Having helped lead the University of Michigan’s successful defense of its use of race as one factor in holistic admissions before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003, I welcomed the court’s recent ruling in Fisher v University of Texas at Austin, upholding a race-sensitive admissions policy. But it is important to look beyond this decision to higher education’s larger task of attracting and educating a diverse group of young people who will be tomorrow’s leaders.
The court’s decision provides much-needed clarity, marking the third time since 1978 that it has affirmed the importance of student-body diversity in higher education. It also makes clear that consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions will require continuing scrutiny and evaluation by colleges across the country.
Affirmative action is just one tool, an important one, for creating fairness and opportunity in our society.
Affirmative action can clearly survive constitutional muster, but those of us in higher education must recognize the underlying considerations that lead our institutions to employ it. And we must acknowledge that affirmative action is just one tool — an important one — for creating fairness and opportunity in our society. Achieving those goals will require many more tools.
Given the changing demographics in the United States, where the white population will very likely account for less than 50 percent of the total population by midcentury, colleges must do more to help create leaders in all areas of endeavor who will reflect that growing diversity.
In Fisher, the court’s decision recognizes the importance of creating diverse student bodies because they enhance educational quality, and it acknowledges the role that selective institutions play in shaping diverse leadership for our country. Examples of institutions that value diverse leadership include the armed forces, businesses, and religious groups, which provided amicus briefs supporting affirmative action in college admissions.
But we need to greatly expand the pipeline of talented individuals from all backgrounds, and to provide opportunities for diverse groups of young people to work together long before they reach college age.
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That will require a concerted effort among higher-education institutions, all levels of government, businesses, philanthropies, and schools from kindergarten to 12th grade, especially in economically disadvantaged and racially segregated areas. It’s time that closing the education gap at the lower levels became a national priority. For this to happen, colleges must engage more broadly and deeply with primary and secondary schools, especially in their home communities.
Some colleges are already doing so, providing mentoring, tutoring, advising, and outreach programs to local schoolchildren. Some offer talented local high-school students the opportunity to take college classes for free. My college, and some others, waive tuition for local high-school graduates who meet our admissions standards.
But we all need to do more to expand opportunities for disadvantaged and minority students. We can do this by joining with local schools to provide their students with access to our libraries and other educational resources. We need to work with students from less advantaged backgrounds — through tutoring, mentoring, and advising programs — to help them develop the skills, habits, and transcripts needed to meet admissions standards, and to succeed in college.
By doing those things, we in higher-education leadership can demonstrate our commitment to creating inclusive campuses for our faculty, students, and staff — campuses that demonstrate education’s power to better individual lives, to drive economic uplift, and to produce leaders who reflect the values and strength of our democracy.
Marvin Krislov is president of Oberlin College.
