A defense of holistic admissions, by N.J. Barkauskas

With the Abigail Fisher case recently decided by the Supreme Court, Affirmative Action in higher education has entered the public realm once again.  The University of Texas, whose argument is supported by the AERA and other social science groups, argues that the use of holistic admissions process benefits students by increasing diversity and positively affecting academics.  That’s a great argument, and one that aims at satisfying the Supreme Court’s test of Strict Scrutiny, but it doesn’t cover all the bases.  .It seems as if this argument is based purely on the academic benefits of diversity; that diversity is being used by the university as a means to an end that is justifiably good.    My argument here is decidedly less scientific, and admittedly non-legal in nature, but the moral reasoning here carries more weight and tackles issues of greater importance. I argue that the court’s decision to remand the case back to the Fifth Circuit court, on the basis that it failed to apply strict scrutiny, is a missed opportunity to provide a justified moral reason beyond its established legal reasoning.   A ruling in favor of the University would have fulfilled the court’s moral- democratic duty to protect the best interest of the American people. 

Fisher argued that the University unfairly denied her admission and admitted less qualified minority students in her place (Abigail Fisher v University of Texas, 11-345, 2012).  Her lawyers attacked the University’s “holistic” admissions process as a thinly veiled quota system that is discriminatory in nature.  Their legal case was based on the assertion that the current UT system of admission won’t meet the court’s standard of strict scrutiny when it comes to race and admissions (Abigail Fisher v University of Texas, 11-345, 2012).  The university, on the other hand, argued that its system is closely modeled on of the system of racial consideration outlined in Bakke and approved by the court (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265, 1978).

By adopting a holistic admissions process UT is attempting to admit the best students from all walks of life.  Their inclusion of race as a factor does not necessarily discriminate against White students but is instead a recognition that successful students come from many social backgrounds, and that success in the face of social adversity is worth rewarding with admission.  Furthermore, academic success can look different depending on the student’s background.  Imagine, for a moment, there are two car factories.  We would expect a Ferrari factory to produce a Ferrari and that it would be quite a technological and mechanical achievement.  But if a small car company run out of your neighbor’s garage produces a comparable car (even if it lacks the bells and whistles) then that accomplishment is worth recognizing and rewarding.  Likewise, a top school producing top high school graduates is expected given the resources that many top public high schools have.  But a student from a disadvantaged background overcoming adversity and achieving at a comparable level is perhaps more impressive than making a Ferrari with Ferrari parts.

Of course, every student that desires a college education should be able to obtain one.  The simple fact is that some schools are forced to be selective because the demand for their services out-paces their capacity to provide service.  The point here is not that top students should denied attendance at the schools they want because their success is to be expected given the inputs they receive.  Instead, the argument here is that UT, and universities, in general should be allowed to measure the less tangible tokens of success if it means providing more opportunities to succeed to systematically disadvantaged students. Universities have a moral and social duty to enrich their communities, and indeed the world, through increased access to their programs.  A holistic admissions process ensures that this duty can be fulfilled by assisting in closing the long standing achievement gap between White students and minority students.

The University of Texas is right to adopt a holistic approach because research and experience has increasingly shown that the idea of academic merit being the sole basis of admission to an institution of higher education is outmoded.  One example of this is Nicholas Burbules’ article on Equity in Education in which he draws the analogy between schooling and a foot race.  If we imagine runners starting a race, the assumption is that they are equally prepared and have an equal shot at winning.  But as Burbles points out, education is not a race in which all runners are equally prepared (Burbules, 1979).  The UT holistic admission process uses measures like the “Personal Achievement Index” (PAI) to try and account for differing levels of preparation that are out of the student / runner’s control.  The PAI includes anything that might put the student’s record into context.  Specifically the PAI for each student can include such factors as:

“…scores on two essays, leadership, extracurricular activities, work experience, service to school or community, and “special circumstances,” which include socio-economic status, whether the applicant is from a single parent home, language spoken at home, family responsibilities, socio-economic status of the school attended, and average SAT or ACT score of the school attended in relation to the student’s test score.” (Abigail Fisher v University of Texas, 11-345, 2012)

By adopting a holistic admissions process universities are not backing one type of runner over another but are instead finding new ways to hand out more medals for different types of successes.

