The Origin of Student Debt: Reagan Adviser Warned Free College Would Create A Dangerous “Educated Proletariat”

Friends:

Check out this excellent piece on this history of student tuition and student debt. Readers may be surprised to read that 

"Student debt...played a minor role in American life through the 1960s, increased during the Reagan administration and then shot up after the 2007-2009 Great Recession as states made huge cuts to funding for their college systems." 

This piece takes us back to a historical moment during the Nixon Administration where charging college tuition, though disguised as cost-saving, was ideologically about college's not creating a dangerous "educated proletariat." Today, this rhetoric would get cast as "anti-Wokism," illustrating how the very same elitist politics reinvent themselves as weapons against not just the working, but also the aspiring, middle class.

Today, some act as if student tuition were ordained by God when the historical record shows it as an artifact of ultra-conservative politicians' views of the late 1960s and early 1970s where they felt threatened by the existence of a well-educated populace.

We need a total re-think of higher education today where higher education is a right, as opposed to a privilege, not unlike K-12 schooling. Moreover, it should be viewed positively, as the constructive force that it has largely been—both for individuals and society, as a whole. For this, we must all vote for candidates amenable to such proposals as canceling student debt and College for All. Here is one such proposal: H.R.2861 - America’s College Promise Act of 2021 Also check out this piece in Newsweek by Dr. Denisa Gándara.

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court recently striking down Biden's student debt plan (Stratfor, Gerstein, & Frazier, 2023), we need to support Biden's decision to use the Higher Education Act as a vehicle for canceling this debt (Bazail Eimil, 2023). A helpful resource in the struggle is The Debt Collective https://debtcollective.org/, an organization that is calling for debt abolition and relief, and holding the U.S. Department of Education accountable for the student debt crisis.

Thanks to Dr. Kevin Kumashiro for sharing.

-Angela Valenzuela 

#CollegeForAll #CancelStudentDebt 

References

Bazail Eimil, E. (2023, June 30). White House pushes forward on student loan forgiveness in wake of SCOTUS ruling, Politico.

Gándara, D. Now Let's Make College Free | Opinion, Newsweek

H.R.2861 - America’s College Promise Act of 2021

Stratford, M. Gerstein, J. & Frazier, K. (2023, June 30) Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s student debt relief plan

Gov. Ronald Reagan explains his requested shutdown of California’s higher education system in Sacramento, Calif. on May 6, 1970. Photo: Bettmann Archive

THE ORIGIN OF STUDENT DEBT: REAGAN ADVISER WARNED FREE COLLEGE WOULD CREATE A 

DANGEROUS “EDUCATED PROLETARIAT”

In 1970, Roger Freeman, who also worked for Nixon, revealed the right’s motivation for coming decades of attacks on higher education.

by John Schwartz | Aug. 25, 2022 | The Intercept

WITH THE vociferous debate over President Joe Biden’s announcement that the federal government will cancel a portion of outstanding student debt, it’s important to understand how Americans came to owe the current cumulative total of more than $1.6 trillion for higher education.

In 1970, Ronald Reagan was running for reelection as governor of California. He had first won in 1966 with confrontational rhetoric toward the University of California public college system and executed confrontational policies when in office. In May 1970, Reagan had shut down all 28 UC and Cal State campuses in the midst of student protests against the Vietnam War and the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. On October 29, less than a week before the election, his education adviser Roger A. Freeman spoke at a press conference to defend him.

Freeman’s remarks were reported the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Professor Sees Peril in Education.” According to the Chronicle article, Freeman said, “We are in danger of producing an educated proletariat. … That’s dynamite! We have to be selective on who we allow [to go to college].”

“If not,” Freeman continued, “we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.” Freeman also said — taking a highly idiosyncratic perspective on the cause of fascism —“that’s what happened in Germany. I saw it happen.”

Freeman was born in 1904 in Vienna, Austria, and emigrated to the United States after the rise of Hitler. An economist who became a longtime fixture in conservative politics, he served on the White House staff during both the Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon administrations. In 1970 he was seconded from the Nixon administration to work on Reagan’s campaign. He was also a senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution. In one of his books, he asked “can Western Civilization survive” what he believed to be excessive government spending on education, Social Security, etc.

A core theme of Reagan’s first gubernatorial campaign in 1966 was resentment toward California’s public colleges, in particular UC Berkeley, with Reagan repeatedly vowing “to clean up the mess” there. Berkeley, then nearly free to attend for California residents, had become a national center of organizing against the Vietnam War. Deep anxiety about this reached the highest levels of the U.S. government. John McCone, the head of the CIA, requested a meeting with J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, to discuss “communist influence” at Berkeley, a situation that “definitely required some corrective action.”

During the 1966 campaign, Reagan regularly communicated with the FBI about its concerns about Clark Kerr, the president of the entire University of California system. Despite requests from Hoover, Kerr had not cracked down on Berkeley protesters. Within weeks of Reagan taking office, Kerr was fired. A subsequent FBI memo stated that Reagan was “dedicated to the destruction of disruptive elements on California campuses.”

Reagan pushed to cut state funding for California’s public colleges but did not reveal his ideological motivation. Rather, he said, the state simply needed to save money. To cover the funding shortfall, Reagan suggested that California public colleges could charge residents tuition for the first time. This, he complained, “resulted in the almost hysterical charge that this would deny educational opportunities to those of the most moderate means. This is obviously untrue. … We made it plain that tuition must be accompanied by adequate loans to be paid back after graduation.”

