RandomGuy
06-23-2016, 12:45 PM
UPDATE (June 23, 11 a.m.): On Thursday morning, the Supreme Court voted 4-3 to uphold the affirmative action program of the University of Texas at Austin. The program considers race as one factor in admitting some students to the university’s freshman class. “Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission,” the court said in its majority opinion, which was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. This article, which was first published on Dec. 9, 2015, explains the background of the case.
Affirmative action in higher education is back in the Supreme Court, with oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin being heard Wednesday. The topic has been contentious in Texas, where a federal appeals court banned affirmative action at the state’s flagship universities in 1996, a move that was then reversed by a Supreme Court decision in 2003. This specific case, which was originally heard by the Supreme Court in 2012 and sent back to the lower court for further review, will once again determine whether UT can consider race as an admissions factor.
The court is expected to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision that backed UT’s policy, a move that could affect other schools and decrease diversity at large public colleges.
Affirmative action policies, which encourage universities to use an applicant’s race as an admissions factor in order to increase racial diversity on campus, were never meant to be permanent. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, which upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” But that decision was only 12 years ago, and the data suggests that we’re still a long way from having proportional minority representation on large public college campuses.
We can get a glimpse of how these policies affect student bodies by comparing public college enrollment rates among demographic groups in the eight states where affirmative action is banned to the states where it is not. The most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau shows that white students are slightly underrepresented at a majority of public research universities, typically the campuses where affirmative action is under fire, and Asian students are overrepresented at a majority of these campuses. Black and Hispanic students are still vastly underrepresented at these colleges overall, and they fare even worse in states with bans on affirmative action. Black students are underrepresented by at least 20 percent at 79 percent of the country’s research universities; only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population, and one of those, Florida A&M University, is a historically black college or university (HBCU).
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happens-when-you-ban-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/
Affirmative action in higher education is back in the Supreme Court, with oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin being heard Wednesday. The topic has been contentious in Texas, where a federal appeals court banned affirmative action at the state’s flagship universities in 1996, a move that was then reversed by a Supreme Court decision in 2003. This specific case, which was originally heard by the Supreme Court in 2012 and sent back to the lower court for further review, will once again determine whether UT can consider race as an admissions factor.
The court is expected to reverse the Fifth Circuit’s decision that backed UT’s policy, a move that could affect other schools and decrease diversity at large public colleges.
Affirmative action policies, which encourage universities to use an applicant’s race as an admissions factor in order to increase racial diversity on campus, were never meant to be permanent. In the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, which upheld affirmative action at the University of Michigan Law School, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote, “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” But that decision was only 12 years ago, and the data suggests that we’re still a long way from having proportional minority representation on large public college campuses.
We can get a glimpse of how these policies affect student bodies by comparing public college enrollment rates among demographic groups in the eight states where affirmative action is banned to the states where it is not. The most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education and the Census Bureau shows that white students are slightly underrepresented at a majority of public research universities, typically the campuses where affirmative action is under fire, and Asian students are overrepresented at a majority of these campuses. Black and Hispanic students are still vastly underrepresented at these colleges overall, and they fare even worse in states with bans on affirmative action. Black students are underrepresented by at least 20 percent at 79 percent of the country’s research universities; only two research universities in states with affirmative action bans have at least the same proportion of black students as the state’s college-age population, and one of those, Florida A&M University, is a historically black college or university (HBCU).
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/heres-what-happens-when-you-ban-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/