Eric Andalon and the Landscape of Affirmative Action in College Admissions
The Supreme Court's rulings on racial equality and equal opportunity have a significant impact on college admissions policies. Social science plays a crucial role where legal doctrine intersects with real-world consequences, particularly in cases like Fisher v. University of Texas. This article examines the complexities surrounding affirmative action, race-neutral alternatives, and socioeconomic factors in college admissions, drawing on various studies and legal precedents, with specific attention to the work of Eric Andalon.
The Fisher Cases and the Quest for Race-Neutral Alternatives
In Fisher v. University of Texas (Fisher I), the Supreme Court emphasized the need for lower courts to carefully examine whether workable race-neutral alternatives could achieve the educational benefits of diversity. The Court stated, "The reviewing court must ultimately be satisfied that no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity." While acknowledging that narrow tailoring "does not require exhaustion of every conceivable race-neutral alternative," the Court mandated a thorough and non-deferential review of a university's consideration of such alternatives.
On remand, in response to the directives from the Court in Fisher I, the Fifth Circuit panel concluded that UT Austin had implemented every race-neutral effort before adopting a race-conscious admissions program, including an automatic admissions plan admitting over 80% of the student body without considering race. The Fifth Circuit was not persuaded by Ms. Fisher's arguments.
The ruling in Fisher II was greatly anticipated. With Justice Scalia’s passing and Justice Kagan’s recusal, Justice Kennedy held the decisive swing vote in a 4-3 decision (or 3-1-3 decision akin to Justice Powell’s opinion in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke).
Socioeconomic and Percent Plan Simulations: A Nationwide Perspective
To understand the policy relevance of college admissions, it's important to look at social science studies that focus on socioeconomic or percent plan simulations on a nationwide level. These studies generally show that class-based approaches and percent plans are not workable race-neutral alternatives. Exceptions to this rule only occur under unrealistic modeling assumptions.
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Reardon et al. Study
One important study by Reardon et al. used agent-based modeling to analyze a nationally representative data set of 10,000 students graduating from high school and applying to colleges. This approach captures the dynamism of the application, admissions, and enrollment systems in the United States. It considers factors like how outcomes at some colleges impact outcomes at competing and less selective institutions, and the fact that more affluent students apply to and enroll at selective universities at higher rates than low-income students.
The key findings by Reardon et al. are summarized in Table 1, illustrating the composition of top colleges under various affirmative action scenarios. The analyses by Reardon et al. demonstrate that class-based programs are not an effective substitute for race-conscious affirmative action.
Carnevale, Rose, and Strohl Study
A study by Carnevale, Rose, and Strohl relies on a data set of high school seniors graduating to model 193 top colleges and universities. Their models include socioeconomic-based admissions in different combinations with other factors like performance in the top tenth of one’s high school. The richness of Carnevale, Rose and Strohl’s measures of socioeconomic disadvantage represents both a strength and a weakness.
However, there are several shortcomings in this study. First, Carnevale et al. rely upon the unrealistic assumption that all qualified disadvantaged students would apply to and choose to enroll at America’s top colleges. This assumption runs contrary to a large body of real world data and scholarship documenting that economically disadvantaged students, especially Latinos, exhibit far more bounded application and enrollment choice patterns, sometimes referred to as “under-matching”. This phenomena was observed in Texas after the Ten Percent Plan admissions guarantee. Carnevale et al.’s assumption likely results in an overstatement of differences between the status quo and their enrollment models. Second and relatedly, Carnevale et al.’s models, including their “pure merit” baseline, assume away the existence of athletic preferences, legacy preferences, etc., and therefore face the same feasibility problems as the less realistic set of Alon’s “reform” simulations described above. Third, Carnevale et al. hypothesize a version of a nationwide Ten Percent Plan, which would be impossible to operationalize. Finally and perhaps most importantly, Carnevale, Rose, and Strohl assume that colleges in tandem with the federal government will commit the financial resources necessary to allow for a radical increase in enrollment opportunities for low-income students at leading American colleges and universities. The takeaway, given these mutually-reinforcing limitations, is that the usefulness of the Carnevale et al. study is limited.
State-Level Experiments and the Impact of Affirmative Action Bans
In Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court noted that universities in California, Florida, and Washington State, where racial preferences in admissions are prohibited by state law, are experimenting with alternative approaches. Today, there is a large body of scholarship on the impact of affirmative action bans and related race-neutral efforts in higher education.