The success of Reagan’s attacks on California public colleges inspired conservative politicians across the U.S. Nixon decried “campus revolt.” Spiro Agnew, his vice president, proclaimed that thanks to open admissions policies, “unqualified students are being swept into college on the wave of the new socialism.”

Prominent conservative intellectuals also took up the charge. Privately one worried that free education “may be producing a positively dangerous class situation” by raising the expectations of working-class students. Another referred to college students as “a parasite feeding on the rest of society” who exhibited a “failure to understand and to appreciate the crucial role played [by] the reward-punishment structure of the market.” The answer was “to close off the parasitic option.”

In practice, this meant to the National Review, a “system of full tuition charges supplemented by loans which students must pay out of their future income.”

In retrospect, this period was the clear turning point in America’s policies toward higher education. For decades, there had been enthusiastic bipartisan agreement that states should fund high-quality public colleges so that their youth could receive higher education for free or nearly so. That has now vanished. In 1968, California residents paid a $300 yearly fee to attend Berkeley, the equivalent of about $2,000 now. Now tuition at Berkeley is $15,000, with total yearly student costs reaching almost $40,000.

Student debt, which had played a minor role in American life through the 1960s, increased during the Reagan administration and then shot up after the 2007-2009 Great Recession as states made huge cuts to funding for their college systems.

That brings us to today. Biden’s actions, while positive, are merely a Band-Aid on a crisis 50 years in the making. In 1822, founding father James Madison wrote to a friend that “the liberal appropriations made by the Legislature of Kentucky for a general system of Education cannot be too much applauded. … Enlightened patriotism … is now providing for the State a Plan of Education embracing every class of Citizens.”

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance,” Madison explained, “and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” Freeman and Reagan and their compatriots agreed with Madison’s perspective but wanted to prevent Americans from gaining this power. If we want to take another path, the U.S. will have to recover a vision of a well-educated populace not as a terrible threat, but as a positive force that makes the nation better for everyone — and so should largely be paid for by all of us.

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Actions to Promote Educational Opportunity and Diversity in Colleges and Universities

It's a really good thing that President Biden didn't hesitate to chide the Supreme Court for their recent, anti-affirmative action decision. Here is a related piece titled, "Biden says Supreme Court ruling should not deter colleges from efforts to diversify their campuses" where he states the following:

"While colleges can no longer explicitly consider a student’s race as part of a holistic admissions review, the court’s opinion does allow colleges to look at how race affected a student’s life, so long as it’s tied to a unique skill or character they’d bring to the school. Discussions like that typically come up in an applicant’s personal essay."

In other words, a student can bring this up in their personal essay or statement of purpose so as to inform the admissions evaluator of their race and how it connects to a personal strength, skill or attribute they'll bring to the university if admitted. While this is a good thing, much more must be done. Do read through President Biden's fact sheet below as it outlines an array of responses by his administration that should prove helpful. It's curious that there's no mention of percent plans like we have in Texas.

-Angela Valenzuela

FACT SHEET: President Biden Announces Actions to Promote Educational Opportunity and Diversity in Colleges and Universities

HOME
BRIEFING ROOM
STATEMENTS AND RELEASES


Today, the Supreme Court upended decades of precedent that enabled America’s colleges and universities to build vibrant diverse environments where students are prepared to lead and learn from one another. Although the Court’s decision threatens to move the country backwards, the Biden-Harris Administration will fight to preserve the hard-earned progress we have made to advance racial equity and civil rights and expand educational opportunity for all Americans.

As our nation’s colleges and universities consider their admissions processes in the wake of the Court’s decision, President Biden is calling on them to seize the opportunity to expand access to educational opportunity for all. Our nation is stronger when our colleges and universities reflect the vast and rich diversity of our people. But while talent, creativity, and hard work are everywhere across this country, equal opportunity is not.

Specifically, the President is calling on colleges and universities, when selecting among qualified applicants, to give serious consideration to the adversities students have overcome, including:the financial means of a student or their family; where a student grew up and went to high school; and personal experiences of hardship or discrimination, including racial discrimination, that a student may have faced.

In doing so, colleges and universities can fully value aspiring students who demonstrate resilience and determination in the face of deep challenges.

The Biden-Harris Administration is taking swift action to support our Nation’s colleges and universities so they can continue building pathways to upward mobility and success for all students to thrive in the American workforce and our Nation’s military. Specifically, the Biden-Harris Administration is:Providing colleges and universities with clarity on what admissions practices and additional programs to support students remain lawful. The Department of Education and Department of Justice will provide resources to colleges and universities addressing lawful admissions practices within the next 45 days, as colleges prepare for the next application cycle. The Department of Education will also provide assistance to colleges and universities in administering programs to support students from underserved communities.

Convening a National Summit on Educational Opportunity. The Department of Education will host a national summit on equal opportunity in postsecondary education next month with advocates, student leaders, college and university administrators, researchers, and state, local, territorial and Tribal leaders to share lessons learned and innovative strategies, and develop additional resources for colleges and students to expand access to educational opportunity.

