{"id":2733,"date":"2016-04-11T09:30:43","date_gmt":"2016-04-11T14:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/?p=2733"},"modified":"2016-04-05T10:54:16","modified_gmt":"2016-04-05T15:54:16","slug":"university-diversity-raceblind-admissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/ssn\/2016\/04\/11\/university-diversity-raceblind-admissions\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Universities Maintain Diversity without Directly Considering Race in Admissions?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"torbakhopper,<\/a>
torbakhopper, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Fisher v. University of Texas<\/em>, clarified when and how it is legally permissible for U.S. colleges and universities to use an applicant\u2019s race or ethnicity for admissions decisions. According to the Court, an institution may only use race as an admissions criterion \u2013 engage in what has been called \u201caffirmative action\u201d for admissions \u2013 when \u201cno workable race-neutral alternatives\u201d would yield the same benefits of racial diversity. That is, affirmative action is only permissible when colleges and universities can prove that there are no other feasible methods for making admissions decisions that would achieve the same results.<\/p>\n

In 2015, the Supreme Court decided to rehear the Fisher <\/em>challenge. At the heart of the case now under consideration are the vaguely defined terms \u201cworkable\u201d and \u201crace-neutral.\u201d Despite a lot of ambiguity about what the Court thinks those terms entail, universities have been tasked with the challenge of establishing alternative admissions methods that are both race-neutral in the eyes of the courts and workable to ensure a racially diverse student body. Is that possible? I conclude that currently fashionable alternatives to affirmative action \u2013 such as the use of non-racial characteristics of applicants as predictive proxies for race \u2013 have substantial limitations. Often, the alternatives are unworkable or raise important new legal or social concerns.<\/p>\n

A Close Look at an Alternative<\/h3>\n

<\/div>One frequently proposed alternative to affirmative action is to predict a student\u2019s minority status using other known characteristics. I call this method \u201cproxy-based affirmative action.\u201d To date, there has been insufficient empirical evidence about the capacity of such a system to achieve levels of diversity similar to those achieved by traditional affirmative action approaches that take applicants\u2019 race explicitly into consideration. To learn more about the workability of the proxy-based approach, I did simulation models of admissions decisions at the University of Texas, using data of all kind on applicants to the university.Often, the currently fashionable alternatives to affirmative action are unworkable or raise important new legal or social concerns.<\/span><\/p>\n

My models looked at what the admitted class looks like when traditional affirmative action criteria are used in admissions, versus what it looks like if indirect proxy measures of student characteristics are used instead of race itself. I address such questions as:<\/p>\n