Fearing Resegregation, Colleges Face Tough Choices After Affirmative Action

Affirmative action changed America’s best colleges from white schools with a handful of students of color to diverse campuses with students from historically excluded groups. It happened rapidly when many colleges decided requiring direct consideration of race in admissions was a vital goal. Students benefiting from affirmative action have had great success in their studies at challenging colleges and have reached powerful leadership positions in their professional lives.

The Supreme Court’s decision outlawing affirmative action deals a direct blow, closing the door to many students and slashing the diversity colleges and students believe improves education. Six conservative justices insist that colleges act as if race does not exist in evaluating students. In their dissents, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, however, pointed to evidence that it relates to all major factors relevant to preparation and that a “colorblind” policy is simply blind to the nature of U.S. society. But they lost in a court transformed by President Donald Trump’s appointments, all of whom sided against affirmative action in the court’s latest decision.

Colleges must reexamine their practices, ending successful programs that are now illegal. The decision could affect what data is required of applicants and the fate of faculties and programs supporting diversity and integration. Campuses will have to think about needed changes in their entire admissions strategies, perhaps also ending schemes that usually aid whites. It is not fair to end factors that help Blacks and Latinos and keep requirements that usually help whites and Asians.

For example, many campuses ended standardized testing requirements during the pandemic. Given the limits of such tests and their predictable racial impact, should testing be restored or permanently abandoned? What about student aid? Whatever campuses decide, there will almost certainly be extensive follow up litigation, and the courts might get deeper and deeper into academic decisions for which they have little competence. We already see Harvard being sued to eliminate preferences for children of (mostly white) alumni.

With nine states already under affirmative action bans for as much as a quarter century, we know a lot about the likely effects on diversity. There will be a substantial cut in admissions for Black, Latino and Native students. In previous arguments for race-based admissions, Harvard predicted a dramatic loss of Black students. They will likely be replaced by small additional numbers of Asian and white students. Private colleges have been exempt from the bans so far but now will be forced to change.

Those states and colleges with the determination and funds are likely already searching for alternatives. However, research shows these alternatives will be far less effective and much more expensive. For example, percent plans, which guarantee admission to state colleges for students in the top 10% of their class, have fallen far short of affirmative action results, as the University of Texas successfully argued before the Supreme Court in 2015 – before Trump took office in 2017 and appointed three new justices.

If colleges and universities decide to focus instead on low-income students, many of those low-income students with the highest scores will be white and Asian, living in areas with better schools and characterized as temporarily poor (rather than those facing intergenerational poverty). Most poor Black and Latino students are segregated in weak schools with concentrated poverty, less experienced teachers and limited precollegiate curriculum. As a result, they are not equally prepared for a good college regardless of their potential.

Additionally, poor students need much bigger aid packages, and only a few colleges currently have resources to cover the full cost. Since the Reagan years, college has become impossibly costly for millions. The Pell Grant once covered the great majority of the cost but has now declined to about a third of the cost of a four-year public college. It’s past due for an increase.

In some conservative states, nothing will be done, and almost all efforts will be undone, with the whole experience often written off as a failed “woke” aberration. In those settings, attempts to replace affirmative action may share the fate of school integration, which has fallen apart in many places since the earlier Supreme Court decisions dismantling desegregation plans and a 2007 opinion outlawing the main types of voluntary local desegregation efforts.

The Supreme Court decision to, in effect, partially resegregate our leading colleges can be taken as a sign that civil rights policies are unnecessary or even illegal, inflaming opposition and demoralizing people of color on other issues. It might also fire up resistance among disillusioned students, faculty of color and their supporters. Even more serious, it may lead to loss of hope for young people preparing for colleges in minority communities. State and college leaders thus have important roles to play in setting the tone and designing next steps.

Looking forward, it will be very important to deal with two of the fundamental reasons why so many students of color will not be admitted or will not enroll: the profoundly unequal public school preparation for college in largely segregated schools and the cost burden that is impossible for many of their families. Black and Latino high schools lack the teachers, well-prepared fellow students, real college prep and AP courses in strong white and Asian schools. The Supreme Court’s rejection of President Joe Biden’s effort to cut student debt will only exacerbate these concerns.

This decision will cost us in training of leaders, in successful cross-racial contacts and in understanding for the next generation, as well as harming our racial climate. Colleges will need to make clear that they will seek students from all groups and try to improve the entire process. It was students who triggered the great movement that Martin Luther King Jr. led. Perhaps mobilized students could help lead us now out of the bad place the Supreme Court has left our colleges.