[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 31 (Wednesday, February 26, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2829-S2832]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
RACE-SENSITIVE ADMISSIONS: BACK TO BASICS
Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following
paper, ``Race-sensitive Admissions: Back to Basics,'' by William G.
Bowen, president emeritus of Princeton University, and Neil L.
Rudenstine, president emeritus of Harvard University, be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
The controversy (and confusion) surrounding the White
House's recent statements on the use of race in college and
university admissions indicate the need for careful
examination of the underlying issues. The Justice Department
has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to
declare two race-sensitive policies at the University of
Michigan unconstitutional; however, the brief does not rule
out ever taking
[[Page S2830]]
race into account, but argues that institutions should first
exhaust all ``race-neutral'' alternatives. Secretary of State
Colin Powell has publicly said that he supports not just
affirmative action, but also the Michigan policies. National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says she opposes the
specific methods used by Michigan, but recognizes the need to
take race into account in admissions.
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in a
case that will shape college admissions processes in the
coming decades, those of us who believe that such processes
should be permitted to include a nuanced consideration of
race must speak out clearly as well as forcefully. Too often,
we fear, the key issues have been oversimplified or
overlooked. Having been personally involved with this highly
contentious subject for more than 30 years, we would like to
try to frame the discussion by offering a set of nine
connected propositions about race and admissions that derive
from core human values and substantial empirical research.
1. The twin goals served by race-sensitive admissions
remain critically important.
The debate over race-sensitive admissions has relevance
only at public and private institutions of higher education
that have to choose among considerably more qualified
candidates than they can admit. Essentially all of these
``academically selective'' colleges and universities have
elected to take race into account in making admissions
decisions, a fact that, in itself, has considerable import.
Race-sensitive admissions programs are intended to serve two
important purposes:
To enrich the learning environment by giving all students
the opportunity to share perspective and exchange points of
view with classmates from varied backgrounds. The recognition
of the educational power of diversity led many colleges and
universities--well before the mid-1960s, when the term
affirmative action began to be used--to craft incoming
classes that included students representing a wide variety of
interests, talents, backgrounds, and perspectives. The Shape
of the River, written by William Bowen and Derek Bok,
provides abundant evidence that graduates of these
institutions value educational diversity and, in general, are
strong supporters of race-sensitive admissions. Survey
responses from more than 90,000 alumni of selective colleges
and universities show that nearly 80 percent of those who
enrolled in 1976 and 1989 felt that their alma mater placed
the right amount of emphasis--or not enough--on diversity in
the admissions process. That same survey also found that
there is much more interaction across racial lines than many
people suppose. In the 1989 entering cohort, 56 percent of
white matriculants and 88 percent of black matriculants
indicated that they ``knew well'' two or more classmates of
the other race.
To serve the needs of the professions, of business, of
government, and of society more generally by educating large
numbers of well-prepared minority students who can assume
positions of leadership--thereby reducing somewhat the
continuing disparity in access to power and responsibility
that is related to race in America. Since colonial days,
colleges and universities have accepted an obligation to
educate individuals who will play leadership roles in
society. Today, that requires taking account of the clearly
articulated needs of business and the professions for a
healthier mix of well-educated leaders and practitioners from
varied racial and ethnic backgrounds. Professional groups
like the America Bar Association and the American Medical
Association, and businesses like General Motors, Microsoft,
and American Airlines (among many others), have explicitly
endorsed affirmative-action policies in higher education.
Leading law firms, hospitals, and businesses depend heavily
on their ability to recruit broadly trained individuals from
many racial backgrounds who are able to perform at the
highest level in settings that are themselves increasingly
diverse. A prohibition on the consideration of race in
admissions would drastically reduce minority participation in
the most selective professional programs. Does it make any
sense to resegregate, de facto, many of the country's most
respected professional schools and to slow the progress that
has been made in achieving diversity within the professions?
We don't think so.
2. Private colleges and universities are as likely as their
public counterparts to be affected by the outcome of this
debate.