Releasing a report on strategies for increasing diversity and educational opportunity, including meaningful consideration of adversity. Following the Summit, the Department of Education will produce a report by this September, elevating promising admissions practices to build inclusive, diverse student bodies, including by using measures of adversity. The report will address topics including the impact of current admissions practices that may negatively affect the admissions chances of students from underserved communities; strategies to integrate measures of adversity in admissions; outreach and recruitment programs to create diverse applicant pools; strategies for retention and degree completion; and financial and other support programs to make college attainable.

Increasing transparency in college admissions and enrollment practices. The Administration is committed to providing transparent data with respect to admissions and enrollment. The Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics will consider ways to collect and publish more information related to college application and enrollment trends. This includes ways that information might be validly disaggregated by race and ethnicity, first-generation status, legacy status, and other measures. Information in these areas could help higher education leaders, academics and the general public address potential barriers to college recruitment, admissions, and enrollment.

Supporting states in analyzing data to increase access to educational opportunity for underserved communities. The Department of Education will assist states, territories and Tribal nations in marshaling their data to improve college recruitment, admissions, and financial aid practices and devise strategies for increasing access to educational opportunity, such as partnerships to appropriately share and use education data, and direct admissions programs that proactively admit students based on factors such as academic performance and students’ geographic location – without requiring them to apply or pay an application fee.

This work builds upon the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic efforts to ensure all students have the opportunity to access higher education by:Securing a historic increase in the Pell Grants: The President championed the largest increase to Pell Grants in the last decade – a combined increase of $900 to the maximum award over the past two years to benefit low – and middle-income students.

Prioritizing college completion: The Biden-Harris Administration has championed efforts to improve postsecondary outcomes, particularly for students who face the greatest barriers to accessing and completing college. In response to the President’s budget, Congress established a new Postsecondary Student Success Grant program to provide direct support to institutions to engage in evidence-based activities that support college re-enrollment, retention, and completion among individuals who are close to graduation.

Supporting America’s Minority-Serving Institutions: President Biden has secured historic investments in institutions that enroll and graduate disproportionate shares of low-income students and students of color, including tens of billions of dollars in funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions and Minority Serving Institutions, including Hispanic Serving Institutions through the Department of Education.

Fixing the broken student loan system: The Biden-Harris Administration has taken action to make the student loan system more manageable for current and future borrowers and reduce the burden of student debt, including by:Cutting monthly payments in half for undergraduate loans. The Department of Education is proposing an income-driven repayment plan that protects more low-income borrowers from making any payments and caps monthly payments for undergraduate loans at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income – half of the rate that borrowers must pay now under existing plans. The average annual student loan payment will be lowered by more than $1,000 for both current and future student borrowers who owe payments.

Fixing the broken Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program by ensuring that borrowers who have worked at a qualifying nonprofit organization, in the military, or in federal, state, territorial, Tribal, or local government, receive appropriate credit towards loan forgiveness. These regulatory changes build on temporary changes the Department of Education made to PSLF, under which roughly 616,000 public servants received more than $42 billion in loan forgiveness.

Ensuring targeted student loan forgiveness programs work. Including its reforms to PSLF, the Department of Education has approved a total of more than $66 billion in relief to over 2.2 million student loan borrowers, including many who were defrauded by their college, enrolled in a college that abruptly closed, or are permanently disabled and unable to work.

Friends, 

Check out this excellent recap of many years of history on higher education admissions in Texas by Kate McGee with the Texas Tribune. We must fully advocate for this plan that despite its race neutrality, could get eliminated. 

It therefore behooves Black and Brown community advocates, leaders, and legislators in Texas to form coalitions with their respective rural counterparts on what should be a shared policy agenda in this arena. The reason is not because as Dr. Stella Flores says, it is a "silver bullet" for a diverse entering class, but rather because it has been relatively successful as a remedy, especially in combination with other recruitment tools and strategies.

 In principle, Texas' Top Ten Percent Plan is truly about giving all students in the state of Texas a stab at getting admitted into Texas' flagship institutions, most especially the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A & M University.

-Angela Valenzuela

With race-based admissions no longer an option, states may imitate Texas Top 10% Plan

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the practice unconstitutional, admissions experts say other states could look to Texas’ Top 10% Plan as a way to diversify their student bodies.

BY KATE MCGEE JUNE 29, 2023UPDATED: 1 PM CENTRAL

The Texas flag flies on the south lawn of the University of Texas at Austin campus. After the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the consideration of race in college admissions, some experts say Texas’ Top 10% Plan could become a new model for other states. Credit: Eddie Gaspar/The Texas Tribune

More than 20 years ago, when the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions in its jurisdiction, those trying to diversify Texas public universities panicked, fearing that the ruling would undo years of modest progress they had made increasing the number of students of color at the state’s top public universities.

The impact of the law was immediate. At the University of Texas at Austin, Hispanic enrollment dropped by 15% in one year, while Black enrollment dropped by 25%.

To curb that decline, Texas lawmakers created a “race-neutral” program known as The Top 10% Plan, aimed at giving a broader group of Texas students opportunities to attend state universities by automatically admitting those who graduated in the top 10% of their high school classes.

Researchers found the plan never succeeded in regaining the racial diversity lost after the 1996 ban on race-conscious admissions at UT-Austin or Texas A&M University’s main campus in College Station, nor has it meaningfully changed which high schools are sending students to those schools. But supporters say it helps provide equal access to the state’s top schools, though they say it is not a standalone solution to increase diversity among the student bodies.

Now, two decades later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the use of race in college admissions at two universities, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, effectively ending race-based considerations in college admissions nationwide.

