States' new diversity plans fail graduate students
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The roster of University of Michigan Law School graduates reads like a who's who of prominent African-Americans: civil-rights leader Roger Wilkins, Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., and Mary Frances Berry, chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
The law school won't reveal which graduates won spots through racial preferences that use different admissions criteria for minority candidates. But the school stands behind its affirmative-action policy in spite of the legal challenges it has triggered. The controversy is reaching all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has set a deadline of today for receiving arguments from groups weighing in on the issue.
So far, most of the public attention has focused on the University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy. But the law-school case is just as critical: The need for diversity doesn't diminish after undergraduate education. A legal setback for Michigan would send public and private universities scrambling to dismantle or redesign their policies for attracting minority students.
Yet some of the most promising alternatives for boosting undergraduate diversity do nothing to ensure that graduate schools more closely represent society as a whole. That's a problem for all professional schools. Tomorrow's doctors, lawyers and business executives need to be drawn from the nation's rich range of racial and economic backgrounds; that is whom they will represent and serve as professionals. Many corporations underscored the importance of such diversity last week, when they declared their support for Michigan's use of racial preferences.
Several former Pentagon officials plan to make the same point today. Critics of the university's policy -- including the Bush administration -- argue it amounts to racial quotas that illegally discriminate against white applicants. They call, instead, for alternatives that boost diversity by focusing on scholastic achievement rather than on race. In Texas, seniors who rank in the top 10% of their high schools are automatically accepted by the state university system. California and Florida have similar programs.
Although the plans successfully funnel a wide range of college-bound students into state universities, they do nothing for graduate-school admissions. And their defenders have failed to address how to ensure adequate diversity at professional schools. Without an alternative to Michigan-style preference plans, minority representation in the nation's graduate schools could plummet.
The Association of American Medical Colleges says the enrollment of black and Hispanic medical students would drop from 11% to 3% if schools based admissions solely on grades and test scores. Former Harvard president Derek Bok, who tracked 3,500 black students at 28 selective colleges and universities, confirmed the value of affirmative action in graduate admissions.
He found that 56% went on to graduate school, and 40% of those received Ph.D.s or professional degrees. The nation benefits when minorities achieve the American Dream. That means preserving graduate schools' right to ensure they have a diverse range of dream catchers.Today's debate: Affirmative actionMichigan case, alternative programs focus on undergraduates.
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