The fact that litigation over affirmative action has, thus
far, centered on public universities should not lead that
private institutions will be unaffected. The 1996 federal-
court ruling in Hopwood v. Texas, banning race-sensitive
admission policies in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, has
been understood to cover Rice University as well as public
universities such as the University of Texas. Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 subjects all institutions that
receive federal funds to any court determinations as to
what constitutes ``discrimination.'' Because many private
colleges and universities have invested substantial
resources in creating diverse entering classes, they might
well be more dramatically affected by any limitation on
their freedom to consider race than would most public
institutions. That is especially true because they are, in
general, smaller and more selective in admissions than
their public counterparts.
It matters that minority applicants have access to the most
selective programs, at both undergraduate and graduate
levels, in both private and public institutions. The argument
that they will surely be able to ``get in somewhere'' rings
hollow to many people. As one black woman quoted in The Shape
of the River observed wryly to a white parent: ``Are you
telling me that all those white folks fighting so hard to get
their kids into Duke and Stanford are just ignorant? Or are
we supposed to believe that attending a top-ranked school is
important for their children but not for mine?'' That
interchange was not just about perceptions. Various studies
show that the short-term and long-term gains associated with
attending the most selective institutions are, if anything,
greater for minority students than for white students, and
that academic and other resources are concentrated
increasingly in the top-tier colleges and universities.
3. Race-sensitive admissions policies involve much
``picking and choosing'' among individual applicants; they
need not be mechanical, are not quota systems, and involve
making bets about likely student contributions to campus life
and, subsequently, to the larger society.
Contrary to what some people believe, admissions decisions
at academically selective public and private colleges and
universities are much more than a ``numbers game.'' They
involve considerations that extend far beyond test scores and
GPAs. Analysis of new data from leading private research
universities for the undergraduate class entering in 1999
(reported in the forthcoming Reclaiming the Game, by William
G. Bowen and Sarah A. Levin) indicates that a very
considerable number of high-scoring minority students were
turned down. For instance, among male minority applicants
with combined SAT scores in the 1200-1299 range (which put
them well within the top 10 percent of minority test-takers
and the top 20 percent of all test-takers, regardless of
race), the odds of admission were about 35 percent: that is,
roughly two out of three of these minority applicants were
denied admission. At the very top of the SAT distribution (in
the 1400-plus range), nearly two out of five were not
admitted. Public universities are larger and somewhat less
selective, but they also turn down very high-scoring minority
candidates. At two public universities for which detailed
data are available, one out of four minority candidates in
the 1200 to 1399 SAT range was rejected.
In short, admissions officers at both private and public
universities have been doing exactly what Justice Powell, in
the landmark 1978 decision, Regents of the University of
California v. Bakke, said that they should be allowed to do:
pursuing ``race-sensitive'' admission policies that entail
considering race among other factors. They have been weighing
considerations that are both objective (advanced-placement
courses taken in high school, for example) and subjective
(indications of drive, intellectual curiosity, leadership
ability, and so on). And they have been selecting very well.
According to all the available evidence, minority students
admitted to academically selective colleges and universities
as long ago as the mid-1970s have been shown to be successful
in completing rigorous graduate programs, doing well in the
marketplace, and, most notably, contributing in the civic
arena out of all proportion to their numbers.
Minority candidates are, of course, by no means the only
group of applicants to receive special consideration.
Colleges and universities have long paid special attention to
children of alumni, to ``development cases,'' to applicants
who come from poor families or who have otherwise overcome
special obstacles, to applicants who will add to the
geographic (including international) diversity of the student
body, to students with special talents in fields such as
music, and, especially in recent years, to athletes. Some
readers may be surprised to learn from Reclaiming the Game
that recruited athletes at many selective colleges are far
more advantaged in the admission process (that is, are much
more likely to be admitted at a given SAT level) than are
minority candidates.
A related topic deserves some emphasis, and that is the
issue of ``quotas.'' There is not space here to discuss the
subject in detail, but one point is important to clarify. The
fact that the percentage of minority students in many
colleges and universities does not fluctuate substantially
from year to year is in no sense prima facie evidence that
quotas are being used. Anyone familiar with admissions
processes--and with their basic statistics--knows that
percentages for virtually all subgroups of any reasonable
size are remarkably consistent from year to year. That is
because the size of the college-going population does not
change significantly on an annual basis, nor do the numbers
and quality of secondary schools from which institutions draw
applications, nor does the number of qualified candidates.