Following that ruling, admissions experts say percentage plans, including Texas’, could get more attention from other states despite the questionable diversity gains by the Texas plan.

“[T]he effectiveness of percentage plans to make a large, aggregate change in enrollment demographics remains an unsettled issue,” according to an upcoming paper on how state policymakers can respond to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Its authors are James Murphy, deputy director of higher education policy at Education Reform Now, a national education nonprofit, and researcher Virginia Carr Schneider.

The policy exploited the existing racial and ethnic segregation of Texas public high schools, allowing universities to accept students from different areas of the state and a wider array of schools without explicitly considering students’ race. Ever since, the plan has faced criticism from suburban parents, state lawmakers and university leaders who believe it makes it harder for students in well-resourced schools to get admitted to the state’s flagship universities.

“However, percentage plans can have a significant impact on the opportunities of students of color, which, given the lack of evidence for negative effects of percentage plans, means they could still provide benefits, making their implementation worthwhile.”

A plan is born

Texas’ Top 10% Plan was developed in 1997 with the help of Hispanic activists and lawmakers after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that banned the use of race in admissions in the three states within its jurisdiction, including Texas.

The late state Rep. Irma Rangel, a Democrat from Kingsville, filed a bill that required each public university in the state to automatically admit any students who graduated in the top 10% of their graduating classes.

Critics, including many conservative lawmakers, thought the rule was unfair to white students from well-resourced high schools who might have a harder time reaching the top 10% of their classes. They were also concerned it would send more underprepared students to Texas universities, particularly the flagships, UT-Austin and Texas A&M.

Rangel pointed out that rural high schools struggled to send white students to UT-Austin, as well as students of color, which helped her cobble together a coalition of Black and Hispanic liberals and rural conservatives to narrowly pass the measure. Then-Gov. George W. Bush signed it into law.

While California and Florida also have percentage plans, Texas’ plan is unique because it allows students in the top 10% of their graduating class to choose which school to attend, rather than assigning them a school.

Six years later, in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court nullified the 5th Circuit’s decision when it upheld the use of affirmative action in college admissions in a case involving the University of Michigan. That allowed Texas universities to consider race again, but The Top 10% Plan also remained.

Eventually, state lawmakers grew concerned that the plan created unintended consequences for UT-Austin, which was accepting more and more of its freshman class through The Top 10% Plan, which meant that there was less space for other students, including out-of-state students or student athletes.

Ultimately, the state Legislature created a carve-out for UT-Austin in 2009, specifying that 75% of each freshman class must be admitted under The Top 10% Plan while the remaining 25% would be admitted through a holistic review process that considers factors such as grade point average, extracurriculars, personal essays and race. That change means the university had to shrink the number of students automatically admitted. Last year, UT-Austin automatically accepted students in the top 6% of their graduating class.

This year, state lawmakers removed a provision in state law that would have forced UT-Austin to admit all students under The Top 10% Plan if a court decision banned the use of race in college admissions. With Thursday’s ruling, UT-Austin can continue to enroll 75% of students through The Top 10% Plan, but it can no longer consider race when accepting the other 25% of the freshman class.

Results so far

When the Top 10% law initially went into effect, the results were positive. Students enrolled under the law had a higher freshman year grade point average than other students, and the number of Black students increased by 44% and the number of Hispanic students grew by nearly 10% at state universities.

But over time, as more data became available to review, researchers started to find that not much had changed in terms of who was enrolling at the state’s flagships.

In 2020, two researchers looked at 18 years of data to see whether the law increased access to Texas’ most selective public universities, UT-Austin and Texas A&M.

They found a slight increase in the number of non-suburban high schools that sent students to those schools, but ultimately determined The Top 10% Plan did not meaningfully change which high schools sent students to UT-Austin or Texas A&M prior to the law’s implementation. The researchers also found that there continued to be more high-achieving students from well-resourced high schools enrolling at the flagships compared with students from other high schools.

Still, supporters argue that scaling back or scrapping the plan would make it harder to create a more diverse student body. According to a data analysis by the Intercultural Development Research Association, the vast majority of Black, Hispanic and Asian students at UT-Austin are accepted through The Top 10% Plan, while the university’s holistic review process disproportionately favors white students.

Data from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board also shows The Top 10% Plan hasn’t helped UT-Austin or Texas A&M reflect the demographics of the state’s 18- to 22-year-olds.

In 2009, 51% of UT-Austin freshmen were white and 23% were Hispanic, while the state’s 18- to 22-year-old population was 41% white and 41% Hispanic. By 2020, that age group was 32% white and 48% Hispanic statewide; UT-Austin’s freshman class was 32% white and 31% Hispanic that year.

At Texas A&M, the gaps were even wider: 55% of the 2020 freshman class was white while 26% were Hispanic.

Meanwhile, Black students made up 7% of the freshman class at UT-Austin and 3% of Texas A&M’s freshman class in 2020 — significantly lower than their 13% share of the 18-22 population.

Stella Flores, a higher education and public policy expert at UT-Austin, said that Texas' percentage plan is not a silver bullet to achieving more diverse student bodies.

"But it doesn't mean it can't be amended or supported with more funding, better recruitment and better outreach so that it can work," she said.

Higher education policy experts say that for percentage plans to work, schools also must recruit students from underrepresented groups and create a welcoming environment for them. That could be more difficult in Texas after state lawmakers passed a bill this year banning diversity, equity and inclusion offices at public universities, said Dominique Baker, a higher education policy professor at Southern Methodist University.

