The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
In Wisconsin, race-conscious admissions are a tool to combat extreme educational disparities. Less than one in four Black and Hispanic high school graduates goes to college, compared to about half of Asian and white students.
In Milwaukee, just 14% of Black adults have college degrees.
Two of Wisconsin's most elite universities, UW-Madison and Marquette have released statements in reaction to the ruling.
Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin wrote that the school will need to modify some of its admissions practices. "At the same time, I want to reiterate that our commitment to the value of diversity within our community, including racial diversity, remains a bedrock value of the institution," Mnookin said.
Marquette President Michael Lovell wrote: "We must continue our work toward greater inclusivity and belonging in our campus community." Lovell said Marquette will review its policies and practices to comply with the ruling.
WUWM Education Reporter Emily Files spoke to UW-Madison constitutional law expert Howard Schweber about the ruling. Below is an excerpt of their conversation.
WUWM: What stood out from the ruling?
Schweber: The decision starts out with a strong blanket statement that in higher education, preferences based on race have no place.
But having made that strong statement, there's a giant exception — which is Chief Justice Roberts said no one should understand this opinion to mean that schools cannot look at a student's essay in which they describe how their personal experiences as a member of an underrepresented minority group have affected them, and take that into account.
So what this does effectively is move the burden away from the colleges and college admissions and onto the students and parents and college counselors to craft an essay that makes precisely the same point.
What you can no longer do is have a box-checking system that says, 'I'm a racial minority,' and have a college assign a weight to that in scoring an application.
What is so problematic about that is that the students who are most disadvantaged are minority students in poor schools. That is precisely the students who might need help the most, are the ones least likely to be able to get it.
Shifting the onus to the student makes it all-important to have college counselors who know how the system works, parents who know how to maneuver the system, access to tutors to help polish essays. And those are all things that within the community of minority applicants will benefit those who are better off, and by comparison, diminish the chances for those who are economically worse off.
WUWM: So would it be more accurate to say that this decision limits how universities can use race in their admissions process rather than prevents them from considering race in admissions?
Schweber: It doesn't really even do that. It doesn't really limit how universities can consider race, it limits the process.
I spoke with a high school principal this morning whose way of describing what's going on is "students are being required to perform their pain."
The process now has to come from the student, you know, the university cannot take account of the reality or the perceived reality of societal racism and make that part of their consideration, or make an assumption that racial diversity equals the kind of diversity that's educationally beneficial. But rather they have to find that in the essays produced by the students.
So it's really a shifting of what you might call the burden of proof or the burden of persuasion away from the institutions and on to the students.
WUWM: Even with race conscious admissions, the percent of Black students at places like UW-Madison and even UW-Milwaukee has barely budged over the last 20 years. So with this Supreme Court decision, what could happen to the rates of Black and Hispanic students at Wisconsin colleges?
Schweber: Well, it's actually terribly unclear. I mean, if those colleges, let us say, really wanted to increase minority representation, they could sponsor outreach programs that provided counseling to students in poor schools about how to write successful applications.
There are a couple of other questions that need to be asked here though. It's not at all clear what this decision means for diversity programs for students after they're admitted.
The decision is only about the moment of admission to college. But the logic of it would suggest that any kind of program that attempts to give a benefit to students based solely on their race is suspect.
And so various kinds of DEI programs are likely to be challenged. There will unquestionably be a flurry of lawsuits trying to work out the specific meaning of what is a very vague and very generally-written decision.
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