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February 7, 2003
By Catherine
L. Horn and Stella M.
Flores
Foreword by Gary Orfield
Percent plans - admitting a certain percent of the
highest performing graduates of each high school to public universities
in a state - have emerged as a basic response to the end of race-conscious
affirmative action in three of the country’s most populous
states – Texas, California, and Florida. This report draws
on data from state agencies, the federal National Center for Education
Statistics, the U.S. Census, institutional and state documents,
and interviews, to assess the impact of these policies on maintaining
racial/ethnic diversity without using race or ethnicity as a factor
in university admissions.
Although these plans have been presented as effective alternatives
to race-conscious affirmative action, our research shows that it
is incorrect to attribute any significant increase in campus diversity
to a percent plan alone. A variety of race-conscious outreach,
recruitment, financial aid, and support programs appears to be
central to the ability of some campuses to even partially recover
from the loss of minority students that follows the abolition of
affirmative action. In almost every case, however, even with these
additional efforts in place, institutions have not been successful
in maintaining racially/ethnically diverse campuses through percent
plans. And, relative to the current college-age population in each
of these states, none of the campuses reflects the students they
are intended to serve.
Major Findings:
- There is insufficient evidence to suggest that percent plans,
even with other race-conscious processes, are effective alternatives
to using race/ethnicity as a factor in admissions processes.
- Percent
plans only set basic requirements for who can automatically be
admitted to a campus or to a system so the implementation
of the plan at individual institutions varies dramatically. Therefore,
there is no standard model to which to compare how well these
plans
work or whether they could be replicated.
- Percent plans do not
address admissions to private colleges or to graduate or professional
programs. They also do not apply
to
out-of-state students.
- The University of Texas at Austin (UT)
consciously supplements the 10 percent plan with outreach and
scholarship programs. Targeting
a specific set of traditionally underrepresented high schools
in communities where large shares of blacks and Hispanics live
results
in these efforts being functionally race-attentive.
- At Texas
A&M, the 10 percent plan has not led to diversity
at nearly the levels achieved through the use of affirmative
action. Therefore, the 10 percent plan cannot be held out as
a model of
success.
- The Texas 10 percent plan guarantees students admission
to their campus of choice while the Florida and California
percent plans
guarantee admission only to the main state university system.
- The higher education systems in California, Florida, and Texas
vary widely in quality and standing. Both UCLA and Berkeley
rank
among the top institutions in the country, while neither
of the Florida schools is nationally ranked. Of the two flagship
universities
in Texas, only UT Austin is loosely comparable to the California
flagships in terms of reputation. Even then, UT admits higher
shares of applicants than either UCLA or Berkeley, the two
schools that
are most relevant to the possibilities on nationally competitive
campuses.
Affirmative action
must try to cope with the system of educational inequality in the
three states:
- Texas, California, and Florida had low levels of
minority access
to higher education even before losing race-conscious affirmative
action.
- These three states have rapidly rising shares of blacks
and Hispanics among 15 to 19 year olds.
- Each of the states has
deeply unequal educational K-12 outcomes by race and ethnicity
and serious increases in racial segregation.
- In all three states,
the gap between the college age population, by race, and the
applications, admissions, and enrollments of
first time in college students to the states’ university
systems and to their premier campuses is substantial. The gap
has grown
even as the states have become more diverse.
Percent plans alone
will not serve as effective alternatives to affirmative action.
In the best of circumstances, they have
only
been able to promote racial and ethnic diversity on campuses
when they are coupled with recruitment, outreach, financial
aid, and
support programs targeted at underrepresented communities with
large minority student populations - all elements of solid
race-conscious affirmative action plans. Race-conscious affirmative
action remains
a stronger and more effective strategy for achieving racially
and ethnically diverse campuses, particularly if it was bolstered
by
some of the resources and policies developed in the wake of
its elimination.
To view the COMPLETE REPORT
and study conducted by The Civil Rights Project go to:
Percent Plans in College
Admissions: A Comparative Analysis of Three States' Experiences
(In
PDF format, 457 KB file size, estimated 1 min 3 secs on a 56 Kbps
connection) 
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