"Some might say the exact office that is supposed to spearhead brainstorming about this and focusing on this has now been declared illegal in the state of Texas," Baker said.

Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, researchers also say the Texas model might not work in other states where racial segregation is not as extreme.

“Indeed, most evidence confirms that the amount of segregation in states that use Top X% Plans is not enough to produce the levels of racial and ethnic diversity achieved under race-based admissions policies,” researchers Kalena Cortes at Texas A&M and Daniel Klasik at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote in a 2020 paper on The Top 10% Plan.

And some higher education policy experts say it’s likely The Top 10% Plan could be the next focus of debate in Texas college admissions. A 2017 bill that died in the Legislature, for example, would have let UT-Austin accept only 30% of its students through the plan rather than 70%.

“That’s coming,” said Murphy with EdReform. “The attacks will come for percentage plans, inevitably.”

Emily Berman, a constitutional law expert at the University of Houston Law Center, said it's possible that those against the use of race in admissions could file lawsuits accusing universities of using "race-neutral" policies for the specific purpose of creating racial diversity.

"It wouldn't surprise me if [opponents] come back and say, even race neutral mechanisms shouldn't be allowed if their purpose is to achieve more racially diverse student bodies," she said, adding that she thinks this argument could be made against Texas' Top 10% Plan.

Disclosure: Texas A&M University, the University of Houston and the University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

AERA Statement on Supreme Court Decision on Race in College Admissions, June 29, 2023

Friends:

I am proud of the American Educational Research Association's response to the SCOTUS ruling against affirmative action. It notes that there are clear ambiguities in the decision clearly as it did not "overrule prior rulings that allow race as a factor in admissions to achieve the benefits of educational diversity for all students." I do encourage all to read AERA's amicus brief that is highly informative on the benefits of diversity to higher education

institutions that was received by an ideological, extremist Supreme Court that cared less about the evidence. Incidentally, several on the court claim to be Constitutional originalist, but conveniently ignored the post-Civil War Reconstruction context of the 14th Amendment that would have legitimated race-based admissions.

Despite this, as noted by the editors of the New York Times, "The Supreme Court Turns ‘Equal Protection’ Upside Down.

These are sad, if not terrible and outrageous, times for current and potential students of color—and all students, indeed—in U.S. higher education. The court has turned a blind eye to structural and institutional inequality that ties the hands of lower courts and policymakers that might seek to acknowledge this. If you are not convinced, read the evidence. Read the amicus brief and learn the truth of the value and importance of diversity to our country and society.

The greatest damage may very well be symbolic in terms of the message it sends regarding the supremacy that court is giving to white citizens. Personally, I am disgusted by a Supreme Court that has been hostile not just to the idea of diversity in higher education as a public good, but also to the post-Civil War project of Reconstruction since day one. 

Truly, my dear friends, colleagues, and students, all is not lost. I do encourage you to read my earlier post today on the matter titled, "Wondering What Will Likely Happen to Higher Ed in the wake of the SCOTUS Anti-Affirmative action Ruling?" We are definitely losing ground though we are not bereft of power. There is much work ahead.

-Angela Valenzuela

For Immediate Release: June 29, 2023 Contacts: Tony Pals, tpals@aera.net (202) 238-3235 Marla Koenigsknecht, mkoenigsknecht@aera.net (202) 238-3233 AERA Statement on Supreme Court Decision on Race in College Admissions June 29, 2023 The following statement is from Felice J. Levine, executive director, and Tyrone C. Howard, president, of the American Educational Research Association. Today the U.S. Supreme Court made it harder for higher education to achieve student equity and inclusivity, but avenues remain open and higher education must seize them. The decision is a low point that could impede equitable access to higher education; erode campus diversity; reinforce, rather than reduce, longstanding and pernicious patterns of bias in higher education; and hinder the development of future workers and leaders who can thrive in an increasingly multicultural society. The Court did not expressly overrule prior rulings that allow race as a factor in admissions to achieve the benefits of educational diversity for all students. However, it invalidated the way institutions and prior Court decisions have defined the educational benefits of diversity as insufficiently measurable and without a necessary end point. More analysis is needed of the complex decision to determine how it translates into institutional policies and practices. While the Court’s decision will leave students and the country worse off, it should not extinguish scientific and higher education efforts to pursue educational equity and excellence for all students. Sadly the Court’s decision fails to acknowledge the substantial body of scientific evidence that student body diversity improves educational outcomes. Study after study has found that alternatives to race-conscious admissions put into place by states do not have the same impact as race-conscious policies in achieving that crucial diversity. The constraints imposed by the Court are formidable; yet, the scientific community and higher education need to respond by redoubling their efforts and expanding their commitment to the hard work of creating equitable educational systems. Meanwhile, at a time when college opportunity is limited for underrepresented students of color and members of other marginalized groups, we urge all educational institutions to take all legal paths to ensure that students from all backgrounds get equal opportunities. We furthermore urge researchers across the country to work with colleges and universities to develop and implement admissions criteria and processes that are as inclusionary as possible for students of color and address systemic inequities. In 2022, AERA and other major research associations submitted a Supreme Court amicus brief in support of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, calling on the court to rely on the substantial body of research and reaffirm the governmental interest in diversity. Joining AERA on the brief were the American Anthropological Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Political Science Association, the American Sociological Association, the Association for the Study of Higher Education, and the Linguistic Society of America. Visit the AERA website for research resources related to the case and race-conscious admission policies. ### About AERA The American Educational Research Association (AERA) is the largest national interdisciplinary research association devoted to the scientific study of education and learning. Founded in 1916, AERA advances knowledge about education, encourages scholarly inquiry related to education, and promotes the use of research to improve education and serve the public good. Find AERA on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. View this release online. Share this release American Educational Research Association 1430 K Street, NW Suite 1200 Washington, DC 20005 (202) 238-3200

Wondering What Will Likely Happen to Higher Ed in the wake of the SCOTUS Anti-Affirmative action Ruling?

