Free Republic

In June 2023, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA) prevailed in complaints alleging racially discriminatory admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The 6-3 Supreme Court decision in these cases eliminated decades of ambiguity about what aspects of race were permissible in candidate evaluations at some of our nation’s most prestigious universities. Following the Court’s decision, a number of analysts and commentators noted that Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion contained a footnote exempting military service academies. That footnote reads: The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admissions programs further compelling interests at our Nation’s...

The recent Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action forbids the use of race in college admissions. Yet North Carolina public universities are already finding ways to circumvent the spirit of the ruling, such as by using essay questions that ask students about challenges they have faced or to reflect on their identity. These prompts allow students to say, for example, “As a Black student … ,” which is indeed permissible under Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard; students are not forbidden from bringing up their race in their applications. These essay responses, as well as the personal interviews that are...

The New York Times is on a tear about “economic diversity.” It’s got a naughty-and-nice list, defined by the number of students with Pell Grants, and it’s stapled a scarlet A (for Affluent) to Duke University, which hasn’t managed to buy as many Pell mascots as its peers. The Times has sent out the memo: Get on the economic-diversity bandwagon now! The call for “economic diversity” is yet another sign of colleges abandoning the pursuit of educational excellence. But even if you do think colleges should serve an economic purpose—and public universities, at the very least, ought to provide taxpayers...

Last week, Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group, filed a lawsuit against the US Military Academy at West Point, contending that the academy’s use of race in admissions is unconstitutional. This comes on the heels of the group’s victory in June in a landmark Supreme Court case against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill over affirmative action. The lawsuit asks the court to take up an issue that was mentioned in passing in the earlier case. A footnote in Chief Justice John Robert’s majority opinion notes that the military academies were not party to...

Columbia Law journals are delaying admissions decisions in the wake of the Court's landmark ruling. The move highlights how the verdict could have implications beyond undergraduate admissions. Law journals at Columbia University Law School are delaying their masthead decisions in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling last week outlawing race-based college admissions, a sign that the ban on affirmative action is already having an effect beyond undergraduate programs. The law school's office of student services, which coordinates applications to all journals including the flagship Columbia Law Review, said Sunday that journal acceptances had been postponed until the school could...

The latest Pew Research Center polling suggests that a mere one-third of Americans favor considering race and ethnicity in college admissions. Over 9.65 million California voters rejected a proposal to repeal an existing race-based affirmative-action ban in 2020. Now, with their ruling overturning race-conscious university admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and the University of North Carolina (UNC), America’s highest court has affirmed this broad national consensus against race-preferential government action. The 237-page-long Court decision is a victory for what Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, sees as “the transcendent aims of the Equal Protection...

The Supreme Court has struck down blatantly racist admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, and the Left is horrified. First, let’s clarify one thing: affirmative action at those two universities, and at many others, is blatantly racist, and has been for a long time. As the majority opinion explains, race is one of the very first things some colleges look at; they put the applicants into groups and then seek to ensure that the next class’ racial makeup is going to be similar to the last class’ racial makeup. There was a time when the college...

Parents willing to write a big check have long been able to hire someone to write a college application essay or take the SAT for their kid. But now there’s a hot new admissions ploy on offer: For a mere $10,000, you can transform your teen into a published author in a peer-reviewed journal. According to a recent report from ProPublica, a cottage industry has exploded to help 17-year-old college hopefuls differentiate themselves in the ever more competitive admissions process as “acclaimed researchers.” More than 10,000 high school students have funneled through dozens of online programs such as Scholar Launch...

Suppose you’re a poor teenager in a dysfunctional environment. You have to work a part time job to help make ends meet. Your parents are absent or completely checked out. So you have to help take care of your younger siblings. You’re smart, but you’re not in a position to devote much time to homework; to getting top grades in every class. But you set a few hours aside in an afternoon, and receive an outstanding score on the SAT. Suddenly, options become available to you. Our ruling class is doing all they can to prevent this possibility. Remember: If...

The evidence is everywhere: American colleges and universities are dying. Not all will die very soon—indeed, probably only a modest portion will. But the trend is unmistakably downward. Why? Is it because, suddenly, Americans stopped having babies and therefore the market for students is drying up? While demographics do play a role (not only birth rates but also international migration), the bigger problems are largely self-inflicted—decisions made mostly within the academic villages constituting today’s modern colleges and universities. Let’s start with a little evidence. Enrollment in universities has fallen consistently for years. National Student Clearinghouse data reveal that, in the...

