A new software program promises to help colleges maintain diversity in admissions in a way that complies with last year’s Supreme Court rulings, which allow limited use of race as long as colleges steer clear of quotas or extra points for minority applicants.
Juan E. Gilbert, an assistant professor of computer science and software engineering at Auburn University, designed the software, called Applications Quest. It groups applicants into clusters of similarly qualified students with similar backgrounds. Officials can then select students from each cluster, creating what Mr. Gilbert says is a heterogeneous student body.
Because race and other criteria, such as academic performance, family income, and gender, are weighted equally, it would be rare for a cluster to contain students of only one race.
Mr. Gilbert says the twin decisions involving the University of Michigan (Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger) gave him the chance to use his technological skills to promote diversity in colleges. He says his software takes a “holistic approach” to admissions -- borrowing from the language of the Supreme Court ruling that called for a “holistic review” of applicants, with race being one of many factors to consider.
He has run the software using an old pool of students applying to computer-related programs at Auburn and found that minority applicants are spread out across clusters. He anticipates similar findings if the software is used at other colleges.
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Mr. Gilbert, an African-American, acknowledges that colleges that use the software could end up selecting a class of students that contains fewer minority students than if they had not used the software.
But that bothers him less than the possibility that colleges might use the Supreme Court rulings to avoid considering race altogether.
“When I see diversity, I see it as more than just race or ethnicity,” he says.
Auburn University has filed a preliminary patent application for Applications Quest. While many colleges use software to guide them in the admissions process, Mr. Gilbert says his program is the only one that deals with the challenge posed by the Supreme Court rulings.
Brian A. Wright, interim associate director for commercialization in Auburn’s office of technology transfer, says the software also can be used to diversify a company’s work force.
“I’m excited about what this could do for universities and what it could do for Auburn,” says Mr. Wright.
Even the group that represented the plaintiffs who challenged Michigan’s admission process is heartened by Mr. Gilbert’s software.
“If used honestly, that’s a great way to achieve broad-based diversity,” says Curt A. Levey, director of legal and public affairs at the Center for Individual Rights.
http://chronicle.com Section: Information Technology Volume 50, Issue 45, Page A27