On Monday morning, Philip A. Ballinger, director of admissions at the University of Washington, sent an e-mail to Kedra B. Ishop, his counterpart at the University of Texas at Austin. Having read the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action there, he wanted to convey his support to his colleague, whom he described as carrying the weight of an entire profession.
His message to her included this telling line: “Congratulations ... I think.”
The court’s long-awaited ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin delivered neither victory nor defeat to proponents of the use of race and ethnicity in admissions evaluations. By remanding the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit for further consideration, the justices sidestepped—for now—a ruling on the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions policies.
Instead of a broad, far-reaching decision, admissions officers got the judicial equivalent of the pause button: They must wait for more clarity.
“There’s always been a lot of fuzziness around the use of race and ethnicity, the time span for using it, and where it’s allowed,” Mr. Ballinger said. “And it’s still fuzzy.”
Even as news releases hailing the ruling as either a big win or a resounding loss for affirmative action sailed through cyberspace on Monday, several admissions officers saw a more nuanced picture.
“It seems like the court does see value in diversity, and in continuing with the standards and yardsticks that admissions offices are trying to abide by in achieving it,” said Jim Rawlins, executive director of Colorado State University’s admissions office and president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. “But there is this idea that this outcome needs to be something that cannot be achieved in any other way.”
Over the years, some scholars have said that selective colleges could enroll sufficiently diverse classes by considering applicants’ socioeconomic status—and not their race and ethnicity. Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, is among the proponents of “race neutral” alternatives, often called “class-based affirmative action.”
Like many admissions officials, however, Mr. Rawlins is not sold on that idea. “By removing the dimension of race, we are removing something that can potentially tell us something different about that student,” he said. “Sometimes race adds to the picture, sometimes it doesn’t.” The flexibility to consider or ignore a given applicant’s race, as one piece of a large puzzle, is what many admissions officers hope to preserve.
After Affirmative Action
Even on campuses where race is not a factor in admissions, officials have expressed a rooting interest in the outcome of the Fisher case. During a meeting on Monday morning, Nancy G. McDuff sneaked glances at her smartphone, waiting for news of the ruling.
“On campuses, race still matters,” said Ms. McDuff, associate vice president for admissions and enrollment management at the University of Georgia.
In 2001, after a federal appeals court struck down an affirmative-action policy at the university, it eliminated the use of race in admissions decisions. Although the change initially decreased the diversity of incoming classes, Ms. McDuff said it helped persuade her staff to redefine the university’s outreach and recruitment strategies to bolster those numbers over the long haul.
Now, Georgia regularly sends admissions officers into middle schools to talk to students about how to prepare for college. “What we realized is we have to change the applicant pool,” Ms. McDuff said. “We had to make that pool more diverse.”
That process isn’t easy—or fast. After voters in Washington State approved a ban on affirmative action, in 1998, public colleges there removed race as a consideration in admissions. At the University of Washington, the number of underrepresented minority students who applied and enrolled plummeted. That was partly because of the message the policy change had sent to families, Mr. Ballinger said.
“One thing we faced was the perception that we didn’t want them,” he said. “And although that was absolutely far, far from the truth, a kind of pall was put over everything.”
Although Washington has seen those numbers rebound, black and Hispanic students in last year’s freshman class were underrepresented relative to the state’s pool of high-school graduates. Mr. Ballinger describes the inability to consider race as a hindrance to shaping a class.
“The student body is an instrument of education itself,” he said. “If one chooses to extract race and ethnicity as a part of that consideration, to me that’s simply removing a tool that helps us make that educational environment as rich as we can possibly make it,” he said. “They’ve taken away one of our chisels, so we have to use a rougher chisel.”