 Friends:

Are you wondering what will likely happen to higher education in the wake of the SCOTUS anti-affirmative action decision?

As closely examined in this 2022 piece by Los Angeles Times writer, Teresa Watanabe, we can already gain important insights from what happened in California following the passage in November, 1996, of Proposition 209 that ended affirmative action based on race, sex, national origin, and ethnicity. Watanabe takes a close look at enrollment numbers in California universities, particularly within the prestigious University of California system. The short of it is that the enrollment of Black and Brown students plummeted by close to 50 percent with the eventual attainment of pre-1996 levels of student enrollment occurring 25 years later! 

When we think of the cost to the otherwise qualified potential Black and Brown students who were discouraged and either applied to the Cal State University System (with lower graduation rates compared to the UC system) or opted out of a higher education degree altogether, the negative impact of earnings denied to these groups have been not solely been substantial, but permanent. Based on Bleemer's (2020) longitudinal research in California on the earnings consequences of Prop. 209, it is a story of lost earning power that limited these individuals' prospects for economic mobility.

With California's response in the rearview window, a comeback in light of the SCOTUS ruling need not take that long for other states. Similarly, worthy of note, is Texas' comeback response—of instituting Texas' Top Ten Percent Plan—to the elimination of affirmative action by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1996 (that you can read and learn about here), yielded positive results.

What I think is getting largely overlooked from all that I'm reading right now on the impact of the SCOTUS decision and how to respond to it, is the vital role that our community, advocacy, and civil rights organizations can play in demanding universities to be aggressive in their responses to what will clearly be an immediate negative impact of the court ruling. After all, we all pay taxes that go toward higher education. Despite challenges, they are still public institutions and should therefore serve the public.

In addition to partnerships, aggressive recruitment strategies, and greater student financial education supports, another might be to demand that our flagship institutions save seats for in-state, as opposed to international and out-of-state, students (Watanabe, 2022). This may be an uphill climb considering that universities rely, in particular, on out-of-state tuitions to keep afloat. It's encouraging to read that in California, this very type of advocacy has made a difference (Watanabe, 2022).

In Texas, we must therefore further advocate for increased higher education funding while also holding fast to what remains of Texas' Top Ten Percent Plan that originated with House Bill 588 passed in 1997 and that was reduced to, roughly, six percent with Senate Bill 175 in 2009 that exclusively pertained to higher education admissions at the University of Texas at Austin beginning in 2011.

Our research, truth-telling, and advocacy continue.

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Bleemer, Z. (2020). Affirmative action, mismatch, and economic mobility after California's Proposition 209. Research & Occasional Paper Series, Center for the Study of Higher Education, UC Berkeley Retrieved from https://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/affirmative-action-mismatch-and-economic-mobility-after-california%E2%80%99s-proposition-209

Watanabe, T. (2022, Aug. 10) UC admits record number of Californians and far fewer out-of-state students, Los Angeles Times. Retrieved: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-10/uc-admits-record-number-of-california-first-year-students-narrows-entry-to-nonresidents

California banned affirmative action in 1996. Inside the UC struggle for diversity

As the U.S. Supreme Court opens oral arguments Monday on whether to strike down affirmative action, UC’s long struggle to bring diversity to its 10 campuses offers lessons on race-neutral admission practices.

BY TERESA WATANABESTAFF WRITER | Los Angeles Times OCT. 31, 2022 UPDATED 9:11 AM PT

 

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

For nearly half a century, the University of California has been at the center of national debates over affirmative action and who is entitled to coveted seats in the premier public higher education system.

In 1974, after Allan Bakke, a white applicant, was rejected from the UC Davis medical school, he alleged reverse discrimination and sued, becoming the namesake of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case curbing racial quotas. In 1995, UC regents voted to eliminate affirmative action and one of them, Ward Connerly, championed a successful campaign a year later to pass Proposition 209, the nation’s first ballot initiative to ban consideration of race and gender in public education, hiring and contracting. Over the last decade, California legislators have launched at least three attempts to restore affirmative action in college admissions — all have failed.

As the U.S. Supreme Court opens oral arguments Monday on whether to strike down affirmative action in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, UC’s long struggle to bring diversity to its 10 campuses offers lessons on the promise and limitations of race-neutral admission practices.

The California takeaway: Nothing can fully substitute for affirmative action practices that allow universities to admit a diverse student body, including using income and parent educational levels as proxies for race. But after passage of Proposition 209 touched off UC’s 25-year slog of trial and error — plus a massive investment of more than a half-billion dollars on diversity measures — a meaningful difference can be made.

