The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has begun examining whether selective colleges are discriminating against women in undergraduate admissions, as the rapidly growing proportion of female applicants threatens gender balance on those campuses.
The federal gender-equity law known as Title IX prohibits colleges and universities from discriminating against applicants based on gender—with the major exception of undergraduate admissions at private colleges that are not professional or technical institutions. That exemption, for instance, allows women’s colleges to remain all female in their undergraduate student bodies.
The commission’s inquiry, which it calls the “FY 2010 Project on Sex Discrimination in Higher Education Admissions,” expects to determine if selective coeducational institutions, both private and public, are giving undue preference to male applicants to avoid becoming “too female.” For private colleges to do so would be undesirable, according to at least one commissioner, while it would be illegal for public ones.
The project was proposed by Gail Heriot, a commissioner and law professor at the University of San Diego, who has been a vocal critic of racial preferences in admissions. In her proposal, she wrote that the commission should first establish whether male preferences exist, then hold a hearing on the topic and explore whether certain applications of Title IX might actually encourage discrimination in admissions.
Ms. Heriot theorized in her proposal that colleges, for example, might be able to enroll more men without discriminating if they added men’s sports to their athletics departments. But, she wrote, “are schools shying away from adding additional men’s athletics programs because they believe they would also have to add women’s athletics programs and feel they cannot afford to do so?”
The commission voted to pursue the project at its August meeting. Staff members then created a preliminary list of colleges and universities whose admissions records would be subpoenaed. They include colleges in several categories: historically black institutions; private, moderately selective institutions, including both religious and nonreligious ones; private, highly selective institutions; and public ones. Georgetown University, Gettysburg College, the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Richmond were named at the meeting, but the commission’s staff would not release the full list because it is still preliminary. The commission is likely to continue discussing the list at its next meeting, in November.
Colleges on the preliminary list were selected not because of any specific concerns about their practices, but because they fit the various profiles and are close to Washington. (The commission has subpoena power only within 100 miles of wherever it intends to hold a hearing—in this case, its headquarters in the capital.) The one exception is the University of Richmond, which Ms. Heriot asked to have put on the list because of media reports several years ago saying that the university was intentionally admitting a higher proportion of male applicants.
Richmond officials were not available for comment late Friday, but according to the most-recent data on the university’s Web site, it accepted a nearly identical percentage of its male and female applicants for the freshman class of 2008—32 percent versus 31 percent, respectively. (The acceptance rates for freshmen in this fall’s class were similarly close, at 38 percent for men and 40 percent for women, according to figures provided by a university spokesman over the weekend.)
The gap between the two admissions rates has narrowed significantly since 2006, when 54 percent of men were admitted and 41 percent of women were, according to the data on Richmond’s Web site. Over all, the university has become more selective as the number of both male and female applicants has increased.