Furthermore, that a University should want a more diverse student body is commendable.  It’s not the case, for instance, that the University of Texas is seeking to make their student body “more white” on purpose or indeed to actively discriminate against one group or another.  Does the inclusion of more minority students mean that fewer White students will be admitted?  Yes, probably.  Does that mean White students are being discriminated against?  No, it doesn’t.

Prohibiting holistic admissions, including the consideration of race, represents an ideological change that could be harmful to higher education following the Fisher ruling.  This type of ideological shift is harmful whether it swings politically left or right.  Education ought to be an area of modern life that is free from political influence and open to the inclusion of all peoples; even though I fully realize it is not.  History has shown, and the legal precedent exists to back this up, that exclusion in education is damaging to the nation as a whole by creating whole classes of citizens that are under-educated and unable to fully participate in the democratic activities of the nation.

What the Fisher case really represents is the fact that our nation has become this scientifically and judicially constrained place where justice, equality, and duty are marginalized in public discourse.

The AERA and other amicus briefs that supported the UT system in this case miss an important angle; whether considering the whole student is the right thing to do morally or democratically.  The AERA brief provided evidence that diversity in schools supports academic achievement for students of all ethnic backgrounds (Abigail Fisher v University of Texas, 11-345, 2012) but did not lay plain the connection between the evidence and the social importance.  UT’s system attempts to enroll students on a different set of criteria than those that are strictly academic.  This decision recognized that achievement and success can be measured by more than GPA and SAT score. Having a holistic admissions process represents the University’s desire to create more diverse graduating classes.  Doing so will no doubt create a wider distribution of educated people across the cultural spectrum of the United States.

What the Fisher case really represents is the fact that our nation has become this scientifically and judicially constrained place where justice, equality, and duty are marginalized in public discourse.  Rather than recognize the complicit nature of every citizen in pervasive injustice, the nation, instead, confines itself to arguments about what is legally allowed rather than simply recognizing the right thing to do regardless of legal standing.  Democracy and free thought are suffering in the current social climate.  Imagine a world where all the runners in the race are exactly the same, and they all finish at the same time.  In this world foot races would be far less meaningful.  By the same token a homogeneous discourse is far less meaningful than one in which many voices can be heard.  Minority-Majority ratios are shifting in this country; by all accounts those who are currently considered minorities will be numerically similar in our lifetimes.  Will we still call them minorities?  If so, what logic would support that?

By eliminating the active inclusion of differing backgrounds and opinions the court effectively diminished the likelihood of a student encountering someone who is drastically different from themselves.  If institutions of higher education can’t seek to diversify, then who can?  When we make it illegal to include disadvantaged or under-represented peoples in the common discourse we are effectively sending the message to our children that they shouldn’t bother interacting with folks who are different because they don’t have merit.  The message being sent by the nation and that is somewhat supported by the Supreme Court with the Fisher ruling is this:  ‘Only merit deserves your attention and what has merit is what we already understand.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.’

References:

Brief of the American Educational Research Association, et al. as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents.  Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas, 2012 No. 11-345.

Brief of the American Social Science Researchers, et al. as Amici Curiae in support of Respondents.  Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas, 2012.  No. 11-345

Burbules, Nicholas C, Stanford Univ.,CA.Center for Educational Research at Stanford. (1979). Equity, equal opportunity, and education.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)

Abigail Fisher v University of Texas, 11-345, (2012)

N.J. Barkauskas is a third year PhD candidate in Educational Theory and Policy at The Pennsylvania State University.  His primary area of research and interest is in the philosophy of education, ethics of education policy, and school reform.