All of these numbers are very stable, and it is therefore not
at all surprising that incoming college classes should change
very little in their composition from year to year. (For
example, we suspect that the fraction of an entering class
wearing eyeglasses is remarkable consistent from year to
year, but that would hardly persuade us that an eyeglass
quota is being imposed.)
4. Selectivity and ``merit'' involve predictions about on-
campus learning environments and future contributions to
society.
One of the most common misconceptions is that candidates
who have scored above some level or earned a certain grade-
point average ``deserve'' a place in an academically
selective institution. That ``entitlement'' notion
[[Page S2831]]
is squarely at odds with the fundamental principle that, in
choosing among a large number of well-qualified applicants,
all of whom are over a high threshold, colleges and
universities are making bets on the future, not giving
rewards for prior accomplishments. Institutions are meant to
take well-considered risks. That can involve turning down
candidate ``A'' (who is entirely admissible but does not
stand out in any particular way) in favor of candidate ``B''
(who is expected to contribute more to the educational milieu
of the institution and appears to have better long-term
prospects of making a major contribution to society). All
applicants, of course, deserve to be evaluated fairly, which
means treating them the same way as other similarly situated
candidates; but, in the words of Lee Bollinger, president of
Columbia University and former president of the University of
Michigan, ``there is no right to be admitted to a university
without regard to how the overall makeup of the student body
will affect the educational process or without regard to the
needs of the society . . . ``Merit'' is not a simple concept.
It has certainly never meant admitting all the valedictorians
who apply, or choosing students strictly on the basis of test
scores and GPAs.
An elaborate admissions process, which focuses on the
particular characteristics of individuals within many
subgroups--and on those of the entire pool of applicants--is
designed to craft a class that will, in its diversity, be a
potent source of educational vitality. Colleges use a variety
of procedures to take account of race, and it is essential
that differences of opinion concerning the wisdom (or even
the legality) of any single approach not lead to an outcome
that precludes other approaches.
5. Paying special attention to any group in making
admissions decisions entails costs; but the costs of race-
sensitive admissions have been modest and well-justified by
the benefits.
The ``opportunity cost'' of admitting any particular
student is that another applicant will not be chosen. But
such choices are rarely ``head-to-head'' decisions. For
example, there is no reason to believe--as reverse-
discrimination lawsuits generally assume--that if a
particular minority student had not been accepted, his or her
place would have been given to a complainant with comparable
or better test scores or grades. The choice might, instead,
have been an even higher-scoring minority student who had not
been admitted, a student from a foreign country, or a lower-
scoring white student from one of several subgroups that are
given extra consideration in the admissions process. Making
hard choices on the margin is never easy and always--
fortunately--involves human judgments made by experienced
admissions officers. It is, in any case, wrong to assume that
race-sensitive admissions policies have significantly reduced
the changes of well-qualified white students to gain
admission to the most selective colleges. Findings reported
in The Shape of the River, based on data for a subset of
selective colleges and universities, demonstrate that
elimination of race-sensitive policies would have increased
the admission rate for white students by less than two
percentage points: from roughly 25 percent of 26.5 percent.
It should be emphasized that taking race into account in
making admissions decisions does not appear to have two kinds
of costs often mentioned by critics of these policies.
First, there is no systemic evidence that race-sensitive
admissions policies tend to ``harm the beneficiaries'' by
putting them in settings in which they are overmatched
intellectually or ``stigmatized'' to the point that they
would have been better off attending a less selective
institution. On the contrary, extensive analysis of data
reported in The Shape of the River shows that minority
students at selective schools have, overall, performed well.
The more selective the school that they attended, the more
likely they were to graduate and earn advanced degrees, the
happier they were with their college experience, and the more
successful they were in later life.
