Will it happen in our lifetime?
The U.S. Supreme Court this week agreed to hear a case out of the University of Texas that challenges affirmative action in college admissions. The decision could bring an end to race-based admissions in higher education.
Here is a guest post by Sarah Garland of the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit that exists to deliver the sort of in-depth education journalism many daily newspapers can no longer afford. You can read the post here, or there, where it was first published.
Affirmative action in college admissions is on the Supreme Court docket again this year after a white student named Abigail Fisher challenged a University of Texas program meant to promote diversity on UT campuses.
Affirmative-action proponents, including many university leaders, are concerned that if the University of Texas loses, efforts to increase diversity in U.S. colleges will be severely undercut. Critics of affirmative action are thrilled that the issue is back in play after a 2003 Supreme Court decision in a lawsuit against the University of Michigan seemed to settle the issue, allowing colleges and universities leeway to consider a student’s race as one of many factors in admissions decisions.Minority enrollment in higher education has been on the rise, according to a 2010 Pew Research Center study, with Hispanic enrollment increasing the fastest. Whites made up 62 percent of the freshman class at four-year institutions in 2008, the report found, down from 83 percent in 1976. (That’s about the same as the percentage of whites in the larger population, although the percentage of minorities among young people is higher.) Nevertheless, the percentages of black and Hispanic young people enrolled in higher education are still lower than those of whites and Asians.
Read the full article http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/supreme-court-to-hear-case-on-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions/2012/02/23/gIQA1nZJWR_blog.html