Free Republic

The outcome of November's election will likely determine the role of racial preferences in the college admissions process. Voters have a clear choice. The Trump administration wants an applicant's grades and achievements to matter most. The Obama-Biden administration had urged colleges to tilt the scale in favor of minority applicants. Now Joe Biden is doubling down on that position by selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate. Harris has persistently advocated for giving Black and Latino college applicants favored treatment. In California, racial preferences literally will appear on the ballot in November. Voters will be asked whether or not they...

In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on affirmative action, a group representing black students has filed a new lawsuit targeting legacy admissions. According to the Associated Press:WASHINGTON (AP) — A civil rights group is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University, saying the practice discriminates against students of color by giving an unfair boost to the mostly white children of alumni.The practice of giving priority to the children of alumni has faced growing pushback in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court’s decision ending affirmative action in higher education. The NAACP added its weight behind the effort on...

Liberals can't handle the Asian factor in affirmative action By Mark Bauerlein Updated 1807 GMT (0207 HKT) August 3, 2017 The big surprise in the study was that Asians had to score significantly higher than whites, as well as blacks and Hispanics. Despite having a higher average SAT score, Asians have lower odds of admission than do "comparable whites." Take away those inequities and Asian enrollment would do what it did at Caltech in California, where racial preferences are outlawed. In 1992, Asian enrollment was 25%. In 2013, it was 43%. According to Students for Fair Admission, an anti-affirmative action...

One of the first polls on the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to forbid racial preference in college admissions is out, and unsurprisingly, to anyone who is not embalmed in Critical Race Theory, most approve.A majority of Americans approve of the Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, though the country is more divided on other high-profile rulings and increasingly viewing the court as driven more by politics than the law, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.On Thursday, the Supreme Court set new limits on affirmative action programs in...

More than two-thirds of Americans think the Supreme Court was right to hold Harvard's race-based admissions policy unlawful. But the minority who disagree have no doubt about their own moral authority, and there's every reason to believe that they intend to undo the Court's decision at the earliest opportunity. Which could be as soon as this year. In fact, undoing the Harvard admissions decision is the least of it. Republicans and Democrats in Congress have embraced a precooked "privacy" bill that will impose race/gender quotas not just on academic admissions but on practically every private and public decision that matters...

Trustees of California State University, the largest four-year university system in the nation, agreed Wednesday to permanently drop the SAT and ACT standardized tests in its admissions process, solidifying the state’s national role in eliminating the high-stakes exams because of equity concerns. The move comes after the University of California system led the way, making the bold decision in 2020 to drop the exams, triggering a national debate over whether the tests unfairly discriminate against disadvantaged students or provide a useful tool to evaluate college applicants. *** Trustee Yammilette Rodriguez said Tuesday that the decision is personally meaningful to her...

The University of California has slammed the door shut on using any standardized test for admissions decisions, announcing Thursday that faculty could find no alternative exam that would avoid the biased results that led leaders to scrap the SAT last year. UC Provost Michael Brown declared the end of testing for admissions decisions at a Board of Regents meeting, putting a conclusive end to more than three years of research and debate in the nation’s premier public university system on whether standardized testing does more harm than good when assessing applicants for admission. “UC will continue to practice test-free admissions...

Currently, nine states prohibit colleges and universities from practicing race-conscious admissions. That number may soon become ten if a new bill in the North Carolina legislature is successfully adopted. Public opinion polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose racial preferences in college admissions. Even in states dominated by the political left, citizens have made it clear that they prefer students be admitted into college based on merit, not based on the color of their skin. One person who can testify to this reality is Wenyuan Wu. Wu is executive director of Californians for Equal Rights, which is a...

The change is the result of a legal settlement (pdf) of a lawsuit brought by groups that claimed that the traditional SAT and ACT tests are racist.

The nine campuses of the University of California system will no longer consider standardized testing scores as part of the admission process beginning in the fall of 2021.The change is the result of a legal settlement (pdf) of a lawsuit brought by groups that claimed that the traditional SAT and ACT tests are racist.Under the settlement, the university, which enrolls some 225,000 undergraduate students, said it won’t consider SAT or ACT scores sent along with admissions applications until 2025. The university further stated that it had no current plan to consider the scores after 2025.The settlement specifies that the university...

