In two recent cases involving the University of Michigan (Gratz v. Bollinger and Gruttinger v. Bollinger), the Supreme Court examined whether race should be allowed to play an explicit role in the admission decisions of schools. The arguments made in support of affirmative action admission policies in these cases and others raise two fundamental…

Academic achievement indices including GPAs and MCAT scores are used to predict the spectrum of medical student academic performance types. However, use of these measures ignores two changes influencing medical school admissions: student diversity and affirmative action, and an increased focus on communication skills. To determine if GPA and MCAT…

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for "lower-caste" groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially…

Building on their important findings in "The Source of the River," the authors now probe even more deeply into minority underachievement at the college level. "Taming the River" examines the academic and social dynamics of different ethnic groups during the first two years of college. Focusing on racial differences in academic performance, the…

This report is an effort to assess what has been accomplished in successfully diversifying and desegregating historically segregated and unequal higher educational institutions across Kentucky, and how this was done. The report discusses the changing legal setting for these initiatives, analyzes the educational achievements and challenges, and…

This volume is the first to comprehensively examine Chinese's affirmative action policies in the critical area of minority education, the most important conduit to employment and economic success in the People's Republic of China after the economic reforms begun in the late 1970s. This book contains four parts. Part I, "Debating China's…

In this article, the author comments on the issue of race and education in America. The author predicts that although the Supreme Court's recent ruling sheds some welcome light on affirmative action for higher education, the debate over the merit and methods of diversifying the student body will continue. By proactively addressing diversity,…

Preparation for and admission to law school is challenging for many students. For a number of years law schools have used criteria for admission that included school rankings and testing. Schools have been ranked by "The U. S. News and World Report" magazine and potential students have been tested with the Law School Admission Test…

Included herein is the conference proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations, sponsored by the Psychology Department of the State University of New York at Farmingdale. The conference theme for 2012 was: The value of an undergraduate degree in psychology: Why psychology--Why now?. The Conference…

Diversity has been a focus of higher education policy, law, and scholarship for decades, continually expanding to include not only race, ethnicity and gender, but also socioeconomic status, sexual and political orientation, and more. However, existing collections still tend to focus on a narrow definition of diversity in education, or in relation…

For more than four decades, universities have used affirmative-action policies to increase the participation of U.S.-born women and members of minority groups in higher education, where traditionally they have been under-represented. Yet those policies, often applied in decisions about which students to admit and which faculty members to hire,…

Throughout the 20th century, one of the central debates pertaining to postsecondary education has been about the concept of merit. Who deserves to go to college? The answer to that question goes to the heart of various policies that have been developed, changed, and debated. Perhaps no other policy has drawn more prominence and criticism than that…

Affirmative action in higher education remains a controversial topic in the US today, as it is tied in directly with citizens' varying conceptions of the larger society, and the importance of racial and other differences (in particular, socioeconomic class) in individual experiences and outcomes. This essay examines different arguments for and…

George W. Bush did signal his views on diversity during his campaign for the presidency, but what he said inexplicably aroused little notice. Campaigning in Miami on 25 August 2000, in a speech devoted to U.S.-Latin American relations, Bush presented a view of America that one would never have thought to hear from the lips of a U.S. presidential…

This article examines current issues regarding affirmative action in today's institutions of higher learning. It addresses the two recent cases decided before the U.S. Supreme Court concerning the University of Michigan's policy. Two other recent and related issues, the "Hopwood" case and California's Proposition 209 approach, are also…