Second, the available evidence disposes of the argument
that the substitution of ``race-sensitive'' for ``race-
neutral'' admissions policies has led to admission of many
minority students who are not well-suited to take advantage
of the educational opportunities they are being offered.
Examination of the later accomplishments of those students
who would have been ``retrospectively rejected'' under race-
neutral policies shows that they did just as well as a
hypothetical reference group that might have been admitted if
GPAs and test scores had been the primary criteria (which is,
itself, a questionable assumption). There are no significant
differences in graduation rates, advanced-degree attainment,
earnings, civic contributions, or satisfactions with college.
In short, the abandonment of race-sensitive admissions would
not have removed from campuses a marginal group of mediocre
students. Rather, it would have deprived campuses of much of
their diversity and diminished the capacity of the
academically selective institutions to benefit larger numbers
of talented minority students.
6. Progress has been made in narrowing test-score gaps
between minority students and other students, but gaps
remain.
A frequently asked question is: Are we getting anywhere?
Data on average test scores in Reclaiming the Game are
encouraging. At a group of liberal-arts colleges and
universities examined in 1976 and 1995, average combined SAT
test scores for minority students rose roughly 130 points at
the liberal-arts colleges and roughly 150 points at the
research universities. Test scores for other students rose,
too, but by much smaller amounts (roughly 30 points at the
liberal-arts colleges and roughly 70 points at the research
universities). Test-score gaps narrowed over this period, and
the average rank-in-class of minority students on college
graduation improved even more than one would have predicted
on the basis of test scores alone. As anyone who has studied
campus life can attest, there are also many impressionistic
signs of progress. Minority students are more involved in a
wide range of activities, and increasing numbers of children
of minority students of an earlier day are now reaching the
age where they are beginning to enroll as ``second
generation'' college students. Graduates are also
increasingly making their presence known in the professions
and business world.
Still, test-score gaps remain (of roughly 100 to 140 points
in the private colleges and universities for which we have
data), and so there is still more progress to be made. That
is hardly surprising, given the deep-seated nature of the
factors that impede academic opportunity and achievement
among minority groups--including the fact that a very large
proportion of such students continue to attend primary and
secondary schools that are underfinanced, insufficiently
challenging, and often segregated. It would be naive to
expect that a problem as long in the making as the racial
divide in educational preparation could be eradicated in a
generation or two.
7. There are alternative ways of pursuing diversity, but
all substitutes for race-sensitive admissions have serious
limitations.
Many of us have a strong appetite for apparently painless
alternatives, and it is natural to look for ways to achieve
``diversity'' without directly confronting the emotion-laden
issue of race. Several alternatives to race-sensitive
admissions have been suggested. For example, colleges and
universities have been urged to:
Focus on the economically disadvantaged. The argument is
that, since racial minorities are especially likely to be
poor, racial diversity could be promoted in this way (an
approach sometimes referred to as ``class-based affirmative
action''). The results, however, would not be what some
people might expect. Several studies have shown that there
are simply very few minority candidates for admission to
academically selective institutions who are both poor and
academically qualified.
Adopt a ``percentage plan'' whereby all high-school
students in a state who graduate in the top X percent of
their classes are automatically guaranteed a place in one of
the state's universities. In states like Texas, where the
secondary-school system is highly segregated, that approach
can yield a significant number of minority admissions at the
undergraduate level (although the actual effects, even at the
undergraduate level, have been shown by the social scientists
Marta Tienda and John F. Kain to be more limited than many
have suggested). Moreover, the process is highly mechanical.
Students in the top X percent are not simply awarded
``points,'' as the undergraduate program at the University of
Michigan does. Rather, they are given automatic admission
without any prior scrutiny, and without any consideration of
the fact that some high schools are much stronger
academically than others.
Even if one considered the top-X-percent plan to be viable
at state institutions, it could not work at all at private
institutions, which admit from national and international
pools of applicants and are so selective that they must turn
down the vast majority who apply--including very large
numbers of students who graduate at or near the top of their
secondary-school classes. Private institutions could not
conceivably adopt a policy that would automatically give
admission to students in the top X percent of their class at
the hundreds and hundreds of schools--worldwide--from which
they attract applicants.
