To the Editor:
“New occasions teach new duties,” wrote poet James Russell Lowell in This Present Crisis.
It’s a sentiment shared by many of us in academic leadership following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling against affirmative action.
At the University of Michigan, we faced a similar crisis in 2006, when the state of Michigan passed Proposal 2, a constitutional amendment that prohibited universities from considering race in its admissions decisions.
At U-M, we’re convinced that racial diversity is one of the many important components of a broadly diverse student body and an intellectually and culturally rich campus community. So after the amendment passed — and was later upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court — we were challenged to reconsider and reimagine how to achieve those ends.
While our efforts remain a work of persistence and aspiration, we have learned much, and are eager to share those lessons with our colleagues across the academy, and to join with them in finding new ways to address the challenge of increasing diversity across the community (“Where DEI Efforts Are Ambitious, Well Funded, and Taking Fire From All Sides,” The Chronicle, June 20).
Diversity is a challenge.
Research has shown, and our experience demonstrates, that it is far more difficult to achieve racial diversity in the student body using only race-neutral methods than including race in the admissions process in a narrowly-tailored manner.
At the outset, we lost significant ground. The passage of Proposal 2 had disproportionate, negative impacts on our most underrepresented communities, and subsequent race-neutral policies have been much less successful in significantly increasing enrollments of Black and Native American students.
But we’ve learned much, and other institutions may learn from us to better address the challenges of today. At U-M, we are pursuing a full spectrum of solutions to increase diversity. To give a few examples:
We conduct a holistic application review process, one that considers all aspects of a student’s record and experience, and admit students with strong academic achievement coupled with exceptional personal talent and a broad diversity of backgrounds, experiences and abilities.
We have built and supported partnerships with K-12 students, families and schools in under-resourced communities through our Wolverine Pathways program and new efforts offered by our Center for Educational Outreach. Through Pathways, students are more successful in the application process, and they also matriculate in higher numbers.
We put a focus on first-generation students through our Kessler Scholars program.
And we focus on low- and moderate-income students through the Go Blue Guarantee and our participation as a founding member in the American Talent Initiative.
In addition, we conduct year-round recruiting and outreach campaigns to identify exceptional students from across the country, including those from underserved communities.
We maintain an office in Detroit to recruit local high school students and coordinate campus visits from those students.
And we strategically engage with one of our greatest resources —our alumni and their networks — to connect with prospective students and their communities, to tell the story of “the Michigan difference” and what their U-M education has meant to them.
All of these efforts are buoyed and sustained by our institutional commitment to DEI efforts across our campuses and medical system through which we’re working toward improving the climate of the campus community. Those efforts are far-reaching, spanning across all our units, and deeply intertwined into the fabric of our university. While some of the work is done centrally, much of it is done at the unit and department level, where its impact is arguably even greater.
U-M’s recent diversity, equity and inclusion strategic plan, DEI 1.0, is an example of just such an institution-wide effort. It resulted in significant progress, with successful and promising models for enhancing diversity, though we also saw areas where we made less progress, and lessons learned on where we need to provide greater focus.
So as we build on our progress and learning in our next strategic plan, DEI 2.0, we’ll continue to leverage those innovative strategies with the greatest promise for achieving increased and abundant representation of the communities that make up our state, nation and global society.
It’s been difficult, and it has taken time, but we have seen progress recently, with increased enrollments in students from many key groups, including historically underrepresented communities including Black, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American and Asian American students. In 2022, underrepresented minorities represented 14.48% of undergraduates, a modest increase from the challenges we faced in the immediate aftermath of Proposal 2.
But we can do more.
This is an issue that is deeply personal for me. As an Asian-American, the child of first-generation immigrants, I have had personal experience with the pain of prejudice and the hurt of racism. And I understand how those wounds of racism and alienation can hinder development and achievement.
So I would like to call on my colleagues — the leaders across our colleges and universities — to join with us in sharing their lessons learned, on what has worked and what can be further improved to increase diversity in all forms across our community.
To give just a few examples, nearly 2,000 accredited four-year colleges and universities have adopted ACT/SAT-optional or test-free testing policies for their fall 2023 applicants, according to FairTest. Alongside this development, many schools are also altering their eligibility criteria for merit scholarships, moving away from SAT and ACT scores and toward high school GPA and other performance measures.
Colleges and universities are also adopting alternative admission assessments such as portfolios. Chapman College in particular has done significant work in portfolio assessments for non-traditional students seeking admission to its graduate programs.
Universities are also taking a hard look at their legacy admissions policies, whether eliminating them altogether or reevaluating the weight that legacy status is given in the admissions process. This would undoubtedly have a significant impact on the diversity of students at elite private universities.
Our process of reevaluation and reimagination must continue. As we do so, I am confident we will find ways to do better together in this new occasion, engaging and learning across our academies.
So let us join together, and to work together to build a diverse, inclusive and exceptional community, to empower our students to overcome their challenges, and to make their dreams come true.
Santa Ono
President
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor
