New Criteria for College Admissions

By Michael W. Kirst

When a decision in a Texas case and one by California voters on a ballot proposal banned affirmative action in higher education in those states in 1996, the reaction ranged from jubilation to outrage. In Hopwood v. Texas , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that race cannot be used as a criterion to achieve a diverse student body. The state attorney general interpreted the ruling as prohibiting the consideration of race or ethnicity in all internal school policies in higher education institutions across the state, including admissions, financial aid, scholarships and fellowships, and recruitment and retention. This interpretation is currently the law of the land in Texas.

Meanwhile, in California, 54 percent of those voting during the November 1996 general election supported Proposition 209, which effectively ended the practice of using affirmative action as one of the criteria in college admissions. As a result of these two victories, long-term opponents of affirmative action felt that a long-overdue end to racial bias in college admissions could finally be achieved. Supporters of affirmative action, on the other hand, feared that the most competitive state universities would be purged of promising minority students.

Too often lost in the sometimes-acrimonious debate over affirmative action, however, has been an attempt to understand the profound changes in university admissions criteria caused by changes...