With the Supreme Court scheduled to hear oral arguments on the University of Michigan's affirmative action admissions policies in April, the debate over such policies grows ever hotter. As this week's deadline for filing briefs approached, more than 300 organizations representing universities, corporations, labor unions, and the military announced that they would support the University's affirmative action policies.
Last month, the Bush administration gingerly threw its weight behind the anti-affirmative action crowd, filing a cautious amicus brief that opposed quotas. The administration has also pointed toward an alternative admissions method used in the President's home state of Texas as a possible substitute for affirmative action. Known as a "percent plan," it guarantees college admission to those who graduate near the top of their high school class. California and Florida also have percent plans, though these differ in many specifics (the percentage of the class guaranteed admission; whether the student earns admission simply to the state system or to the campus of his/her choice; and whether the plan applies to public high schools only or includes private schools). The common denominator, however, is that supporters believe such plans will generate diverse college populations without explicitly using race as a factor.
Two new reports by the Harvard Civil Rights Project question this assumption and in doing so shed light on the complexity of this issue. (See Percent Plans in College Admissions: A Comparative Analysis of Three States and Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State: The Talented 20 Program in Florida.) The reports are clear in their ideology - that affirmative action must be preserved-and slant their conclusions accordingly, but they also raise some important issues.
Researchers from the Civil Rights Project examined Texas, California, and Florida together (and provided a second report just on Florida) and concluded that percent plans have done little to foster diversity. Most students guaranteed college admission under the plans would have been admitted anyway, they say; hence percent plans are no substitute for old-fashioned affirmative action.
Close readers will notice, however, that the racial compositions of most of the schools examined by the Harvard crew changed little, if at all, after switching from affirmative action to percent plans. The authors choose to ignore this data, suggesting first that the appropriate goal should be to increase diversity, not hold it steady, and second, that any recent progress is due not to the percent plans, but to efforts by the schools to increase outreach, recruitment and financial aid aimed toward minorities. (They also fuss that these efforts are more expensive to implement than affirmative action.) In short, they argue that there is no proof that percent plans have worked - and of course there isn't, because the admissions plans were accompanied by other efforts to promote diversity and we only have a few years of data. Still, the data used in these studies could as easily lead one to contend that there's no proof that percent plans will impede diversity. In fact, the evidence suggests that it's been preserved.
Critics raise some valid questions: that these plans have been implemented differently everywhere; that elite Universities like Berkeley may not be able to make effective use of percent plans; that information about these plans has been inadequately distributed in poor areas; and that they would work differently - and maybe less well - at schools like Michigan with lots of out-of-state students untouched by the in-state percent plans.
It's certainly the case that, after eliminating conventional affirmative action, the schools that used percent plans also boosted their other efforts to attract minorities. The Harvard civil rights crusaders say this means we've simply shifted race-based practices from admissions decisions to recruiting and financial aid. But some of these other efforts - e.g., encouraging 8th graders to do well in high school in order to be eligible for a percent plan, or increasing college awareness among minorities - could have a bigger impact than affirmative action itself.
So beware of articles decrying the sins of percent plans, but also don't assume these plans are a cure-all. If one values diversity, one may need to accompany such plans with additional efforts. Percent plans also may contain other limits, such as Florida's guarantee of admission into the state university system but not necessarily to the higher-status campuses. Given the attention such plans have received in Washington and the continuous nature of affirmative action, however, we can expect this debate to continue for some time to come.
Percent Plans in College Admissions: A Comparative Analysis of Three States, by Catherine L. Horn and Stella M. Flores, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, February 2003
Appearance and Reality in the Sunshine State: The Talented 20 Program in Florida, by Patricia Marin and Edgar K. Lee, The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University, February 2003
"Groups Support University of Michigan Affirmative Action Case," by Diana Jean Schemo, The New York Times, February 18, 2003
