Ending Race Preferences Would Decrease Minority Enrollment
The selection of students based on race, although considered immoral and illegal 40 years ago, is justified today for purposes of skin color diversity. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, diversity produces educational benefits. This educational value of racial diversity is that it prepares white students for workplace diversity.
According to a study released in October 2007, eliminating “affirmative action” would result in a 35 percent decrease of minority enrollment at competitive schools and a lesser decrease at all colleges. The contention is not particularly shocking, nor should it come as a surprise. It follows that under race-blind admissions policies, particularly at competitive schools, minority enrollment would drop. (Under such policies, schools admit minority students with grades and scores lower than those in the general admission pool.) Additionally, black students would be better off academically if they were admitted to schools that matched their qualifications.
In “Diversity and Affirmative Action in Higher Education” (PDF) (authored by Dennis Epple and Holger Sieg of Carnegie Mellon and Richard Romano of the University of Flordia), researchers found not only that minority students attend “higher quality schools” because of race preferences, but they pay lower tuition. Race-blind policies would put a dent in all of that.
Even if race preferences ended, colleges and universities would find a way to admit students based on race. The University of California is the perfect example. The administration and faculty senate plan to meet next month to discuss changing their admissions policy to find a way around the 1996 law barring the state from hiring, contracting, and admitting based on race.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed, and download the 36-page study (PDF)
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Jennifer Gratz
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
This report was released in October 2007 and it is being reported by the likes of Inside Higher Education as news?! I missed that the first time I read this…
Since I’m writing here, I have to say even over a decade after I first heard the argument that “race preferences do not exist, but if they are eliminated there will be drastic and devastating effects,” it still surprises me that anyone can say that with a straight face!