As the U.S. Supreme Court opens oral arguments Monday on whether to strike down affirmative action in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, UC’s long struggle to bring diversity to its 10 campuses offers lessons on the promise and limitations of race-neutral admission practices.

The California takeaway: Nothing can fully substitute for affirmative action practices that allow universities to admit a diverse student body, including using income and parent educational levels as proxies for race. But after passage of Proposition 209 touched off UC’s 25-year slog of trial and error — plus a massive investment of more than a half-billion dollars on diversity measures — a meaningful difference can be made.

“While California has not identified a really effective policy to promote diversity other than affirmative action, it has shown experimentation is beneficial for targeted students,” said Zachary Bleemer, a Yale University assistant professor of economics and research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley. “And so it’s worth it.”

UC President Michael V. Drake and all 10 chancellors have submitted an amicus brief in support of Harvard and UNC’s affirmative action policies. Calling UC a “laboratory for experimentation” on using race-neutral measures to promote diversity, the university leaders said that decades of outreach programs to low-income students and re-crafted admissions policies have fallen short.

“Those programs have enabled UC to make significant gains in its system-wide diversity,” the brief said. “Yet despite its extensive efforts, UC struggles to enroll a student body that is sufficiently racially diverse to attain the educational benefits of diversity.”For some private universities, which are allowed to use affirmative action, the looming high court decision is causing consternation. Many experts predict the court’s conservative majority will strike down race-based preferences in a case that could affect not only higher education, but potentially the workplace as well.

“You are talking about the devastation of the American admissions process for students of color, full stop,” said Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr. “Affirmation action is hands down the best tool we have for maintaining racial and ethnic diversity in colleges in the United States.”

Initially, Proposition 209 drastically reduced diversity at UC’s most competitive campuses. In 1998, the first admissions year affected by the ban, the number of California Black and Latino first-year students plunged by nearly half at UCLA and UC Berkeley. William Kidder, a UC Riverside civil rights investigator, recalled his shock when he entered UC Berkeley law school in 1998 and found that his first-year class of 270 included only six or seven Black students, compared with four times that many in the class two years ahead of him enrolled before Proposition 209.

“The lack of diversity in the classroom had a negative impact on my learning as a student,” said Kidder, who is white. “The range of viewpoints and quality of discussion about ideas were inhibited.”

California State University’s 23 campuses did not lose nearly as many Black and Latino students as UC did, and the system’s enrollment today nearly fully reflects the state’s diversity. Among its 422,391 undergraduates in fall 2021, 47% are Latino, 21% white, 16% Asian and 4% Black.

That closely mirrors the demographics of the state’s 217,910 California high school students who met UC and CSU eligibility standards in 2020-21: 45% are Latino, 26% white, 16% Asian and 4% Black. CSU’s wider access, more affordable price tag and greater ease of commuting from home may be some reasons behind the greater diversity.

But diversity varies, with proportions of Latino and Black students lower at several of the more selective CSU campuses. At Cal Poly San Luis Obispo — with a 31% admission rate in fall 2021 — 53% of undergraduates are white, 19% Latino, 14% Asian and 1% Black. At Cal State Los Angeles — with an 80% admission rate — 72% of students are Latino, 11% Asian, 4% Black and 4% white.

“While Proposition 209 promoted race neutrality in university student recruitment, admissions, financial aid, student academic support and employee hiring, the policy has made it more challenging to erase equity and opportunity gaps that exist in the CSU,” the university said in a statement. “Despite the challenges that have resulted, the CSU has continued to serve significant numbers of students from underrepresented communities over the years and we continue outreach efforts to provide access to students who are Black, indigenous or people of color and provide support once they are enrolled in the university.”

UC enrollment still does not fully reflect the state’s racial and ethnic makeup — falling particularly short with Latinos, who made up just 30% of the system’s 189,173 California undergraduates in fall 2021. Students of Mexican heritage are by far the largest undergraduate ethnic group, however.

But campuses are making notable strides. Black and Latino students increased to 43% of the admitted first-year class of Californians for fall 2022 compared with about 20% before Proposition 209. For the third straight year, Latinos were the largest ethnic group of admitted students at 37%, followed by Asian Americans at 35%, white students at 19% and Black students at 6%.

The enrolled first-year class of fall 2021 was also the most diverse ever, with Black and Latino students making up 38% compared with about 20% in 1995 before Proposition 209.

Progress has been striking at UCLA, where the affirmative action ban hit particularly hard and swift. By 1998, the number of Black and Latino students in the campus’ first-year class of Californians had plummeted by nearly half.

But by 2021, UCLA’s California first-year class included more Black students — 346, or 7.6 % — than their 1995 numbers of 259, or 7.3%. The same is true for Latino students, whose numbers grew to 1,185, or 26%, from 790, or 22.4%, during that same period.

UCLA devotes up to $2 million annually to aggressively recruit diverse students and then convince them to accept their admission offers. In the early 2000s, the UC system launched two major reforms to boost diversity: an admission guarantee to top-performing students statewide and at most California high schools, and a comprehensive review process that uses several factors — including special talents and location of home and high school — in addition to grades and coursework to evaluate applicants.

In 2020, UC regents voted to eliminate standardized test scores as an admission requirement in another landmark step to widen access to underserved students.

“We’re very proud of the progress we’ve made,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in an interview. “We also recognize how far there is to go.”

UC Berkeley also has gained ground, especially since 2019, when the campuses increased fall enrollment of first-year Black and Latino Californians by more than 30%.

