Colleges Should Take 'Confirmative Action' in Admissions

  By LANI GUINIER

   "A liberal education," Lee C. Bollinger declares, "is largely
  about crossing sensibilities, about seeing the world through
  different eyes and realizing that your perceptions may not be
  accurate." Bollinger, the newly selected president of Columbia
  University, emphasizes that "people learn more and learn
  better in an environment where they are part of a mix of
  people where there are substantial differences, with people
  not like themselves." And he continues: "Understanding race in
  America is a powerful metaphor for crossing sensibilities of
  all kinds."

  Bollinger has become a national figure with his aggressive
  defense of diversity as crucial to the mission of higher
  education at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he
  has been president since 1997. But despite support from a
  large contingent of college and university presidents, the
  diversity defense, like affirmative action itself, is under
  sustained legal assault. The most recent attack came from the
  U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which ruled that
  the University of Georgia's decision to award applicants of
  color an extra half point in the admissions process was
  unconstitutional.

  Georgia officials chose not to seek review by the Supreme
  Court, contending that two lawsuits involving admissions
  decisions at the University of Michigan, due to be reviewed
  this month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit,
  would present a stronger defense of racial diversity. Georgia
  vowed instead to increase recruitment efforts to enlarge the
  pool of black applicants. That alone will not do much to
  overcome its own history; the university barred black students
  for the first 160 years of its existence, until it was forced
  to integrate in 1961. It now has a student body that is only
  5.7 percent black, in a state with a population that is more
  than 25 percent black.

  Beyond that, and more important, Georgia's response that its
  hands are now otherwise tied in its efforts to diversify sends
  the troubling message that courts of law alone will decide how
  we can function in a multiracial society. In fact, the legal
  fights over affirmative action have deflected public attention
  from Bollinger's astute juxtaposition of diversity and merit
  and distracted many colleges from a much needed exploration of
  what constitutes fairness for all people. What's more,
  prolonged court battles have obscured the role that diversity
  plays in helping institutions -- especially public
  universities -- fulfill their educational and democratic
  missions.

  Indeed, despite the appellate court's focus on Georgia's use
  of race to benefit students of color, considerations of racial
  diversity were relevant to the admission of only a tiny
  fraction of Georgia's applicants. In addition, it is hardly
  accurate to say that the institution's use of race as a "plus
  factor" for students of color gave a slight edge to nonwhite
  applicants. The vast majority of its successful applicants
  were white students who benefited from criteria, such as
  aptitude-test scores and legacy status, that correlate closely
  with race but weakly, if at all, with merit in terms of future
  educational and professional success. Those criteria
  overwhelmingly favor middle-class and upper-middle-class white
  students.

  Georgia's difficulty attracting black students -- a result of
  such pervasive yet almost invisible preferences -- illustrates
  an increasingly disturbing reality. The 11th circuit and many
  other courts have failed to understand what Bollinger so
  forcefully argues: Merit in a public institution of higher
  education cannot exist independent of considerations of
  diversity.

  What the appellate court, for example, failed to evaluate was
  the role that diversity should play as an integral part of
  Georgia's institutional mission governing the selection and
  education of all students. Diversity is a key element of
  Georgia's educational mission. According to its mission
  statement, the University of Georgia "endeavors to prepare the
  university community and the state for full participation in
  the global society of the 21st century. ... It seeks to foster
  the understanding of and respect for cultural differences
  necessary for an enlightened and educated citizenry."

  In a statement released last month, Georgia's president,
  Michael F. Adams, affirmed that mission. A "mix of students
  supports the energy and academic environment of a place
  charged with pushing back the boundaries of knowledge," he
  said, and helps create a place that "is a powerful force for
  economic development and discovery for the state."

  To produce the "enlightened" citizenry anticipated by its
  mission statement and the "powerful force" for development and
  discovery that a mix of students helps create, Georgia needs
  to move beyond the marginal use of affirmative action and make
  what I call "confirmative action" central to its entire
  admissions process. By framing diversity as simply about
  preferences for persons of color, the current controversy over
  affirmative action fails to examine how the conventional
  "merit-based" criteria that we assume to be fair
  systematically exclude poor and working-class people of every
  racial group, including whites. Such criteria also fail to
  predict the most important elements of merit in a multiracial
  democracy: who will contribute to the society as a whole after
  graduation.

