Beyond affirmative action, colleges need new diversity strategies

Following Monday’s oral arguments, the consensus is the U.S. Supreme Court is on the verge of overturning affirmative action in college admissions prompting fears among those who support the practice about what will happen to diversity on campus without it. All too few worry about what’s currently happening with it. 

While selective college leaders loudly proclaim their support for affirmative action, many of their institutions actually undermine diversity and socioeconomic mobility in ways that calcify, if not worsen, inequity. No matter how the court rules, that should stop. If the colleges won’t improve on their own, there are plenty of policy and political levers to push meaningful change.

Currently, top colleges widely use a series of practices that in effect constitute affirmative action for the rich. Consider the bump given to children of alumni, the so-called legacy preference, and that provided through the early decision admission process, which is available to those well enough off to commit to attending a college without ever seeing a financial aid package. 

The legacy preference is worth the equivalent of a 160 point boost on the SAT. It’s widely used at top schools. Notre Dame, for example, admits vastly more white students that have benefitted from a legacy preference than Black and Latino enrolled students, combined.  

Applying under early decision is worth an extra 100 SAT points. Early decision applicants are more than twice as likely to be white and upper-income as their regular decision peers. At Washington University-St Louis, there are more than three times as many early decision enrollees as Pell Grant students from families earning less than $60,000 a year. At the University of Pennsylvania, a quarter of legacies enroll via early decision. 

Together, legacy and early decision influence the admission of upwards of 50 percent of enrollees at selective colleges. At Iowa’s Grinnell, for example, they account for over 70 percent of students; at Maine’s Bates College, they’re over 80 percent.

For the few working-class students who get past a selective college’s admissions office, schools frequently and increasingly undercut them by handing so-called “merit aid” to their more affluent peers. According to its own data, in 2020 Michigan’s Olivet College provided a greater tuition discount to families making $75,000 to $110,000 a year than it provided in financial aid to students from families making less than $30,000.  

Finally and perhaps most disappointing at all too many colleges, those from disadvantaged backgrounds still face a less than welcoming culture on campus. Some 82 percent of white Michigan State students graduate within six years of initial enrollment, but only 63 percent of Black students do. 

Given that peer institutions like Rutgers, the University of Texas, and the University of Florida graduate Black students at a 20-25 percent greater clip, the degree completion gap at Michigan State should be unacceptable. But no one holds schools like Michigan State accountable for student results.

The fact is very few selective colleges focus their efforts on working-class and racial minority students in a manner that extends from recruitment and admissions to financial aid and student support on campus all the way through to degree attainment. Yet that type of effort is exactly what is needed to evidence a meaningful commitment to diversity.

With or without race-based affirmative action, we should support and push colleges to stop undermining diversity and hold them accountable for results. There are concrete ways to do so.

Every selective college on its own can end policies like legacy preference, early admission, and financial aid awarded without taking into consideration economic need. They can invest more in targeted student support services and faculty diversity efforts. 

Colleges can recruit and admit more working-class and middle-income students. They can institute class-based affirmative action policies as a supplement to race-conscious policies.

When colleges themselves won’t act, policymakers can and should. 

Colorado banned the legacy preference in public college admissions. More states should do the same. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) have proposed federal legislation to ban it and donor preferences. 

In New York, there’s legislation that would push colleges to end early decision or contribute to the state’s need-based financial aid program available to students at other schools. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) has proposed conceptually similar college accountability legislation at the federal level. 

The State of Michigan, to its credit, recently increased need-based financial aid, but it didn’t demand that colleges do the same with their own institutional financial aid. It should rejigger its state college aid formula to be based on an institution’s need and reward schools that distribute financial aid based on the same.

The really big stick is state and federal tax policy. Colleges, which receive over $150 billion a year in direct federal taxpayer support, need to do more than pay lip service to diversity and socioeconomic mobility. If they don’t, they should either be taxed more on endowment growth as per the GOP’s 2017 tax law or lose their charitable tax status. If they’re good actors, they can and should be taxed less.

But if colleges and policymakers won’t act, then it’s time for alumni and university corporate and philanthropic partners to start conditioning contributions by putting donations into “escrow accounts” that schools can only tap upon meeting measurable access and completion goals. 

Affirmative action may be a divisive issue but insisting that colleges make a meaningful commitment to diversity and socioeconomic mobility shouldn’t be. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.

Michael Dannenberg is the former senior education counsel to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and is currently a senior fellow with College Promise. His work is supported by the non-partisan Kresge Foundation based in Troy, Michigan.