TheHill.com Judge says University of California school system must stop using SAT, ACT scores in admissions BY JUSTIN WISE - 09/01/20 09:57 PM EDT Judge says University of California school system must stop using SAT, ACT scores in admissions The University of California school system must stop using SAT or ACT scores while making admissions and scholarships decisions, a judge ruled Tuesday. The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this year alleging the admittance of such scores during the coronavirus pandemic harmed disabled students who lacked the same test-taking opportunities as non-disabled individuals. Alameda Superior Court Judge...

In the struggle to achieve racial equality are two closely related controversies about “equal treatment” and “merit.” Does equal treatment mean treating individuals without regard to race, as critics of affirmative action assert, or with regard to race, as demanded by advocates of race-based diversity? And what is merit, and how should it be rewarded? Developments in California over the past several months brought both those issues boiling to the surface. On May 5, black and Hispanic Democratic legislators introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, the latest attempt to repeal Proposition 209, which added a provision to the state constitution prohibiting...

As states, businesses, universities, and other organizations in the U.S. and across the world announce measures to tackle racial inequality and discrimination following George Floyd’s death, the University of California has taken it a step further and voted to reinstate affirmative action in college admissions. The vote On Monday, the UC Board of Regents unanimously voted to propose rescinding the 1996 law known as Proposition 209, which outlawed “preferential treatment” for minority citizens applying to state colleges or government jobs.

The University of California is being sued for requiring incoming students to take the SAT and ACT. The lawsuit claims that the tests have a well-known "discriminatory effect" and "exacerbate the inequities" for underrepresented students. The lawsuit says the University of California (UC) is legally obligated to provide equal access to all students. The SAT and ACT, the lawsuit says, "reflect demographic and socioeconomic characteristics like family income, parental education and race" instead of measuring "academic ability or mastery of curriculum." The College Board, the organization behind the SAT, released a 2019 assessment of the SAT/PSAT in California that found...

Social-justice organizations last week threatened the University of California with a lawsuit unless it halts the use of standardized testing in admissions, claiming the tests discriminate against minorities. Who knows what success they may have before a sympathetic judge. But the issue may be settled sooner as the political mood in the UC moves against testing. This shift could have baleful nationwide consequences. Standardized tests have been a target of the left for decades, but in 2018 something changed. Dozens of colleges, most significantly the University of Chicago, have been dropping their standardized-test requirements. The number of students who take...

A law professor and an Asian-American politician are suing the University of California for data they believe would reveal that the state university system is illegally using race in its admissions process. The suit, filed Thursday in a California state court, asks for the socioeconomic and academic characteristics of applicants who enrolled in the nine undergraduate colleges that make up the University of California over the last 12 years. The petition follows a high-profile trial this fall over a federal lawsuit alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants. Richard Sander, an economist and law professor at UCLA who brought...

The “test optional” movement has won its most high-profile convert in the University of Chicago, which announced last month that applicants to the school would no longer need to submit ACT or SAT scores. The University of Chicago has become known in recent years for its commitment to academic rigor and resistance to coddling and group think. But in this decision it has increased the momentum of a fashionable but damaging ideology overtaking elite education: That standardized metrics of any kind are discriminatory and elitist, and that each student is so special that he or she can only be evaluated...

A growing number of colleges have made the SAT or ACT optional. And late last year, more than 80 colleges, including all eight in the Ivy League, announced the formation of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, which is developing a website and application process intended in part to diversify student bodies. Colleges are becoming more conscious of their roles - too frequently neglected - in social mobility. They're recognizing how many admissions measures favor students from affluent families. They're realizing that many kids admitted into top schools are emotional wrecks or slavish adherents to soulless scripts that forbid...

Enrollment for Black and Latino students dropped at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the first class formed after the Supreme Court found race-conscience admissions in colleges unconstitutional. The university’s admissions department on Wednesday released its first-year class profile, showing a sharp drop in its Black student population. About 5% of MIT’s incoming class of 2028 is Black, a significant drop from its 13% average in recent years. Latino students make up 11% of the class of 2028, compared to a 15% average in recent years. Overall, 1,102 students make up the incoming class.Stu Schmill, MIT’s dean of admissions, attributed...

Harvard has finally changed course and reinstated standardized testing for admissions after several other Ivy League schools led the way.Students applying to enter Harvard in fall 2025 and beyond will be required to submit SAT or ACT scores, though the university said a few other test scores will be accepted in “exceptional cases,” including Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests. The university had previously said it was going to keep its test-optional policy through the entering class of fall 2026...In explaining its decision to accelerate the return to testing, Harvard cited a study by Opportunity Insights, which found that test...