States without affirmative action offer lessons for Minnesota's campus diversity efforts

Minnesota's college admissions officers, anticipating the U.S. Supreme Court ruling curtailing their ability to consider race, spent recent months quietly studying how their colleagues in other states had fared when faced with similar restrictions.

The lesson they learned: Their jobs are about to get tougher.

"I'll say it's regrettable that we are taking this step backward and being denied one of the ways we try to create diverse campuses," Carleton College President Alison Byerly said.

The ruling came at a time when Minnesota colleges are trying to recruit from a pool of students that is both shrinking and becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. By 2036, about 40% of Minnesota public high school graduates will be people of color, according to projections by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, a nonprofit that works with colleges and universities.

Universities in states that had already banned affirmative action — such as California and Michigan — saw dramatic drops in the number of students of color and have struggled to recover.

"There isn't a good panacea, there isn't a good workaround," said Evan Caminker, a law professor and former dean of the University of Michigan's law school who has worked on affirmative action cases in the state.

Lessons from other states

Californians voted in 1996 to ban race-conscious admissions, and Michigan voters prohibited affirmative action a decade later in 2006. After the bans took effect, minority student enrollment immediately declined, particularly at more selective schools.

Enrollments at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley, immediately fell 40% among Black and Hispanic students, said Zachary Bleemer, an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University who studies affirmative action and university application processes. There was also a drop in minority students who submitted college applications.

Less-selective schools didn't see as dramatic of a drop, and some saw an increase in enrollment from students of color because fewer of those students were admitted into top-tier schools, Bleemer added.

But the drop in access to top schools has dampened wages and job opportunities for Black and Hispanic residents in California over the last two decades. "Some young, wealthy Black and Hispanic professionals just disappeared because they lost this access," he said.

UCLA tried using a holistic application review process that put more weight on socioeconomic status, while targeting recruitment of students in low-income or underrepresented neighborhoods. The University of California system also guaranteed admission to in-state students who graduate in the top 9% of their high school class, if campuses have capacity.

"It does increase Black and Hispanic enrollment, and it targets a really interesting group of students who are low testing and high GPA," Bleemer said. "They do well in their community and these are students who do really well in college."

After the affirmative action prohibition went into effect, the University of Michigan saw a "marked and sustained" drop in enrollment among the most-underrepresented groups, according to a brief the school submitted to the Supreme Court last summer.

Over the last 15 years, Michigan moved to a holistic application process and spent hundreds of millions of dollars to boost recruitment efforts and offer financial aid for socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

A statement from the University of Michigan said the "enrollment of students from historically underrepresented communities has recovered modestly from the decade of decline" — but notes that the recovery has been uneven. The percentage of Hispanic students enrolling has increased, but the percentage of Black and Native American students has decreased.

There's no proxy that is as efficient as taking race directly into account, said Caminker, the law professor. Emphasizing any one variable in the application process can crowd others out, he said. The automatic admission policy for a top percentage of high school students considers only GPA.

"Now you're admitting students based entirely on GPA, not on test scores, extracurricular activities, not on what teachers say about a student," he said. "For any reasonable alternative, you'll find they have pros and cons."

Application changes ahead?

Admissions officers at Minnesota schools that considered race as one of many factors in their decisions caution it will take time to understand the full implications of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

In the 6-3 decision, the justices determined the admissions practices used at Harvard and the University of North Carolina "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points."

They didn't specify how universities could address those problems but left open the possibility schools could consider an applicant's race if it ties into another characteristic or quality.

"A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student's courage and determination," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. "Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student's unique ability to contribute to the university."

Some Minnesota colleges are thinking about tweaking the prompts for the essays or short-answer questions on their applications. Suzanne Rivera, president of Macalester College, noted shortly after the ruling that they're thinking about "how to ask the right questions" to elicit the best answers from students without running afoul of the law.

Byerly of Carleton College suspects some schools will boost efforts to retain students of color after they've enrolled.

"If we are going to have a harder time bringing in students of color, it may be doubly important to ensure strong support and retention of those students," she said.

Others expect a renewed push to reduce disparities in K-12 education. University of Michigan leaders noted in a statement after the ruling that "achieving a more diverse student body in an unequal K-12 education system" requires sustained efforts.

Other challenges to admissions processes are already underway. Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based nonprofit, filed a federal complaint challenging Harvard's practice of giving additional weight to applicants related to donors or alumni, arguing the practice disproportionately benefits white people.

Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the lawsuits that resulted in the recent Supreme Court decision, said in remarks last week that they "remain vigilant and intend to initiate litigation should universities defiantly flout this clear ruling."

Staff writer Mara Klecker contributed to this report.