WSJ: Colleges Cut Back Minority Programs After Court Rulings

Colleges Cut Back Minority Programs After Court Rulings

They're Wary of Scholarships Based on Race in Wake Of the Michigan Cases
By DANIEL GOLDEN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL


The Supreme Court's June rulings on racial preferences in University of
Michigan admissions were widely interpreted as a victory for affirmative
action.

Six months later, the impact looks considerably more ambiguous. Although the
decisions allowed colleges to preserve the ability to consider race in
choosing students, many schools have felt obliged to change how they factor
race into other big academic decisions, particularly in awarding
minority-only scholarships.

In the Michigan cases, both of which were brought by rejected white
applicants to the university, the court approved of using race as one tool
to achieve a diverse student body. But the court said schools can't maintain
quotas or separate admissions tracks for racial groups -- nor define
diversity solely in terms of race. As such, it struck down a point scale for
admitting undergraduates that gave an automatic boost to blacks, Hispanics
and Native Americans, ruling that applicants must receive "truly
individualized consideration." In other words, all aspects of a student's
life should be taken into account, from race to family background to
economic opportunity.

The court didn't mention financial aid or scholarships in its decisions. But
because aid is so closely linked to admissions, many schools fear that
race-conscious scholarships and other programs would be interpreted by lower
courts as impermissible under the standard set in the Michigan cases.
Already, the court's decisions have accelerated conservative legal
activists' challenges of minority scholarships.

In the months since the rulings, Williams College, Indiana University,
Carnegie Mellon University and other schools have opened minority
scholarships to all races -- even at the risk of alienating some minority
students, alumni and donors. Amherst and Mount Holyoke colleges have taken
the same step with campus minority-recruitment events. Among the biggest
potential beneficiaries of scholarships that until now were reserved for
minorities: white students with diversity credentials, such as those who
come from disadvantaged backgrounds or specialize in unlikely fields.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights is
investigating complaints by conservative activists and students about
race-exclusive programs at several public and private universities. Among
the programs are tuition waivers for native Hawaiians at the University of
Hawaii and minority scholarships and job fairs at Seton Hall University
School of Law, in Newark, N.J. Schools found in violation could forfeit
federal funding, although the Office for Civil Rights generally works with
schools to bring them into compliance, rather than penalizing them.

"Minority scholarships are quite common in undergraduate institutions around
the country," says Kent Syverud, dean of Vanderbilt Law School, a former
Michigan professor who testified in the Michigan case, "but that's likely to
change" into scholarships that have race as one factor among many.

Amy Agbayani, who oversees diversity issues at the University of Hawaii at
Manoa, declines to comment on the investigation but says the Michigan
rulings "will require us to carefully administer our affirmative-action
programs." She says only 9% of the campus's undergraduates are native
Hawaiians, compared with 27% of public-school students in the state.

Seton Hall says it recently told the Office for Civil Rights that its
minority scholarships, which are partially funded by six large New Jersey
law firms that then assign partners to mentor the six recipients, are
constitutional. The university said its scholarships pass muster under the
Supreme Court's new rulings because the programs contribute to the diversity
both of the law school and the state bar.

The reduction in race-exclusive scholarships reflects a wider shift by
colleges, in response to the Michigan rulings, to emphasize income and
social class in admissions as well as financial aid. Both Michigan and Ohio
State, for instance, have begun asking applicants whether their parents and
grandparents went to college. The decline of race-exclusive scholarships is
also likely to make it harder for some minority students to afford college
tuitions. More may instead seek minority scholarships offered by private
organizations and foundations, which aren't affected by the Michigan cases
because they don't receive federal funding.

In the most recent national study on race-exclusive aid, the federal General
Accounting Office found in 1994 that two-thirds of colleges, one-third of
graduate schools and three-fourths of professional schools awarded at least
one minority scholarship. Minority scholarships accounted for 5% or less of
college and graduate-school scholarship money, but 14% of scholarship money
at professional schools, the GAO said. Private donors funded about 60% of
minority scholarships for undergraduates, while most of the money for
minority graduate scholarships came out of schools' pockets.

Since then, minority scholarships have diminished as colleges reacted to a
growing legal threat. In 1994, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit in Richmond, Va., struck down a University of Maryland scholarship
program for African-Americans, saying the university failed to show the
scholarships were needed to remedy past discrimination. The decision didn't
principally address the contribution of minority scholarships to a diverse
student body, which many colleges now cite as a justification. Worried by
the Fourth Circuit decision and others, state universities in North
Carolina, Colorado, Delaware and Florida, and elsewhere, later opened
minority scholarships to all races.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Michigan decisions have reinforced that pattern.
Since 1985, Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., has annually awarded
the Bolin Fellowships for Minority Graduate Students, named after the
school's first black alumnus. This year, Williams changed the scholarship's
name to the Bolin Dissertation Fellowships, and for the first time
applicants of all races will be considered as long as they belong to an
"underrepresented group." That could include academic rarities such as
female physicists of any ethnicity or Caucasian researchers in Asian
Studies, according to acting dean of faculty William Lenhart.

"The college thought it was a reasonable change" in light of the Supreme
Court's decisions, Mr. Lenhart says.

In the wake of the June rulings, Yale general counsel Dorothy Robinson wrote
in Trusteeship magazine this fall that universities face "daunting
challenges" in defending race-exclusive programs, as well as a "delicate"
process of negotiation with campus constituencies and outside donors. Ms.
Robinson said in an e-mail interview that Yale is "carefully reviewing" its
race-based programs, which include a four-day summer orientation for
African-American, Asian-American, Latino and Native American freshmen. She
said Yale has "modified those enrichment programs" in some cases, but she
declined to be more specific.

