Defending Diversity

Without precise goals, reams of research, and continuing discussions among campus leaders, your college’s race-conscious admissions program is probably toast.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin wasn’t so blunt, the takeaways are clear. Campus leaders concerned about enhancing diversity — and helping their institution survive a legal challenge — are wise to stay knee-deep in good data. “The question of evidence is front and center,” says Arthur L. Coleman, managing partner of EducationCounsel LLC, which advises colleges on student-diversity strategies. “We’ve moved from the concept of diversity being a compelling interest to, now, a clear lens on the illustrative kinds of evidence that it takes to make a case for diversity policies.”

Since the court affirmed once again that colleges could use race as one of many factors in admissions, so long as those policies are “narrowly tailored” to achieve educational goals, colleges have been taking stock of their own practices. Many institutions are using big data to refine their recruitment, admissions, and retention strategies in ways that might enhance diversity. That’s just a first step. To comply with the legal precedents restated in Fisher, enrollment officials know they must carefully track their progress. Without measures of effectiveness, a diversity policy is legally risky and, perhaps, educationally unsound.

Given the ever-present threat of lawsuits, colleges might seem confined by a long list of proscriptions. Yet Philip A. Ballinger was encouraged by a key line in the court’s opinion: “Public universities … can serve as ‘laboratories of experimentation.’ "

Mr. Ballinger, associate vice provost for enrollment and undergraduate admissions at the University of Washington, is overseeing an admissions experiment. In 2015 the university incorporated robust geodemographic information — data on where people live — into its review of applicants. More socioeconomic data points, he hoped, would give admissions officers a better glimpse of students’ life circumstances, and, in turn, help the university enroll a more diverse class. “Before, we were missing all this information,” he says, “about the families from which students come, their neighborhoods, what’s happening in their schools.”

So the university created a “Geo-Index,” which merges information from students’ applications with census and high-school data. All that is distilled to a single number (from 1 to 5), designed to measure the adversity experienced by each applicant.

Because Washington banned racial preferences in 1998, the Geo-Index does not include data on race or ethnicity. It can reveal disadvantages among white students from rural areas as well as among black students in urban neighborhoods, Mr. Ballinger says: “This is based purely on the word ‘Where.’ It’s more contextual, a really powerful distillation of what we’re asking about in holistic review.”

After just one year, it’s difficult to judge Washington’s experiment. There were more underrepresented minority freshmen in the fall of 2016 than in the preceding year, which Mr. Ballinger suspects is a result of several factors. To gauge the Geo-Index’s effectiveness, the university will have to study it over time. “We do think it can make a difference on the margins,” he says.

At Texas, a robust blend of evidence helped the university prevail in the Fisher case.

Mr. Coleman, the consultant, a former deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, has seen more institutions gathering a broader variety of data. Some are surveying underrepresented minority students about their experiences on campus, and compiling statistics on the number of courses in which such students are underrepresented. Anecdotal insights gleaned from focus groups can help, too.

“We recommend, without exception, that senior leadership engage periodically with students,” Mr. Coleman says. “The student voice can be instrumental.”

The University of Maryland at College Park has taken an especially deep look at its race-conscious strategies over the years. “The takeaway from Fisher, as from previous cases, is that this is a continual process,” says Shannon Gundy, director of admissions. “You can’t rest on your laurels.”

After the Supreme Court’s 2003 rulings in the University of Michigan affirmative-action cases, which upheld the use of race as one of multiple factors in admissions evaluations, Maryland officials engaged in some soul-searching: What did the institution value? What was most important when choosing applicants?

The answers led to the “Statement of Philosophy of Undergraduate Admissions,” which describes diversity as “an integral component of the educational process and academic excellence.” The document links specific institutional goals to Maryland’s holistic review process, which includes 26 factors that could influence admissions decisions, including an applicant’s race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background, as well as leadership, community involvement, and “breadth of life experiences.”

Maryland’s rendering of its admissions process reflects the tight fit between institutional goals and practices that legal experts say is crucial. Moreover, its policies clearly define an array of diversity components that go beyond race. The 26 admissions factors are “flexibly applied”; eschewing a rigid formula, admissions officers conduct individualized reviews of applicants and their unique circumstances.

To help justify the necessity of race-conscious programs, Maryland has investigated alternatives. Recently the university used data to determine whether a race-neutral plan like the one in Texas might limit diversity (the answer was yes). Several years ago, the admissions staff spent much of the summer “re-reviewing” a subset of that year’s applicant pool without considering any student’s race. The experiment allowed Maryland to document the extent to which a race-neutral policy would hinder its efforts to enroll underrepresented minority students. “It’s daunting and it’s expensive,” Ms. Gundy says. “But you have to do the work to collect the evidence.”

Admissions policies get all the attention, but the Fisher case affirmed that colleges must consider the full spectrum of enrollment policies. “The discussion is reorienting around the question of what success looks like,” Mr. Coleman says. “It’s not just a question of compositional diversity, but a question of student success on campus, which includes student satisfaction and students feeling like they belong.”

At College Park, discussions of students’ success are continuous. Recently, Barbara Gill, associate vice president for enrollment management, participated in a four-hour strategic-planning exercise with colleagues from other departments. They described the kind of experiences they wanted students to have in 2022. And they discussed ways of promoting more interaction among students from different backgrounds. “In classrooms, there’s that mixing, but in terms of how students define their social lives, it’s more homogeneous than they want,” she says. “So the next question is, How do we do that?”

Whatever the university decides, the answers are sure to be well documented.

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.