Schools mount a defense of affirmative action

After a run of setbacks, universities turn to research to make a case that race-sensitive admissions work.

May 22, 1999

Now, faced with a string of legal and political setbacks to race-sensitive admissions, higher education is rallying with data, research and analysis in a bid to show that affirmative action improves the education of all students, whites included.

The latest is a report released yesterday by Stanford University and the American Educational Research Association that attacks what it calls prevailing myths about fairness and merit in admissions.

The study's authors, from some top research institutions, say race-sensitive admissions policies are still vital to overcome disparities in educational opportunity for African Americans and Latinos. Despite progress in recent years, proportional disparities still exist between minorities and whites enrolled in the country's colleges and universities.

Critics of affirmative action often argue that considering race in admissions is unfair to whites who are denied access to elite schools while minorities with lower test scores are admitted. The Stanford authors try to confront the argument that admissions should be color-blind and based on merit, as measured by objective standardized tests.

They contend that, while such tests may accurately measure the acquired knowledge a student possesses relative to his peers, they represent an inadequate definition of merit. Low test scores of students in poor areas might merely reflect deficiencies of the school system - not of the students' talents - the authors argue.

That jibes with the way some elite schools describe the decision-making that drives admissions. "We continue to be committed to affirmative action in admissions - what we prefer to call being conscious of the background the student comes from," says Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We're looking at where a student came from and whether they were able to achieve despite their relative lack of advantage," he said. "When we accept a student, we're looking at what we think is their potential to succeed academically" - something test scores cannot gauge.

The Stanford report also cites previous studies showing that a diverse student body provides a better educational opportunity for all students. "To what extent can students receive a meaningful education that prepares them to participate in an increasingly diverse society if the student body and faculty are not diverse?" wrote Jeff Milem of the University of Maryland, one of the report's authors.

Critics also argue that minorities admitted to elite schools who have lower academic credentials than their white peers are being set up for failure and unhappiness. But the Stanford report argues that minority students who would have been denied admission to elite colleges if decisions were based solely on test scores succeeded when given a chance at such schools.

That mirrors another study on race-sensitive admissions policies, sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and published last fall by former Princeton University president William G. Bowen and former Harvard University president Derek Bok. Their study found that 75 percent of black students admitted to elite schools graduated within six years, compared with 59 percent of white students and 40 percent of black students at all schools nationally. Blacks with lower SAT scores were more likely to graduate the more difficult the school they were admitted to.

Stetson says Penn's own data also show that minority students with lower test scores succeed and graduate in large numbers.

The Bowen and Bok book, a panoply of data compiled by the University of Michigan to counter suits against the school's admissions policies, and the Stanford report are signs of higher education's newfound resolve to fight critics of affirmative action.

"Because of the urgency created by the court challenges to affirmative action, it's placed a burden on academia to come up with data to back its arguments," says John Payton, an attorney for the University of Michigan in its court case. The university has compiled data, for instance, showing that five years after graduation, students exposed to a diverse student body are more likely to live and work in integrated settings, and that the white students in particular enjoy greater growth in self-confidence and motivation to achieve.

William Taylor, part of the group that created the Stanford report, says universities have been loath to explain their admissions policies, and hecontends they should be publicly defining their arguments with more clarity.

"I think we're all now adopting a more aggressive attitude in defending our admissions strategy," says Penn's Stetson. "Each school may have had its own individual data showing success of the policy, or they wouldn't have continued to practice affirmative action. But all the disparate data had not been brought together until now."

That stems in part from the elite schools' reluctance to share data with anyone. What made the Mellon study unusual was that several dozen elite schools agreed to share internal data to create a giant database. But Bowen and Bok had to agree not to disseminate the statistics on individual schools.

Even now, as schools start to see the value in backing their arguments with hard data, they remain reluctant to reveal statistics. Stetson said Penn was not yet prepared to release information that shows the successful retention and graduation rates of Penn's minority students who might not have been admitted without affirmative action.

Higher education's defense is being sparked by a growing list of court cases - in Texas, for instance - as well as ballot initiatives - in California and Washington state - that shot down the use of affirmative action in admissions.

Stetson says that so far, most schools affected by the regional court rulings are public, not private. And Eugene Hickok, Pennsylvania's secretary of education, says he does not expect similar court or political challenges here.

But that does not mean the state's elite schools are sitting on their hands. "We're on the alert," Penn's Stetson says. "At any time there could be questions raised about our policies, and we think we have a strong case to present."

Copyright © 1999 by The Philadelphia Inquirer