selective undergraduate institutions (e.g., Backes, 2012;Hinrichs, 2012;Kidder & Gándara, 2017;Long & Tienda, 2008), in graduate fields of study (Garces, 2012a(Garces, , 2013, and in the professions of law and medicine (Garces & Mickey-Pabello, 2015;Wightman, 1997). Relatedly, a rich body of work has found that high-profile admissions practices that do not explicitly consider race and are ostensibly race-neutral, such as percentage plans and those that consider socioeconomic status, are not effective substitutes for the consideration of race in maintaining campus diversity (Flores & Horn, 2015;Kidder & Gándara, 2017;Reardon, Baker, Kasman, Klasik, & Townsend, 2015).…”

“…Conversely, studies examining the effects of state laws and policies that prohibit race-conscious admissions reveal a widespread decline of racial and ethnic diversity at selective undergraduate institutions (e.g., Backes, 2012;Hinrichs, 2012;Kidder & Gándara, 2017;Long & Tienda, 2008), in graduate fields of study (Garces, 2012a(Garces, , 2013, and in the professions of law and medicine (Garces & Mickey-Pabello, 2015;Wightman, 1997). Relatedly, a rich body of work has found that high-profile admissions practices that do not explicitly consider race and are ostensibly race-neutral, such as percentage plans and those that consider socioeconomic status, are not effective substitutes for the consideration of race in maintaining campus diversity (Flores & Horn, 2015;Kidder & Gándara, 2017;Reardon, Baker, Kasman, Klasik, & Townsend, 2015). This body of work shows that the most effective means of generating racial and ethnic campus diversity are those that combine the consideration of race with other factors.…”