Recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit made big news on behalf of affirmative action in college admissions by upholding the University of Texas at Austin’s right to continue to use race in its undergraduate admissions. The Austin based university actually uses the “top-ten percent” plan, when essentially guarantees admission to the Austin campus to any student in Texas who graduated in the top 10 percent of his or her graduating class. The assumption is that since Texas continues to have segregated schools and in some areas of the state minority enrollments are well over 90% in K-12 schools and institutions of higher education. Case in point is the Rio Grande Valley area in south Texas, which is predominantly of Mexican origin.
The decision came on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year, which ruled that public colleges could, in fact, continue to use race in admissions, but only if the race based admission policy meets a narrow tailored goal or need of the university and the state.
A key issue, besides the top 10 percent plan, was the university’s desire to create “critical mass” among minority students through a process called race-conscious holistic review. However, less than 20% of the class for 2008, the year in question in this case, was evaluated and presumably admitted via the race-conscious holistic review process. In 2007, UT-Austin admitted approximately 6,300 freshman and this past fall they admitted 7,300 freshmen. Based on data from the university’s Office of Information Management and Analysis for the fall of 2013, Hispanics make up only 19.1% of overall student enrollment and white students 48.4%.
According to the recent publication by Susan Combs, Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, “By 2020, the Texas Hispanic population is expected to outnumber the White population….” thus making Texas a minority-majority or better stated a Hispanic-majority state. According to 2013 U.S. Census data, the state is nearly 40% Hispanic and in some cities in Texas well over 50% to 90% Hispanic. And it will only get better, or worse depending on your perspective, by the year 2040 state demographers predict that the Hispanic population will grow to 18.8 million (53%) and whites will grow to 11.5 million (32%). In 1980, whites made up 66% of the state population and Hispanics 20.4%. Herein lies the crux of the matter, whites don’t want to give up their overwhelming majority share of the resources they currently enjoy.
Based on many years of collecting national data on college-bound students, Hispanic and black students score significantly lower than white students on standardized college admission tests such as the American College Test (ACT) or the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). In the UT-Austin case for the 2007 entering class, the average SAT score for Hispanics was 1155, for blacks 1073 and 1275 for whites. Nationally, data reported by the National Center for Educational Statistics for 2011-12, the average SAT scores (Critical Reading and Math scores combined) for Hispanics was 913, for blacks 856 and whites 1063. The fact is that standardized college admission tests are not race neutral, but that’s a subject for another time.
Shouldn’t Texas and for that matter the United States of America be educating a larger percentage of our minority students, at the very least, equal to their percentage in the population of Texas or the USA? Our country was founded by immigrants and build off the backs of immigrants. Minorities and immigrants are increasingly becoming the future workforce of Texas and the USA. Should we not provide them with a better education? We know that workers with more education make more money. The future workforce will of course support our retirement plans, pay into the Social Security System, pay taxes and, if highly educated, that translates into more money into the state and federal coffers.
The key compelling issue I feel is sometimes missed in the debate is that race-conscious admissions allow the state to level the playing field. We know from many years of collecting data that Hispanics and blacks perform lower on standardized tests compared to whites. Hispanics and black students in this country do not have the same advantages as white students. So, why should Hispanic and black students with lower test scores not be admitted to universities? Shouldn’t public universities enroll students in proportion to their representation in the state population? After all, UT-Austin is a public institution of higher education and supported by state funds. Hispanics and blacks pay their fair share, just like whites, of taxes to support the university. 19.1% Hispanic student enrollment at UT-Austin is hardly considered a fair, much less reasonable, share relative to the nearly 40% Hispanic population in Texas. This continued to keep Hispanics back in the 1980’s. Can one consider the decision handed down by the U.S. Court of Appeal a win for affirmative action? I don’t think so.