  By contrast, the process of confirmative action ties diversity
  to the admissions criteria for all students, whatever their
  race, gender, or ethnic background -- including people of
  color, working-class whites, and even children of privilege.
  Linking diversity to merit, it confirms the public character
  and democratic missions of higher-education institutions.
  Diversity becomes relevant not only to the college's
  admissions process but also to its students' educational
  experiences and to what its graduates contribute as leaders in
  our democratic polity.

  Unlike the medieval institutions of Europe and the American
  colonies, which trained future clerics and oligarchs, most
  public colleges and universities in the United States were, in
  fact, established to develop leaders and active, critical
  citizens in a participatory democracy. And according to Mindy
  Kornhaber, an assistant professor of education at Pennsylvania
  State University at University Park, who has studied the
  mission statements of several public universities, the
  training of leaders remains pre-eminent today. It certainly
  has been key to serving the needs of the state of Georgia,
  President Adams explained last month. "I don't need to recount
  the number of current legislative, legal, business, industry,
  and civic leaders who have been educated here." The training
  of leaders for public service, Kornhaber concludes, may be the
  key contribution of American public higher education to all
  universities -- public and private, here and abroad.

  The current definition of merit, however, relies on uniform
  paper-and-pencil tests that cannot measure the capacity of
  students to solve complex problems or to lead others in
  resolving the complicated issues of our day. Rather, such
  tests measure a student's learned intelligence to make quick,
  strategic guesses with less than perfect information. Such
  learned intelligence is an inappropriate admissions criterion
  in part because it is often based on information or forms of
  analysis that students have not learned in school. As Richard
  C. Atkinson, president of the University of California,
  argues, sorting and ranking by aptitude-test scores, such as
  the SAT I, fail to assess what is in fact most important to
  colleges and universities. Instead, the practice sends "a
  confusing message to students, teachers, and schools" that
  "students will be tested on material that is unrelated to what
  they study in their classes. It says that the grades they
  achieve can be devalued by a test that is not part of their
  school curriculum."

  Research by Howard Gardner, a professor of cognition and
  education at Harvard University, shows that the ability to
  work collaboratively and to learn from diverse perspectives
  constitutes a kind of emotional intelligence that can also be
  learned and that is highly correlated with career advancement
  and leadership, but is not measured by numerical scores on
  aptitude tests. The current timed paper-and-pencil tests do
  not tell us how someone will function in situations where a
  range of intelligences -- including personality factors such
  as drive, motivation, creativity, and problem-solving skills
  -- are relevant.

  Indeed, research by Derek Bok and William G. Bowen in The
  Shape of the River (Princeton University Press, 1998), and a
  Harvard study of three classes of its own graduates over a
  30-year period, discovered just this point: High test scores
  that count so much in admissions decisions do not measure
  attributes of leadership. To the contrary, the Harvard study
  reported that low SAT scores and a blue-collar background were
  the two factors that correlated with financial and career
  satisfaction as well as community leadership.

  Timed, standardized aptitude tests also fail to predict
  academic competence. The SAT's are frequently hailed as the
  essence of objective merit, yet SAT's correlate less with
  college students' first-year grades than with either their
  parents' or their grandparents' socioeconomic status.
  Similarly, the LSAT nationwide, some say,  predicts the
  variance in first-year law-school grades only 9 percentage
  points better than what might be produced by a random
  assortment of scores and grades.

  Honing leadership skills and training future problem-solvers
  for active participation in a multiracial democracy mean that
  students must be encouraged to ask questions, to seek
  knowledge from those with whom they disagree, and to
  participate in open and honest debate. Sadly, standardized
  tests appear to have the opposite effect. SAT's and other
  standardized aptitude tests socialize students who do well to
  believe they "deserve" opportunities to succeed; the tests
  don't encourage a commitment among those students to give back
  in any way to the taxpayers who subsidize such opportunities.

