The Efficacy of Affirmative Action in 2023

With students strengthening their resumes and involving themselves in countless extra-curricular activities, the U.S. college admissions process has become increasingly competitive. This can be attributed to the constant increase in applicants with a decrease in acceptance rates. Reportedly between the years 2019 to 2022, the recorded application rate increased by 21.3%. While in the past ten years acceptance rates have fallen by approximately 16%. In an attempt to better this system, there have been policies enacted to uphold fairness and equity, one example being Affirmative Action. The original introduction of Affirmative Action into law was necessary, but in the modern college \admissions system considering race as a part of socioeconomic status is not the fairest way to distribute access.

Affirmative Action was enacted in 1961 by Kennedy when he established the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity for federal contractors. An additional executive order expanded upon the policy in 1965 under the Johnson administration, to promote equal employment opportunities within all employment. These policies were applied to higher education starting in the 1960s, to expand educational access to minorities. However, these new practices began to face opposition in 1978 with the Regents of the Univesity of California v. Bakke lawsuit that was brought to the Supreme Court. This case resulted in a ruling that the “use of racial "quotas" in its admissions process was unconstitutional, but a school's use of

"affirmative action" to accept more minority applicants was constitutional in some circumstances”. Some still view the action as “positive discrimination”, the act of preferential treatment of a group of people over another because of their race, which has created a divide in its support. More recently, The Supreme Court orally heard two cases that highlight the uses of race-based affirmative action, and whether or not these methods are a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. On October 30, 2022, both the Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina were introduced. Strategist Edward Blum, who is heading both cases, is asking that race no longer be considered in admissions.

Affirmative action in the past has been exposed for violating the Equal Protection Clause. One of the first cases in this was observed in Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244. In 2003, The University of Michigan’s admissions process was under scrutiny for its use of “predetermined point allocations,” which automatically added twenty points to a student's score based on their race. This score ultimately determined if they would be admitted to the university. The points were allocated if the student applying identified as Hispanic, African American, or Native American. Within the same point system, a perfect 1600 SAT score was awarded 12 points. This system was removed after the court ruled 6-3 that it was unconstitutional because it infringed on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The point system overlooked the assessment of an individual student’s application and instead judged applicants as a whole minority.

Affirmative action was created as a means of offering equity and equal opportunities for all individuals within the workforce. In 2023, it should be expected that the admission officers base their decisions on merit, and not focus on fulfilling what are now referred to as “targeted goals”. Due to the court's ruling that “racial quotas” were unconstitutional. Not only is it unfair to other minorities that don’t fall into the categories of Hispanic, African-American, or Native American, but affirmative action also brings into question the reason why universities believe these students are not able to score as highly. In the past, these disparities could be attributed to the lack of educational access, however, in 2023, this access to public education is no longer an issue. This does not mean however that the disparity in quality of public education can be ignored.

Additionally, affirmative action is solely based on race, not socioeconomic needs. Students of certain minorities are expected to perform worse on exams by the admission officers, so they receive Affirmative action to ensure they are still admitted. This policy causes students who lack the educational foundation to succeed in courses and questions minority students’ qualifications. According to the SCOTUS Opinion, Black students that perform better than 40% of the population have higher chances of acceptance than Asian students that perform better than 90% of the population.

Students put incredible amounts of effort into being admitted. Many individuals feel they deserve to know that their acceptance was due to their merit. Additionally, by overlooking scores and experience, unprepared students are more inclined to drop out of challenging courses or switch to less rigorous majors. So, instead of propelling students who receive affirmative action toward earning a degree, they are more likely to drop out of college. According to the Supreme Court Opinion decided last month, “Studies suggest that large racial preferences for black and Hispanic applicants have led to a disproportionately large share of those students receiving mediocre or poor grades once they arrive in competitive collegiate environments.”

There is a diverse pool of students that could benefit from this policy, however, affirmative action limits the students that are accepted. One of the more popular cases was the lawsuit against Harvard University for its alleged discrimination toward Asian applicants. In 2014, there was a lawsuit filed against Harvard for discriminating against Asian Americans in their application reviews. This caused several public demonstrations and marches in Boston in support of the lawsuit. Individuals were holding up signs that read “Discrimination in the name of diversity is wrong”, and “I am Asian American, I have a Dream Too”. The result of this lawsuit was in Harvard University’s favor because it was found that Harvard considered race in admissions within the Supreme Court’s criterion, but has since been updated. Nonetheless, Harvard’s use of affirmative action exposed a perspective from members within the Asian American minority against affirmative action.

At the time I started this piece, the recent SCOTUS decision for Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President And Fellows Of Harvard College had not occurred yet. The result decided on June 29, 2023 was that Havard’s admissions violates the Fourteenth Amendment. While the ruling of the court is an important end to race-conscious admission decisions, there are still major strides that can be accomplished to increase diversity in higher education. Instead of waiting until students are submitting college applications to offer equitable forms of resources, focusing on the quality of K-12 education in districts with lower socioeconomic status will narrow the disparities that affirmative action targets. If universities are going to offer resources like higher percentages of admission to students it should be based on socioeconomic opportunity, not race. To continue the pursuit of higher education for our youth, we should reevaluate policies to improve the college admissions process towards being more fair, so that we can ensure that our students of the future have the most equitable system that we can create.