Lawyers on Race-Conscious Admissions: ‘This Is Doable. But Also, Do It Right.’

If part of the intent of the recent affirmative-action lawsuits brought against universities was to send a chill through admissions offices, it doesn’t seem to be working. Most of the discussion at a University of Southern California conference this week on race and admissions was about how to do a better job bringing underrepresented minority students to campuses, not about whether it can be done at all.

“We do have to be creative about solutions on equity,” said Stella M. Flores, an associate dean and associate professor at New York University.

The lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were discussed at the Admissions, Race and Identity conference, held at USC’s Center for Enrollment Research, Policy and Practice, but they were not front and center. Instead, the roughly 200 admissions officials, professors, and other administrators got a rundown on the research on identity and access to college.

In “Does Whiteness Equal Meritocracy in Admissions?,” Julie Posselt, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, explained that institutions were created for white men and will resist change. That’s borne out in research on stereotypes, implicit bias, and standardized testing.

“Systems of selection in education end up reproducing unequal outcomes,” she said.

It’s up to admissions professionals to try to work against those forces, Posselt said. To do that, they should change what they’re asking of applicants, how they judge what applicants give them, and who is doing the judging.

Darnell Cole, an associate professor of education at Southern California, brought up the strange way that college admissions encourages applicants to emphasize the challenges in their lives in order to gain entry into the top colleges.

“What is lost when disadvantaged students are forced to commodify their backgrounds for the sake of college admissions?” he said.

The panelists labored over the definitions of race, intersectionality, and “holistic” admissions. They asked admissions officers to consider questions like the one Cole raised when designing their admissions processes.

Harvard on Trial

Detailed background on the lawsuit over the university’s race-conscious admissions policy, the case’s implications for selective colleges, and coverage of the trial as it unfolded, in a federal court in Boston.

• Harvard Doesn’t Discriminate Against Asian American Applicants, U.S. Appeals Court Rules
• 3 Takeaways From the Appeal of the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
• A Judge Advised Harvard to Give Its Admissions Officers Training to Stop Bias. Will That Help?

But the lawsuits that have captured the public’s attention recently could not be completely ignored. They were filed by the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. There’s speculation among legal scholars that one of them could make it to the now more conservative Supreme Court.

The case against Harvard went to trial in Boston this past fall, putting the university’s undergraduate admissions process in the spotlight. Harvard was accused of discriminating against Asian-American applicants by giving them low “personal scores,” among other accusations. A judge is expected to rule on that case this year.

The UNC case is barely getting started but was brought by the same organization. In that case, the university was accused of giving “significant racial preferences” to underrepresented minority applicants. Both universities deny these accusations.

The main message for admissions officers at the conference in Los Angeles was pay attention, but don’t overreact.

“Don’t be afraid, because this is doable,” said Jamie L. Keith, a partner at the education consultancy EducationCounsel. “But also, do it right.”

She added that admissions officers should know why they make the decisions they do, and document their work.

Art Coleman, managing partner at EducationCounsel, said that several lawsuits over the past few decades have been seen as serious threats to affirmative action.

“We’ve been there before,” he said. But none of those cases came to that.

Kedra Ishop, vice provost for enrollment management at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, said the work of ensuring campus diversity is not simply a matter of admitting applicants with different backgrounds. The whole university has to try to make its campus a place where underrepresented minority students want to come and feel supported once they arrive.

“You have to have a top-to-bottom commitment in doing this work,” Ishop said.

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.