What Do Americans Think About Affirmative Action? It Depends on How You Ask

Pat Greenhouse, The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Most Americans support affirmative action for racial minorities as a broad concept, a new survey says. Yet a majority opposes the consideration of applicants’ race in college admissions.

Confusing? Not really. It’s all a matter of how specifically you pose the question.

As higher education awaits a federal judge’s ruling in a case challenging Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions policy, it’s a good time to ask what the public thinks of this contentious issue.

So let’s take a closer look. Sixty-one percent of Americans favor affirmative-action programs for minorities, according to a Gallup poll released on Wednesday. That record high was up from 54 percent in 2016. For the first time, a majority of white respondents (57 percent) supported affirmative action, an increase of nine percentage points; support among blacks and Hispanics has remained relatively steady, at 72 percent and 66 percent, respectively.

The wording of the question in Gallup’s survey was broad: “Do you generally favor or oppose affirmative-action programs for racial minorities?”

When presented with specifics, though, the public is more wary of race-based policies. In a 2016 survey, Gallup and Inside Higher Ed asked about the Supreme Court’s decision in Fisher v. University of Texas: “The Supreme Court recently ruled on a case that confirms that colleges can consider the race or ethnicity of students when making decisions on who to admit to the college. Overall, do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision?”

The answer: 65 percent disapproved.

Game Theory

Gallup’s findings are in line with those from another new survey. Nearly 75 percent of Americans believe colleges should not consider applicants’ race or ethnicity when considering them for admission, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Monday.

Pew gave respondents a list of factors colleges might consider (including high-school grades, ACT and SAT scores, gender, and race, among others), and asked whether each should be a major or minor factor — or no factor at all. Just 7 percent said race should be a major factor, and 19 percent said it should be a minor one.

Echoing the results of Gallup’s previous findings, Pew’s survey revealed strong support for the use of grades and test scores, yet little support for other factors, including athletic ability, first-generation status, and whether an applicant’s relatives attended the college.

In an analysis last fall, Gallup suggested that when Americans hear “affirmative action,” they tend to think of something positive, such as encouraging more students from various racial backgrounds to apply to college. Another possibility: “Respondents could favor the idea simply because they applaud the result — more diversity in a student body — without thinking much about how that result is brought about.”

But when things get down to the brass tacks of how admissions decisions are made, Gallup’s analysis suggested, respondents tend to think of “historically negative discrimination practices” from previous eras that are now illegal.

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?

Then there’s this: When Gallup has asked whether applicants should be admitted “solely on the basis of merit,” 67 to 70 percent of respondents have said yes. “Admissions decisions, a majority of the public is in essence saying, should be blind to the race and ethnicity of the applicant,” Gallup wrote.

That’s where things get complicated. Thinking of numbers, such as standardized-test scores, as pure measures of merit, with no relationship to an applicant’s background, is tricky. After all, those measures tend to benefit white and Asian-American applicants more so than black and Hispanic applicants.

As Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment management and marketing at DePaul University, explained a few years ago in an essay, many metrics colleges cherish are entangled with race and socioeconomic background. Admissions offices are the agents that keep many low-income, first-generation, and minority students out of college, he wrote, “by creating a game that is heavily skewed in favor of students from high-income, well-educated families.”

Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com.