  In fact, at Bollinger's University of Michigan Law School, a
  study found that high LSAT's actually correlate with career
  dissatisfaction, have no bearing on income as a lawyer, and
  don't necessarily lead to either community service or
  leadership. Students who scored the highest on the law
  school's admissions index, which combines undergraduate
  grade-point averages and LSAT scores, were less likely to be
  mentors for younger colleagues or serve on community boards
  once they became lawyers. Underscoring Bollinger's defense of
  diversity, it was disproportionately the black and Latino
  students who became leaders as lawyers.

  High-stakes testing may have begun as a noble effort to open
  up opportunity, but excessive dependence on aptitude tests has
  instead reproduced the very hierarchy that they were
  originally intended to topple. Reliance on test scores tends
  to favor the children of the rich over those of working-class
  families. At the University of California at Berkeley, for
  instance, nearly 42 percent of the white students entering in
  1997 came from families earning more than $100,000 a year.

  Similarly, at the University of Texas at Austin, when SAT
  scores were a dominant admissions criterion, 75 percent of the
  freshman slots were occupied by students from 10 percent of
  the state's high schools. Those feeder schools, which
  represented 150 of the 1,500 high schools in Texas, were the
  resource-rich suburban public and private institutions serving
  the upper-middle class of the state's white population. Some
  counties in rural West Texas, with large poor and
  working-class white populations, had not sent any graduates
  recently to the state's flagship public universities.

  To get back on track, we need to view "merit" as a functional
  rather than a generic concept, one that is intimately
  connected with each institution's specific mission and the
  democratic purposes of higher education. Reframing how we view
  merit, a key aspect of confirmative action, would indeed
  confirm the benefits of our democratic ideals -- but not
  simply to people of color. Merit would become a
  forward-looking function of what our democratic society needs
  and values rather than a fixed, quantifiable, and
  backward-looking entity that, like one's family tree or
  inherited assets, can be chronicled with proper instruments.
  Merit, in other words, would reflect the benefits to the
  institution's educational mission and learning environment of
  the diverse experiences of people from all backgrounds,
  especially those who are committed to contributing back to the
  larger society and to the taxpayers who subsidized their
  education in the first place.

  The challenge of embedding an institution's mission into
  admissions should also prompt us to re-emphasize issues of
  curriculum, learning theory, and ways to motivate all members
  of a diverse population to reach their full potential while
  making larger contributions to society. That means that
  institutions must become more accountable for nurturing
  diversity in the curriculum or in pedagogy, not just in
  admissions. If college presidents like Lee Bollinger and
  Michael Adams, as well as social scientists like Howard
  Gardner, are right that the ability to learn from and use
  diverse perspectives is instrumental in constructive
  problem-solving, then we need to move beyond the complacent
  "chalk and talk" format so ubiquitous on college campuses. We
  must reconsider the ways that teachers teach and students
  learn.

  The misleading suggestion that diversity is in tension with
  merit limits their dual potential to inform and inspire more
  group-based learning and collaborative teaching -- approaches
  that better prepare students for what they will do in both the
  workplace and the public sphere after they graduate. For
  example, Uri Treisman, a calculus professor at the University
  of Texas at Austin, developed group-based peer workshops when
  he was a professor at Berkeley that significantly improved the
  performance of his black students. After researchers
  discovered that the Chinese-American students who excelled in
  his first-year calculus classes were studying in groups,
  Treisman carefully observed their study habits. He realized
  that it was the process of intellectual engagement with peers
  that enabled the students to master the conceptual challenges
  of calculus, and that all his students would benefit if he
  altered how he taught calculus to include more group
  problem-solving.

  In the admissions process, a confirmative-action approach
  suggests, for example, that the University of Georgia could
  require all students, including those with high SAT scores, to
  explain why they should be admitted to a public university
  that values diversity and hopes to train its students to
  become leaders and critical thinkers. The 11th circuit wrote:
  "If the goal in creating a diverse student body is to develop
  a university community where students are exposed to persons
  of different cultures, outlooks, and experiences, a white
  applicant in some circumstances may make a greater
  contribution than a non-white applicant."