The top-X-percent plan is also entirely ineffective at the
professional and graduate-school level, because (like
selective undergraduate colleges) these schools have national
and international applicant pools, with no conceivable
``reference group'' of colleges to which they could possibly
give such an admission guarantee. Even if there were a set of
undergraduate colleges whose top graduates would be
guaranteed admission to certain professional schools, the
result would not represent any marked degree of racial
diversity. For example, if the top 10 percent of students in
the academically selective colleges and universities studied
in Reclaiming the Game were offered admission to a
professional school (an unrealistically high percentage given
the intensely competitive nature of the admission process),
only 3 percent of the students included in that group would
be underrepresented minorities--and, of course, only some
modest fraction of those students would be interested even in
applying to such programs. If we are examining a top-5-
percent plan, the minority component of the pool would be
about one-half of 1 percent. Without some explicit
consideration of race, professional schools that ordinarily
admit a significant number of their students from selective
colleges would simply not be able to enroll a diverse student
body.
Other troubling questions include: Do we really want to
endorse an admissions approach that depends on de facto
segregation
[[Page S2832]]
at the secondary-school level? Do we want to impose an
arbitrary and mechanical admissions standard--based on fixed
rank-in-class--on a process that should involve careful
consideration of all of an applicant's qualifications as well
as thoughtful attention to the overall characteristics of the
applicant pool?
Place heavy weight on ``geographic distribution'' and so-
called ``experiential'' factors, such as a student's ability
to overcome obstacles and handicaps of various kinds, or the
experience of living in a home where a language other than
English is spoken. The argument here is that, if special
attention were given to these and analogous criteria, then a
sizable pool of qualified minority students would
automatically be created.
But, as we have mentioned, colleges have been using
precisely such criteria for many decades, and they have
discovered--not surprisingly--that there are large numbers of
very competitive ``majority'' candidates in all of the
suggested categories. For example, if a student's home
language is Russian, Polish, Arabic, Korean, or Hebrew, will
that be weighted by a college as strongly as Spanish? If not,
then the institutions will clearly be giving conscious
preference to a group of underrepresented minority students--
Hispanic students--in a deliberate way that explicitly takes
ethnicity (or, in other cases, race) into account.
Similar issues arise with respect to other experiential
categories, as well as geographic distribution. There is no
need to speculate about (or experiment with) such approaches,
because colleges have already had nearly a half century of
experience applying them, and there is ample evidence that
the hoped-for results, in terms of minority representation,
are not what many people now suggest or claim. Moreover,
insofar as such categories were to become surreptitious
gateways for minority students, they would soon run the risk
of breeding cynicism, and almost certainly inviting legal
challenges.
All of the indirect approaches just described pose serious
problems. Nor can they be accurately described as ``race-
neutral.'' They have all been proposed with the clear goal
(whether practicable or not) of producing an appreciable
representation of minority students in higher education. In
some cases, they involve the conscious use of a kind of
social engineering decried by critics of race-sensitive
admissions.
Surely the best way to achieve racial diversity is to
acknowledge candidly that minority status is one among many
factors that can be considered in an admissions process
designed to judge individuals on a case-by-case basis. We can
see no reason why a college or university should be compelled
to experiment with--and ``exhaust''--all suggested
alternative approaches before it can turn to a carefully
tailored race-sensitive policy that focuses on individual
cases. The alternative approaches are susceptible to
systematic analysis, based on experience and empirical
investigation. A preponderance of them have been tested for
decades. All can be shown to be seriously deficient. Indeed,
if genuinely race-neutral (and educationally appropriate)
methods were available, colleges and universities would long
ago have gladly embraced them.
8. Reasonable degrees of institutional autonomy should be
permitted--accompanied by a clear expectation of
accountability.
As the courts have recognized in other contexts (for
example, in giving reasonable deference to administrative
agencies), a balance has to be struck between judicial
protection of rights guaranteed to all of us by the
Constitution and the desirability of giving a presumption of
validity to the judgments of those with special knowledge,
experience, and closeness to the actual decisions being made.
