It’s been more than 15 years since two of the country’s top public university systems, the University of Michigan and the University of California, were forced to stop using affirmative action at admissions.
Since then, both systems have sought to build racially diverse student bodies through extensive outreach and massive financial investments amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
These efforts have been wholly inadequate, the university acknowledged in two defense briefs filed with the Supreme Court this month.
The freshman class entering UC Berkeley in 2021 included 258 Black students and 27 Native American students in a class of 6,931. That same year, black admissions at Michigan’s flagship campus in Ann Arbor was her 4%, but the college maintained a special admissions office in Detroit to recruit black students.
Outreach programs are very expensive. The University of California system says he has spent more than $500 million since 2004 to increase student diversity.
In the brief, university attorneys argue that without affirmative action, achieving racial diversity in highly selective universities is virtually impossible.
“Despite sustained, vigorous and diverse efforts to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of our students through race-neutral means,” a brief from Michigan states: . ” Since the end of affirmative action.
Justin Driver, a Yale Law School professor, said cases in California and Michigan illustrate the possible consequences of affirmative action being banned from school admissions.
“Despite incredibly valiant and sustained efforts to navigate the realities of a post-affirmative action world, our flagship campuses in California and Michigan are rife with members of marginalized racial groups. have not been successful in registering,” Driver said. Impact of High Court Education Decisions.
The Supreme Court on Oct. 31 will hear a lawsuit filed by students for fair admissions, an anti-affirmative action organization that challenges the race-sensitive methods Harvard and North Carolina use to select classes of freshmen. intend to do something.
The organization says Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans and North Carolina encourages admissions for underserved racial minorities. In its own brief, it argues that ending national affirmative action would help improve diversity at the University of California and the University of Michigan.
With the Supreme Court’s recent shift to the right, an affirmative action case could overturn 40 years of precedent that race can be considered a factor in college admissions decisions.
Such changes could have a profound impact on universities, many of which argue that diverse environments enhance learning by exposing students to different perspectives.
Nine states, including Michigan and California, have local edicts that prohibit affirmative action. Some states, such as Oklahoma, which do not have affirmative action programs, took the opposite position in court filings, noting that the University of Oklahoma “considered when Oklahoma banned affirmative action in 2012. It claims to maintain just as much (if not more) diversity.” Thirteen other states joined Oklahoma’s opinion.
According to data released by the university, Oklahoma’s 2020 freshman class was 61 percent white, 12 percent Hispanic, 3.7 percent black, and 2.1 percent American Indian. The state brief notes that a large number of students identify as “more than one race,” and the number of students who are part black increases the proportion of blacks to more than 6% of her. Black residents make up her 7.8% of the state’s population.
A brief put forward last year by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also sided with students for fair admissions and said that despite the University of Texas using those forms, race-conscious admissions It claims to be opposed to
Brief criticizes not only affirmative action, but diversity itself, stating that “indeed, it takes a hostile racial stereotype to justify ‘diversity’.”
Both Michigan and California are known for their highly rated schools, with thousands of applications coming in from all over the country. Admissions are highly competitive, so applicants from underrepresented groups face higher barriers to admission.
At the University of Michigan, Proposition 2, a voter ballot known as the Affirmative Action Initiative, was adopted in 2006, resulting in a state constitutional ban on race-sensitive admissions. This led to a sharp decline in enrollment for black and Native American students. Since then, Michigan has worked to diversify its student body through outreach programs.
They include a college advisory board of young graduates in Michigan and a recruitment office in nearby Detroit, a mostly black city. Additional incentives include generous scholarships.
Michigan spokesman Rick Fitzgerald called Proposition 2 an “involuntary experiment” imposed on the university, admitting that its diversity profile suffered afterward, and that the university’s experience was “selective.” It should serve as a cautionary tale underscoring the compelling need for selective colleges to become selective colleges.” He can consider race as one of many background factors about applicants. ”
Black undergraduate enrollment fell from 7% in 2006 to 4% in 2021, even as the total percentage of African Americans attending college in Michigan increased from 16% to 19%. said Brief. At the same time, the Native American school enrollment rate, which he once had at 1%, has fallen to 0.11% in 2021, he said.
Additionally, a full quarter of underrepresented students surveyed feel they “do not belong” in Michigan, a 66% increase over the decade, the report says.
At the Ross School of Business in Michigan, Rita Brooks was one of 74 Black students out of 2,421 undergraduates enrolled in 2021.
“While I appreciate the incredible resources and education, it’s hard to ignore the isolation I feel in a classroom where I’m at most one of two black students,” said Brooks, a native of the Detroit area. Told.
Some prospective students say they see the University of Michigan’s low black undergraduate enrollment as a reason to go elsewhere, and the low numbers further discourage enrollment of students of color. Indicates that there is a possibility of interference.
Aniya Caldwell of Jackson, Michigan, who served as president of her high school’s National Honor Society in 2020, chose to attend Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC.
“There is very little diversity at the University of Michigan,” Caldwell said in a LinkedIn message. “Overall, I chose to go to Howard because I knew I would be surrounded by people of color and not have to worry about racism or discrimination.”
In California, Proposition 209 was passed in 1996 to ban racial preferences in admissions. By the fall of 2006, there were 96 black students in her freshman class of nearly 5,000 at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The group’s nickname was “Infamous 96”, as it shocked the UCLA community with its very low black enrollment.
Since then, enrollment in the California system of underserved minorities has partially recovered. For example, before Proposition 209 was adopted, he had 7% black admissions at UCLA, and in 1998 he dropped to 3.43%. By 2019, it increased to 5.98%. California’s population is 6.5% black.
But attorneys for the University of California system say it’s an uphill battle to achieve diversity, especially in the most selective schools.
Fifty-two percent of California public high school students identify as Hispanic, compared to 15% of Berkeley freshman students who identify as Hispanic, the highest among the system’s nine campuses. The number is 25%.
“Many students from underrepresented minority groups, especially those on UC’s most selective campuses, are often the only students of their own race in their classes,” the outline states.
Berkeley’s dean of undergraduate admissions, Orphemi Ogundere, is “incredibly proud” of the university’s enrollment progress despite banning race considerations. But “I have no doubt that if we could consider the human being as a whole, or the student as a whole, we would make much more significant progress.”
At the University of California, San Diego, another elective school in the system, 3% of undergraduates are black, and some of them have complained about racism incidents.
Another summary filed with the court by a group of civil rights and legal organizations in California says that while this summary focuses solely on the University of California system, it also reduces the diversity of California’s other four-year public universities. is doing.
By 2018, the percentage of black students enrolled at California State University was half what it was in 1997, down from 8% to 4%, Brief said.
Native American students enrolled in California State University system campuses decreased from 1.23% in 1995 to 0.2% in 2018.