This study focuses on how admissions at selective colleges and universities represent key racialized organizations. We analyzed data from 50 individual interviews of admissions professionals, through a theory of racialized organizations to recognize admissions as practices that consistently reproduces systemic inequities. We reveal how…

With a decision pending in two lawsuits challenging race-conscious admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), many observers are predicting that the US Supreme Court will significantly limit, if not completely prohibit, the use of race in college and university admissions. However if the United…

Education is the value proposition that provides individuals the opportunity to become meaningful contributors to society, their community, and their immediate families. It is the calling card of personal achievement and individual intrinsic benefits. Education is about access and opportunity. Institutions continue to navigate strategies of access…

This essay discusses the contentious events leading to the decision by the University of California's Board of Regents to end affirmative action in admissions, hiring and contracting at the university in July 1995. This controversial decision provided momentum for California's passage of Proposition 209 the following year ending "racial…

Through an analysis of relevant social science evidence, this article provides a deeper understanding of critical mass, a concept that has become central in litigation efforts related to affirmative action admissions policies that seek to further the educational benefits of diversity. We demonstrate that the concept of critical mass requires an…

This article examines the intersection of race, socioeconomic status (SES), and charter type/admission practices in Louisiana charter schools. This study used publicly available Department of Education data to compile the sample of charter school demographic information. A one-way Multiple Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was conducted using race and…

The assumption behind the fierce competition for admission to elite colleges and universities is clear: The more elite the school one attends, the brighter one's future. That assumption, however, may well be flawed. The research examined recently by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights provides strong reason to believe that attending the most…

As a result of massification of higher education and the quest for competitiveness, the Taiwanese government has adopted a series of higher education reforms since the late 1990s. While the low birthrate has become a potential threat, recent developments in higher education policies such as the Program for Developing First-Class Universities and…

One of the important arguments by critics of affirmative action is that it actually hurts the students it is supposed to help by subjecting them to the "stigma" of being admitted under policies explicitly seeking campus diversity. Such students, this theory argues, must feel embarrassed and uncomfortable as a result and would prefer to…

Educational programs for gifted students face both philosophical and practical challenges from egalitarians. Some object that gifted schools inherently undermine a commitment to equality in education, while others observe that schools for talented students cater to privileged youth and effectively discriminate against disadvantaged minorities.…

The National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education (CARE), consisting of a national commission, an advisory board, and a research team at New York University, aims to engage realistic and actionable discussions about the mobility and educational opportunities for AAPIs and how distinctions of race, ethnicity,…

The Carnegie Council's position on public and academic policy issues involved in the Bakke case is summarized in this publication. The Council holds that the racial experience of an academically admissible student is among the criteria relevant to admissions decisions. In speaking of race, the experience of persons raised in non English speaking…

This paper describes the college admission process through the conceptual lens of Dickason's (2001) phases of affirmative action. The first phase, obligatory affirmative action, describes the history of affirmative action and the impact on college admission. The second phase, voluntary affirmative action, describes University of West Florida's…