It’s time to do away with selective college admissions for undergraduate education. Now, let’s get the caveats out of the way. When it comes to specific training that requires particular skills (as with engineering or the performing arts) or courses of study where social benefit makes the case for some screening (as with nursing programs or the military academies), there’s an obvious case for performance-based selectivity. These are instances where prerequisites and demonstrated performance have an obvious, discernible import. Likewise, when it comes to professional schools or graduate training, that’s a different conversation. But should we embrace selectivity in undergraduate...

For how many years have elite colleges been playing a double game of inclusivity/selectivity? Some years back, Yale President Peter Salovey had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal affirming the high regard the school placed on inclusion and the opening of Yale to voices of all responsible kinds. A variant of the beloved word appeared seven times in the short discussion. None of it was true, of course; too much inclusion means a loss of prestige. For all the egalitarian talk on campus, the happy photos of smiling diverse faces in marketing materials, and the pledges of sensitivity and...

In the midst of the Covid pandemic, the UNC Board of Governors made the decision to take some pressure off potential applicants by implementing an emergency waiver for the System’s standardized testing requirement. Voting in July of 2020, the UNC Board of Governors temporarily waived the testing requirement for 2021’s spring, summer, and fall terms at all UNC-System schools. Neatly disguised as necessary (since testing centers were closed or canceling tests) and practical (since no at-home testing option was available at the time), this waiver opened the door for future “emergencies” to further diminish standards. As many expected, in May...

One week ago today, attorneys for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) laid out their cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina before the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices also heard arguments from attorneys representing the defendants and the Executive Branch. While the plaintiff held firm on the narrowly tailored position that racial preferences are wrong, proponents of race-based affirmative action brought to the Court overblown theatrics concerning diversity. Putting an end to race-conscious college admissions would, they explained, have devastating effects on campus diversity, which could not be compensated for by race-neutral alternatives. imultaneously, however, these champions of...

In most public discussions, “affirmative action” in higher education is treated as one of the core issues that divides liberals from conservatives. It is rare in public life to hear a Democratic leader criticize the use of racial preferences in college admissions, and it is equally rare to hear a Republican support them. Supreme Court opinions on the use of preferences have typically broken down as splits between “liberal” supporters and “conservative” critics, and many journalists have opined that such preferences are now in great danger because of the six-to-three conservative majority on the Court. The ideological divide on this...

Standardized tests have been attacked for being biased against some groups of students. Is that true? Should we stop using them? Exams like the American College Test (ACT) are supposed to assess how much information students learned in high school and, by implication, their preparedness for college. However, they’ve been criticized as being biased against female, minority, and low-income students. As a biological psychologist, I’ve taught mostly in the fields of neuroscience, brain function, learning theory, cognition, and the like. But I also spent 12 years teaching high-school science, math, and ACT prep courses for a large, nonprofit tutoring center...

Among the arguments against the policy of admitting students to colleges because they have the right ancestry—that is, they appear to come from “underrepresented” minority groups—is the fact that it can mismatch students and schools. At least sometimes, students admitted to fulfill perceived diversity needs are far behind their classmates in academic ability and find the level of rigor in the classroom to be overwhelming. Opponents of racial preferences contend that mismatch has serious consequences that are usually overlooked. Defenders of racial preferences minimize the extent of mismatch and say that the benefits of increased diversity outweigh any costs. A...

After careful consideration, we have decided to reinstate our SAT/ACT requirement for future admissions cycles. Our research shows standardized tests help us better assess the academic preparedness of all applicants, and also help us identify socioeconomically disadvantaged students who lack access to advanced coursework or other enrichment opportunities that would otherwise demonstrate their readiness for MIT. We believe a requirement is more equitable and transparent than a test-optional policy. In the post below — and in a separate conversation with MIT News today — I explain more⁠01 about how we think this decision helps us advance our mission.

Starting in the days of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, American colleges and universities embraced the idea that one way for the country to atone for its ugly history of slavery and racial discrimination was to give preferences to applicants from “underrepresented “ groups. At first, that just meant students with African ancestry, but later came to include Hispanics, Native Americans, Aleutian Islanders and others. Schools began to admit applicants from those groups even though they had weaker academic qualifications than the great majority of the students. The assumption was that they were helping them, because a degree from a more...

In November 2020, when University of Pennsylvania graduate student Mackenzie Fierceton won the prestigious and highly competitive Rhodes scholarship to study at Oxford — one of just 32 scholars selected from a pool of 2,300 applicants — she was praised by the Ivy League school’s president in a newsletter. “Mackenzie is so deserving of this prestigious opportunity,” declared President Amy Gutmann of the 23-year-old from suburban St. Louis. “As a first-generation [to go to college] low-income student and a former foster youth, Mackenzie is passionate about championing young people [and] dedicating herself to a life of public service.” But a...