  Assuming that the court is correct that white applicants
  contribute to the university's diversity and that Georgia
  should therefore "assess each applicant as an individual
  rather than as a member of a particular racial group," then
  Georgia and other institutions should consider requiring every
  applicant to complete a diversity essay. That essay would
  describe how the applicant would contribute to the diversity
  of an intellectual community that is dedicated to preparing
  its graduates to function consistently with the institution's
  democratic mission. In that way, admissions decisions could be
  tied to evidence of a long-term commitment to public service,
  leadership, and group problem-solving skills -- especially
  those involved in overcoming obstacles or working with diverse
  communities -- and an ability to contribute to a successful
  multiracial educational experience for other students.

  The advantage of a confirmative-action approach is that all
  students would compete against one another based on their
  ability to contribute to the university and society rather
  than on largely arbitrary, biased factors like SAT scores and
  other proxies for privilege -- such as legacy status, which
  was also the basis of a preference in the Georgia admissions
  process. Admissions decisions would not be entrusted to those
  who design nationwide tests or those who inflexibly administer
  selection criteria determined by others.

  Instead, a structured decision-making process could draw from
  the wisdom and experience of relevant stakeholders --
  including members of local communities, current students,
  faculty members, administrators, and leaders from the world of
  business and the public sphere. Those individuals would be
  encouraged to collaborate to design admissions policies
  reflecting an institution's mission and consistent with
  changing local needs.

  Such a democratically inspired approach was used in Texas to
  eliminate the SAT as a requirement. In lieu of SAT scores, the
  University of Texas now automatically admits any applicant who
  graduated in the top 10 percent of a Texas high-school class.
  This is not the only way to gain admission, of course. But it
  has increased the number of Latino students and maintained the
  number of black students, compared with those admitted under
  affirmative action, and created a more economically diverse
  student body.

  Because the adverse impact of the SAT was most obvious in its
  effect on the admissions prospects of black and Latino
  citizens, those groups led the fight against the use of
  aptitude tests. They also discovered that class rank in high
  school more accurately predicted first-year college grades.
  Working-class and poor whites joined those efforts once they
  realized that the tests also had a less visible but equally
  significant class bias.

  The Texas Legislature adopted the plan with the support of
  several conservative white lawmakers. They realized that
  changes were necessary to give their own constituents access
  to a valuable public resource -- taxpayer-subsidized higher
  education. Gov. George W. Bush signed the plan, which has now
  been in effect for almost three years. The result? The
  grade-point average of freshman students admitted under the
  10-percent plan is higher, for every racial group, than it was
  when SAT scores dominated admissions criteria.

  By contrast, when Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida adopted his own
  version of the 10-percent plan, he failed to include the
  relevant stakeholders in the decision-making process. As a
  result, many black and Latino community leaders and
  legislators found fault with the One Florida plan, under which
  those graduating in the top 20 percent of the state's
  high-school classes gain admission to "a" public college but
  not necessarily to one of "the" flagship universities, as in
  Texas. Animus against the plan is credited with motivating the
  higher-than-usual black turnout in the 2000 election. Because
  Jeb Bush neglected black and Latino lawmakers, professors, and
  community advocates in developing the new admissions
  protocols, he was much less successful in fulfilling the
  state's higher-education mission of serving the diverse larger
  community.

  Joining functional merit with institutional missions would go
  beyond supporting affirmative action for its specific
  beneficiaries. It would decouple merit from testable mental
  aptitude for all students and free us to envision many more
  ways to select students and allocate scarce educational
  resources in a manner that better comports with democratic
  values. Institutions throughout the country could use a more
  structured and participatory decision-making process to
  experiment and learn from best practices.

  Some colleges might abandon the SAT requirement entirely, as
  Mount Holyoke, Bowdoin, and Bard Colleges already have done.
  Other institutions, such as large universities with tens of
  thousands of applications, might consider using the tests only
  as a floor -- accepting no students with scores below which no
  one previously succeeded in graduating. Above that floor,
  applicants could be chosen by several alternatives, including
  a lottery. Concerns about a lottery's insensitivity to an
  institution's particular needs or values could be dealt with
  by increasing the selection prospects of applicants with the
  skills, abilities, or backgrounds that are valued by the
  institution.

