In 2003, the United States Supreme Court ruled in its Grutter vs. Bollinger decision that universities can consider an applicant’s race as a part of a holistic review for admission. Racial quotas established by universities were previously ruled unconstitutional in a 1978 Supreme Court decision. Although affirmative action is undergoing a supreme court challenge, universities around the U.S. are still falling short of achieving representative diversity.
Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas. Abigail Fisher sued the University of Texas-Austin after she was denied admission in 2008. To ensure socioeconomic and racial diversity, the University of Texas-Austin uses an admissions policy that automatically grants admission to the top 10 percent of students at every high school in Texas. It also holistically considers race as a factor. Abigail Fisher missed the 10 percent cutoff and asserts that less qualified applicants were accepted to the university solely because of their skin color. The court’s ruling will likely set a precedent that will determine whether universities can consider an applicant’s race in a holistic admissions review process.
Fisher’s lawyers argue that the university is diverse enough without considering race as a factor in the admissions process. Currently, 6 percent of the university’s student body is African-American while 29 percent is Hispanic.
Today American universities have still not achieved enough diversity. According to the 2010 decennial census, African–Americans comprise 11.8 percent of the population in Texas while Hispanics account for 37.6 percent. In essence, with the University of Texas’s 10-percent rule and its race-conscious admissions policy, its student body still isn’t representative of the state’s population as a whole.
Similarly, despite the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s credible efforts to create a more diverse student body, diversity at the university remains inadequate. According to the most recent demographic information available on the school’s website—the 2010-2011 academic year—just 2.9 percent of students are African-American. In Wisconsin, African-Americans account for 6.2 percent of the state’s populace. Nationally, African-Americans represent 13.1 percent of population. UW-Madison has half the African-American students needed to be representative of the state and less than a quarter needed to be representative of the nation as a whole.
Fortunately, UW-Madison has made progress towards broader diversity since 2000, when a journalist at this paper revealed the university had photoshopped an African-American student onto the cover of an admissions booklet to make the university appear more diverse. But there’s still much room for progress.
The benefits of diversity are manifold. Chiefly, though, diversity provides universities—actually any institution—with different perspectives from students who hold very different life experiences, beliefs and cultures. If UW-Madison’s mission is to educate its students and prepare them for the real world, it is critically failing its students by not providing a student body that is representative of Wisconsin or the U.S.
Put simply, UW-Madison’s current policy to encourage more diversity isn’t working. To ensure broader diversity the university should increase efforts to attract minorities to Madison and implement a policy similar to the University of Texas-Austin’s top 10-percent rule. Adopting the 10-percent rule would not only ensure a more ethnically diverse student body but also a more socioeconomically diverse student body. In addition, the university should allocate more money to scholarships and financial aid for minorities and the economically disadvantaged.
Let’s be clear, race-conscious admissions policies do not solve the underlying cause of an unrepresentative student body, which is poor schools in predominantly minority and economically disadvantaged areas. Policy makers must work to improve schools in these areas. But until schools are improved, admissions counselors should work to create more diverse learning communities at universities.
The Fisher vs. University of Texas case offers the Supreme Court justices a chance to reaffirm America’s commitment to diverse institutions of higher learning. Equally important, the case reminds us at UW-Madison that we must redouble our efforts to create a more diverse learning community.
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