But Femi Ogundele, UC Berkeley’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment management, remains frustrated by the affirmative action ban, saying it prevents his team from fully understanding their applicants whose identities are often deeply connected to their race and gender. Hearing how applicants navigated experiences of being the only students of color in their high schools, for instance, or plowing through male-dominated science or technology classes as a girl could provide valuable insight into their character, he said. Proposition 209 barred discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin.

Some researchers have found that the Proposition 209 ban has had lasting negative consequences.

In a 2020 study, Bleemer found that the ban caused Black and Latino students who might otherwise have gotten into UCLA and UC Berkeley to cascade down into less competitive campuses; others chose not to apply for UC admission altogether. Such UC applicants ended up earning fewer undergraduate and graduate degrees and, for Latinos, lower wages. By the mid-2010s, the effects of Proposition 209 had reduced the number of early-career Black and Latino Californians earning more than $100,000 by about 3%, or as many as 1,000 earners, according to the study.

“This was a sort of a permanent shock to young Black and Hispanic workers,” Bleemer said. “And it didn’t lead to a symmetric boost for white and Asian students who gained access to these universities.”

Others, however, say the takeaway from UC’s experience is positive. Richard Sander, a UCLA law professor, argues that the affirmative action ban led to greater diversity at campuses throughout the system and better grades and higher graduation rates for Black and Latino students.

Starr, the Pomona College president, said affirmative action has helped the institution create a diverse class with Black students making up 9% — nearly twice the rate at UC. Latinos are at 16%, Asians 17% and whites 34%. She said that Pomona, one of the nation’s top-rated liberal arts colleges, is looking at ways to even opportunities for applicants if race can no longer be considered. They include possibly rethinking the use of standardized tests, which are now optional, and letters of recommendation — both measures found to favor more privileged students.

At USC, officials are thinking about revving up more aggressive recruiting practices and more generous financial aid packages to maintain diversity. In USC’s 2021-22 undergraduate class, Black students made up 6%, Latinos 17%, Asians 24% and whites 30%.

Campus officials plan to decide by next spring or early summer whether to continue optional testing policies for fall 2024 applicants, said Kedra Ishop, USC vice president for enrollment management.

Ishop said one lesson she learned from her administrative experience at the University of Texas at Austin during multiple conflicts over affirmative action is to be ready to send out clear messages to potential applicants about the value of diversity. “We want a diverse student body on our campus, and we’ll pursue that through whatever the legal means we have after this decision,” she said.

At UC Berkeley, Ogundele said affected universities should “double down” on comprehensive review systems to evaluate a student beyond academic metrics and use data aggressively. Admission officials will need to understand the environment not only in various ZIP Codes but also individual high schools to place a student’s academic experiences in full context, he said.

“I recognize that’s a big ask,” Ogundele said, noting there are hundreds of high schools across California. “But that’s what’s going to be necessary if your process is going to be equitable.”

Block said UCLA is also ready to share its experiences. A precipitous drop in California Black first-year students in 2006 — down to 95, lower even than immediately after Proposition 209 — prompted the campus to refine its comprehensive review system to pay greater attention to an applicant’s learning environment. Then, in 2012, Block hired Youlonda Copeland-Morgan, who reshaped the university’s outreach, recruitment and enrollment strategies. Copeland-Morgan, who retired last month as vice provost for enrollment management, called her approach “intrusive recruiting” to pursue applicants as college coaches do highly prized athletes.

She and her team launched collaboratives with more than two dozen Los Angeles Unified high schools and several African American churches in the Inland Empire to scout promising students and keep them on track, for instance. They look for diverse talent not only at college fairs, but also community events such as the Taste of Soul street festival in the Crenshaw neighborhood. They meet families at Starbucks in Compton, South L.A., Ladera Heights, South Gate. A few years ago, the team started a texting program to students as young as eighth grade to prepare them for college and possible UCLA admission.

Over the last decade, the number of Black students from California who apply, are admitted and enroll at UCLA has swelled. Black first-year student enrollment, for instance, grew by more than 100%, from 169 students, or 4.2%, of the 2012 first-year class to 346, or 7.6%, in 2021. Latino enrollment, however, grew only by 19% during that period.

Both UCLA and UC Berkeley admit enough Black and Latino applicants to fill their classes with representative shares, but need more to accept their admission offers. Those rates have grown more quickly for Black students than Latinos.

The campuses say they are reaping big payoffs — 75% commitment rates — by holding in-person activities that connect admitted students with faculty, staff and other students of similar backgrounds.

Block said UCLA is also hiring more Latino faculty and working to become a so-called Hispanic-serving institution, which will open the door to federal grants to enrich Latino educational opportunities. To address family financial concerns, the campus launched a pilot program this year offering low-income students up to $2,000 annually or $10,000 during an undergraduate career to reduce their financial burdens.

How much such measures will help institutions make the transition to higher education without affirmative action is, however, unclear.

Ogundele experienced both worlds as an admissions professional at Stanford University, where he used affirmative action, and UC Berkeley, where it is banned.

“What I’m learning in this environment is that there is no alternative,” Ogundele said. “There is no race-neutral alternative to being able to consider race.”

Teresa Watanabe

Teresa Watanabe covers education for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the Times in 1989, she has covered immigration, ethnic communities, religion, Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs and state government for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. A Seattle native, she graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.