The future of affirmative action programs in higher education will be decided within the next year.
Recently, the Supreme Court announced that it will consider the legality of affirmative action programs that consider a college or university applicant’s race to encourage diversity.
The court will review the rulings in lower court lawsuits that determined that two schools – Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – were justified in using the systems in place in their admissions process to encourage a racially diverse student population. The court has upheld similar programs as recently as 2016. However, a conservative court could strike down laws that declared that race could be a consideration for evaluating student applicants.
If the future Supreme Court ruling overturns the 40-year law, the way higher education approaches the application process would be changed. College and universities would be restricted – or forbidden – to use a prospective student’s race as a consideration for acceptance to the institution. Such a ruling also would ultimately reduce the number of Black and Latino students accepted to competitive programs, increase the number of white and Asian American students and reduce diversity on higher education campuses.
Affirmative action programs have been around since 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that the prevailing “separate but equal” mandate is unconstitutional. In 1961, President Kennedy created the Council on Equal Opportunity via executive order, a move to ensure that contractors hire people regardless of race, creed, color or national origin. A more detailed timeline of key legislation can be found here.
The original Harvard lawsuit was brought in 2014 by Edward Blum and the organization he created, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which aimed to remove the consideration of race in higher education admissions. The lawsuit alleged that the university discriminates against Asian-Americans. In a statement responding to the Supreme Court decision to hear the case, Harvard this week vehemently defended its admissions policies saying, “Harvard does not discriminate against applications from any group in its admissions process. We will continue to vigorously defend the right of Harvard, and other colleges and universities, to seek the educational benefits that come from a class that is diverse on multiple dimensions, from its capacity for academic excellence to its ability to help create a campus community that gives each student the opportunity to learn from peers with a wide variety of academic interests, perspectives, and talents.”
College and universities are not alone in wanting to promote a diverse population. In the U.S., the general public also seems to welcome diversity. A 2019 Gallup poll that measured Americans’ attitudes about affirmative action programs found that 61 percent of respondents indicated that they favor affirmative action programs for minorities, up from 54 percent in 2016. What’s more, a majority of white survey respondents favored affirmative action for minorities for the first time, with 57 percent of white respondents indicated their support.
While the court has signaled its willingness to hear the case, any decision would not affect higher education admissions policies until at least the 2023-2024 academic year. The court is expected to will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October 2022, but it will likely not reach the final decision until summer next year.