Few selective colleges have changed their admissions practices since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin two years ago, according to a report released on Tuesday by the American Council on Education. Yet many institutions, it found, have since embraced various strategies for increasing racial and socioeconomic diversity in their student body.
The report, which is based on a survey of colleges, urges policy makers, researchers, and journalists to consider such nuances as higher education braces for another ruling in the closely watched affirmative-action case. In June the high court announced that it would revisit the lawsuit, which challenges the university’s consideration of race and ethnicity in its evaluations of undergraduate applicants. As the Supreme Court takes up the case for a second time, college officials once again are weighing how best to achieve diversity.
So far, however, most haven’t revamped their admissions practices as a result of Fisher. Only 13 percent of colleges that consider race in admissions reported having changed their processes since 2013. The most prevalent changes were an increased emphasis on socioeconomic disadvantage (11 percent), on international diversity (9 percent), and on ability to pay (8 percent). As the report notes, such changes might have had little or nothing to do with Fisher.
Overlapping Goals
The same caveats surely apply to another set of findings in the report. Over the last two years, the report says, several diversity strategies have “received a post-Fisher boost.” Those include increasing the recruitment of transfer students from community colleges (23 percent) and of low-income students (22 percent), as well as bolstering efforts to enroll racial and ethnic minority applicants who have been admitted.
“Institutions may have changed little in their admissions calculus,” the report says, “but they seem to have increased their use of other diversity strategies in their broader work.”
Diversity efforts can serve overlapping goals. “Race-conscious and race-neutral diversity strategies can and do coexist,” the report says. Colleges that consider an applicant’s race, the authors write, are more likely to consider other aspects of his or her background, too. Seventy-four percent of institutions with race-conscious admissions also weigh socioeconomic disadvantage, compared with 27 percent of those with race-neutral admissions, the survey found.
Along with the survey findings, the report serves up some criticism of the news media. Widely used strategies for enhancing racial and socioeconomic diversity — such as articulation agreements with other institutions — receive less attention than less-prevalent practices, such as test-optional admissions policies and statewide percentage plans like the one in Texas.
“If researchers, policy makers, and the press want to align more closely with prevailing practice — and we believe that they should — then the focus of their attention and coverage will need to shift,” the report says.
The report, “Race, Class, and College Access: Achieving Diversity in a Shifting Legal Landscape,” was written by ACE’s Center for Policy Research and Strategy, Pearson’s Center for College and Career Readiness, and the Civil Rights Project at the University of California at Los Angeles. It’s based on a survey of 338 selective four-year colleges.
Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.