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Analyses of data over the last 12 years suggest two stories related to percent plans effectiveness, at least in Texas. First, the soaring numbers of the non-White population, particularly Latinos, among college-eligible students may be leading to inaccurate praise of not only the percent plan but other related state college enrollment policies as well. More accurate assessments of percent plan effectiveness that account for these demographic realities indicate that Latinos are less likely to go to college despite their heavily increasing share of the high school graduate population. The second story of the percent plan in Texas is where eligible students choose to go to college. As noted, the data suggest that underrepresented students who are percent-plan-eligible are more likely to enroll in a nonselective . . . The evidence presented in . . .
Regarding the University of Florida (UF), the authors acknowledge but do not fully appreciate the import of the fact that the Governor’s “One Florida” initiative prohibited affirmative action in admissions but did not restrict race-conscious financial aid and other recruitment. Marin and Lee, who studied in depth what happened in Florida, saw these factors as crucial at UF: “At UF, while they have lost race-conscious affirmative action in admissions, they heavily use race-targeted programs to address minority recruitment and practically ignore the Talented 20 Program . . .
In summary, recent empirical studies focusing on particular states and universities generally find that percentage plan and socioeconomic disadvantage are not workable substitutes for consideration of race in college admissions-including the studies of Texas by Harris and Tienda, Flores and Horn and Long, and studies of California by Kidder and Gándara and Kurlaender et al.
Financial Considerations for Class-Based Affirmative Action
In Fisher I, the Supreme Court declared that race cannot be considered when a “nonracial approach . . . While elite private universities have more per capita resources and endowments than leading public universities, the competitive institutional market dynamics that result in private college tuition-setting and financial aid equilibria would make it difficult to truly move the needle with large-scale class-based affirmative action programs for undergraduates. As the President of Vassar recently stated (rather bluntly) in response to a New York Times inquiry, “Talented, low-income kids are out there . . .
Chart 2 displays cost estimates if each of thirty-four private universities increased (or shifted) 12 percent of grant aid to support a modest class-based admissions plan in the manner described by Bowen et al. The price tag varies with the size of a school’s student body and existing gift aid commitments, so applying the 12 percent figure across-the-board will overshoot or undershoot the mark in specific cases compared to more nuanced estimates. For example, the University of Southern California (USC) already enrolls more low-income students (23 percent) than the other universities in this group, whereas Washington University in St. Louis enrolls the fewest low-income students (6 percent). For these and other reasons, the estimates in Chart 2 are only intended to provide an impressionistic sense of scale. It must be emphasized that these are likely lower-middle estimates compared to some of the more aggressive socioeconomic enrollment models discussed above (especially Carnevale et al.
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At the private institutions displayed in Chart 2, the average annual cost of adding 12 percent more gift aid to support class-based admissions would be about $16.5 million per university annually. At Harvard, a 12 percent increase in grant aid would cost $21 million, an amount equal to all of Harvard’s annual federally-funded research expenditures in the social sciences. At a smaller elite university like Tufts, the cost would be about $6.5 million, but viewed in the context of Tufts’s modest undergraduate population and tuition resource base of only 5000 students, this too would pose a considerable fiscal burden. Though not displayed in Chart 2, Bowen et al.
Turning to leading public universities, the prospect of paying for substantially enlarged financial aid for low-income students is even more daunting. In fact, Reardon et al. The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (UM) is a paradigmatic example of these budget-driven enrollment trends. UM operates under a state law affirmative action ban passed in 2006, and while it has employed numerous race-neutral alternatives in an effort to lessen the decline in racial diversity, the University of Michigan has not substantially boosted its enrollment of low-income undergraduates.
institutions in the Association of American Universities (AAU) there are six UC campuses (UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Santa Barbara). Ranking all 60 AAUs based on the proportion of undergraduates who are Pell Grant recipients in 2013 (i.e., low-income), the UC campuses rank 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 8th. Among the public universities in the AAU, only Arizona and Michigan have per capita institutional gift aid on par with UC campuses. Moreover, state gift aid is another important component, and students at the UC campuses in the AAU receive several times more per capita state gift aid as do the students at the other 28 public AAU universities . . .
