Litigation against colleges and universities has prompted the need to re-examine the legalities of the means by which they strive for a diverse student population. Court decisions have resulted in mixed signals about the use of various types of affirmative action policies. This study' method presented an analysis of archival data to provide a…

This timely book examines issues pertaining to equal opportunity--affirmative action, challenges to it, and alternatives for improving opportunities for underrepresented groups--in higher education today. Its starting point is California's Proposition 209, which ended race-based affirmative action in public education and the workplace in 1996. The…

The Supreme Court has held repeatedly that race-based preferences in public university admissions are constitutional. But debates over the wisdom of affirmative action continue. Opponents of these policies argue that preferences are detrimental to minority students--that by placing these students in environments that are too competitive,…

Critics of affirmative action announced last week efforts to get bans on racial and ethnic preferences on the ballots in four states--Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, and Oklahoma--as part of a plan to thrust the issue into the national spotlight in the November 2008 elections. Ward Connerly, the prominent anti-affirmative-action activist who played a…

Higher education has been characterized as "one of the greatest hopes for intellectual and civic progress in this country. Yet for many Americans, however, it has been seen as part of the problem rather than the solution" (Boyer, 1997, p. 85). Some have acknowledged that higher education is a public good through which individual participation…

The U.S. Supreme Court's decisions in 2003 in the affirmative action cases of "Gratz v. Bollinger" (2003) and "Grutter v. Bollinger" (2003), sometimes referred to as the "Michigan cases," provided the first indication of the role that race-conscious admission policies will play in higher education in the new century since the Court's decision…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore ethical challenges and dilemmas that exist within admissions systems at colleges and universities in the USA. Design/methodology/approach: Although the issues considered herein are examined primarily from the perspective of admissions officers, this paper also considers the viewpoint of prospective…

In this article we examine the current status of affirmative action in postsecondary admissions through a concurrent review of recent court rulings, state legislation, and higher education enrollment data. Analyzing each of these factors in the context of the others is important because the court decisions and state-level legislation interact to…

The nation's military-service academies could be stripped of one of their chief tools for bringing in black, Hispanic, and American Indian students as a result of regulatory changes being considered by the Department of Defense, officials of the U.S. Air Force Academy said last week. The proposed change in the department's directives to its…

Those involved in higher education understand that the admissions process has less to do with rewarding each student's past performance--although high performance is clearly essential--than it does with building a community of diverse learners who will thrive together and teach one another. Reports have noted that many leading public universities…

During this election year, many people who study race and education had hoped that the nomination of a black presidential candidate and the increased focus on race would have led to a related discussion of equal access to higher education and a turn toward a stronger commitment to the creation of a truly diverse society. However, unfortunately,…

Despite the precedent established in the "University of California Board of Regents v. Bakke," that race may be used as a factor in admissions policies at state institutions of higher education, state and federal court decisions were divided over whether the use of race in admissions decisions was a violation of the Equal Protection…

Ranked purely on the basis of the available reliable and valid measures, the demographic composition of incoming medical students fails to meet societal concerns regarding under-represented minorities (URM). Admissions offices are squeezed, administratively and legally, between honouring objectively measured individual merit and addressing…

Over the past several decades, affirmative action has become a widely-debated issue in higher education. According to research, race-sensitive admissions policies engender significant advantages for students of all racial backgrounds, yet critics claim that these benefits are matched by significant costs--particularly in terms of minority student…

The recent release of "Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education", by the American Association of University Women, presents an opportunity to review the extraordinary success of women in education over the last four decades. The release also presents an opportunity to review the failure of the entire education system--from…