  For example, a weighted lottery could enhance the chances that
  certain students will be selected by putting their names in
  two or three times. Depending on the state's or locality's
  needs, the institution could weight the names of students who
  come from underrepresented communities or demographic groups,
  or students who make five-year public-service commitments to
  work in disadvantaged communities upon graduation.
  Particularly in the education arena, where opportunity lies at
  the core of institutions' missions, a lottery -- although
  arbitrary -- might allow random selection to serve important
  democratic goals.

  Other alternatives include reserving spaces in the sophomore
  or junior classes at flagship campuses for students who have
  maintained B averages at community colleges, where admission
  would be open to all. Or if, as some studies say, the SAT
  accurately predicts only 17 percent of first-year grades, and
  a college's mission emphasizes academic excellence among
  freshmen, that institution might consider limiting the use of
  the test scores to the admission of a comparable portion of
  its first-year class.

  California, often a bellwether, is considering two proposals
  that are consistent with the premise of confirmative action.
  First, Atkinson has argued that his university system, one of
  the largest in the country, should no longer require
  applicants to take the main SAT test. If Atkinson's proposal
  is adopted, the system would rely -- at least temporarily --
  on exams that are intended to measure student achievement in
  specific subjects, rather than general aptitude or reasoning
  in mathematics, vocabulary, reading, and other areas. Already,
  as a result of a second proposal, applicants will soon be
  rated in a dozen categories, including special talents,
  leadership skills, and accomplishments in the face of
  "personal challenges," such as economic hardship.

  Practicing confirmative action, each institution would, with
  its specific mission in mind, regularly review and seek
  feedback on its admissions program. And it would ask several
  important questions to guide such efforts:

  * Are admissions processes consistent with the institution's
  purposes? Do they award opportunity broadly? Do they admit
  people who demonstrate competence and potential under a range
  of relevant measures?

  * Are the relevant stakeholders involved in helping formulate,
  give feedback on, and carry out the criteria that are adopted?
  Do their decisions support the institution as a public place?

  * Are graduates contributing back to the institution and the
  society it serves?

  I am not advocating a specific magic-bullet replacement for
  admissions policies centered on aptitude tests. Nor do I
  endorse only one selection practice as the way to achieve
  coherence between what public universities do and what they
  say they want. Yet if we can move away from the contested
  terrain of affirmative action, on the margin of the admissions
  process, we can begin to rethink how colleges and universities
  admit and educate everyone.

  To do so, the democratic challenge of distributing educational
  opportunity must be returned to the relevant stakeholders
  rather than administered by a judiciary more concerned with
  the appearance of formal equality than the reality of
  functional merit. Although Georgia decided not to appeal the
  11th circuit's ruling to the Supreme Court -- a wise choice in
  the eyes of civil-rights practitioners -- the court's decision
  gives the university an unusual opportunity to refashion its
  admissions processes.

  It is not enough for Georgia to expand the pool of black
  applicants. Indeed, Georgia's President Adams is willing to
  contemplate future changes to the entire admissions process in
  order to distribute "an important public resource" more
  fairly, to meet the needs of the individual, the institution,
  and the state.

  That means the university must move beyond its current
  practices, which admit the vast majority of students based on
  test-centered criteria that benefit primarily white
  middle-class students, without obvious relation to the
  institutional mission. Most important, it should experiment
  with a range of admissions practices and then assess each
  practice in terms of its contribution to the mission of the
  institution -- and the role that the institution itself can
  play in helping create a genuine multiracial democracy.

  Lani Guinier is a professor of law at Harvard University. She
  is the author of Lift Every Voice (Simon and Schuster, 1998);
  the co-author, with Susan Sturm, of Who's Qualified? (Beacon
  Press, 2001); and the co-author, with Gerald Torres, of The
  Miner's Canary: Enlisting Race, Resisting Power, Transforming
  Democracy, to be published by Harvard University Press in
  February.