The widely acclaimed heterogeneity of the American system of
higher education has permitted much experimentation in
admissions, as in other areas, and has discouraged the kinds
of government-mandated uniformity that we find in many other
parts of the world. Serious consideration should be given to
the disadvantages of imposing too many ``do's'' and
``don'ts'' on admissions policies.
The case for allowing a considerable degree of
institutional autonomy in such sensitive and complex
territory is inextricably tied, in our view, to a clear
acceptance by colleges and universities of accountability for
the policies they elect and the ways such policies are given
effect. There is, to be sure, much more accountability today
than many people outside the university world recognize.
Admissions practices are highly visible and are subject to
challenge by faculty members, trustees and regents, avid
investigative reporters, disappointed applicants, and the
public at large. Colleges and universities operate in more of
a ``fishbowl'' environment than the great majority of other
private and public entities. Nonetheless, we favor even
stronger commitments by colleges and universities to monitor
closely how specific admissions policies work out in
practice. Studies of outcomes should be a regular part of
college and university operations, and if it is found, for
example, that minority students (or other students) accepted
with certain test scores or other qualifications are
consistently doing poorly, then some change in policy--or
some change in the personnel responsible for administering
the stated policy--may well be in order.
That point was made with special force by a very
conservative friend of ours, Charles Exley, former chairman
and CEO of NCR Corporation and a onetime trustee of Wesleyan
University. In a pointed conversation that one of us (Bowen)
will long remember, Exley explained that he held essentially
the same view that we hold concerning who should select the
criteria and make admissions decisions. ``I would probably
not admit the same class that you would admit, even though
I don't know how different the classes would be,'' he
said. ``You will certainly make mistakes,'' he went on,
``but I would much rather live with your errors than with
those that will inevitably result from the imposition of
more outside constraints, including legislative and
judicial interventions.'' And then, with the nicest smile,
he concluded: ``And, if you make too many mistakes, the
trustees can always fire you!''
9. Race matters profoundly in America; it differs
fundamentally from other ``markers'' of diversity, and it has
to be understood on its own terms.
We believe that it is morally wrong and historically
indefensible to think of race as ``just another'' dimension
of diversity. It is a critically important dimension, but it
is also far more difficult than others to address. The
fundamental reason is that racial classifications were used
in this country for more than 300 years in the most odious
ways to deprive people of their basic rights. The fact that
overt discrimination has now been outlawed should not lead us
to believe that race no longer matters. As the legal scholar
Ronald Dworkin has put it, ``the worst of
the stereotypes, suspicions, fears, and
hatreds that still poison America are color-coded . . .''
The after effects of this long history continue to place
racial minorities (and especially African-Americans) in
situations in which embedded perceptions and stereotypes
limit opportunities and create divides that demean us all.
This social reality, described with searing precision by the
economist Glenn C. Loury in The Anatomy of Racial Inequality,
explains why persistence is required in efforts to overcome,
day by day, the vestiges of our country's ``unlovely racial
history.'' We believe that it would be perverse in the
extreme if, after many generations when race was used in the
service of blatant discrimination, colleges and universities
were now to be prevented from considering race at all, when,
at last, we are learning how to use nuanced forms of race-
sensitive admissions to improve education for everyone and to
diminish racial disparities.
The former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach draws a
sharp distinction between the use of race to exclude a group
of people from educational opportunity (``racial
discrimination'') and the use of race to enhance learning for
all students, thereby serving the mission of colleges and
universities chartered to serve the public good. No one
contends that white students are being excluded by any
college or university today simply because they are white.
William G. Bowen is president emeritus of Princeton
University and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
He is the co-author, with Derek Bok, of The Shape of the
River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College
and University Admissions (Princeton University Press, 1998)
and, with Sarah A. Levin, of Reclaiming the Game: College
Sports and Educational Values (Princeton University Press,
forthcoming in 2003). Neil L. Rudenstine is president
emeritus of Harvard University and chairman of the board of
ARTstor. His extended essay ``Diversity and Learning'' (The
President's Report: 1993-1995, Harvard University) focuses on
the value of diversity in higher education from the mid-19th
century to the present.
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