Ms. Robinson added, "Schools should anticipate that there may be other legal
challenges to higher-education programs and policies by opponents of
affirmative action."

One powerful opponent is the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative
think tank in Sterling, Va. Founded in 1995, the center has spearheaded the
fight against race-exclusive programs in higher education. For instance,
before the Michigan rulings, the center prevailed on the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to open minority summer-enrichment programs to all
races. Since May 2002, the center has asked colleges to make 75
minority-only programs available to all races, and most have complied, says
the organization's counsel, Roger Clegg. The center is talking with other
schools and has filed complaints with the Office for Civil Rights against
six, including one last week against Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.
Underrepresented minorities at Pepperdine qualify for a scholarship program
that also offers receptions, retreats, excursions and guidance counseling.
The Department of Education is evaluating the complaint. A Pepperdine
spokesman declined to comment, saying the university was still reviewing
that complaint.

Another current target: African-American scholarships at Washington
University in St. Louis. Mr. Clegg argued in a Sept. 9 complaint to the U.S.
Department of Education that the university's Ervin Scholars Program, which
provides full four-year tuition plus a $2,500 stipend and other academic
support to 10 African-American freshmen each year, violates the
"individualized consideration" required by the Michigan cases.

Washington University said in a statement that the Ervin program "serves to
further the compelling interest in securing for all students the educational
benefits of a diverse student body." The school cites 1994 policy guidance
from the Department of Education that financial aid based on race is
justified either for diversity or to remedy the effects of past
discrimination. The Bush administration hasn't issued official guidance of
its own, but its strong support of race-neutral approaches to diversity in
the Michigan cases suggests it may be less sympathetic than its predecessor
to race-exclusive scholarships. A Department of Education spokeswoman says
the Office for Civil Rights is evaluating whether to investigate the
complaint against the school.

Ervin Scholar Shaun Koiner says he has misgivings about race-exclusive
scholarships. Mr. Koiner, a Washington University senior, comes from a
middle-class family and went to a Catholic high school in Hyattsville, Md.
With excellent grades and a 1370 SAT score, he chose Washington over
Stanford, Yale, Princeton and other elite universities that didn't match the
Ervin Scholars financial package.

Although the scholarships serve "a good purpose," Mr. Koiner says, "maybe
more consideration needs to be given to socioeconomic class, as those
minorities who have resources are receiving a double benefit." Mr. Koiner,
who has a 3.7 grade-point average at Washington, says all the Ervin Scholars
are so outstanding that they would have qualified for merit aid even if the
competition had been open to all races.

Such a competition is about to start at schools across the country. Indiana
University, for example, recently renamed its "Minority Achievers Program"
the "Hudson and Holland Scholars Program." The program, which will provide
stipends of $4,000 to $7,000 a year to 150 freshmen in fall 2004, will give
an edge to minorities underrepresented in higher education -- blacks,
Hispanics and Native Americans -- but others are now eligible to apply.

"We'll still have a disproportionate number of African-Americans, Latinos
and Native American students" receiving the scholarships, says Charlie
Nelms, vice president for institutional development and student affairs for
the Indiana University system. "But you'll see Caucasian students from
low-income backgrounds from rural Indiana in this program. You'll also have
Asian-American first-generation college students."

Mr. Nelms says the change wasn't prompted by the Michigan decisions but by a
desire to "get more high-achieving students enrolling, majority and
minority."

The Tennessee Board of Regents, which oversees six universities and 13
two-year colleges, is also reconsidering race-exclusive scholarships. To
overcome its heritage of segregation, the state operates under a federal
consent decree requiring scholarships for African-Americans at formerly
all-white schools, and for white students at Tennessee State, a historically
black university. But the decree is set to expire in 2005-2006.

Wendy Thompson, special assistant to the chancellor in charge of the system,
says she expects the board to expand the scholarships to all races as a
result of the Michigan decisions. "We won't be able to contain it to black
and white," she says. "We can broaden it so we'll have as much diversity as
possible."

Meanwhile, starting next year, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh will
open its full-tuition minority scholarships to students of all races who
contribute to diversity, such as low-income whites and Asian-Americans.
Admissions director Mike Steidel says the change was prompted by the
Michigan decisions as well as a complaint filed with the Office for Civil
Rights by a white student who sought unsuccessfully to be considered for the
scholarship.

Carnegie Mellon has also restructured its need-based financial-aid policy.
Prior to the Supreme Court decisions, Carnegie Mellon evaluated candidates
for need-based aid from both university and federal funds on a point scale
that gave an edge to black, Hispanic and Native American students. From now
on, says Mr. Steidel, "everyone is starting at the same base."

The University of Texas at Austin plans to resume considering race as a
factor in admissions for freshmen in the 2005-06 school year, because the
Michigan decisions take precedence over a 1996 federal appeals court
decision banning affirmative action at the school. But the university, which
had offered a variety of minority scholarships before that federal ban, will
not return to race-exclusive aid. Instead, it will take race into account
but review applicants individually. "That's what the court requires," says
admissions director Bruce Walker.

Iowa State University, on the other hand, isn't backing down from its
scholarships for minority freshmen interested in engineering, for which
two-thirds of the funds come from private donations. "We think we owe it to
the donors to preserve" the race-exclusive criteria, says University Counsel
Paul Tanaka. "That was their desire, that the funds be spent in that way."

Some donors were disappointed when Clemson University in Clemson, S.C.,
shelved minority scholarships prior to the Michigan decisions. "We had to go
back and contact donors and we just had to do the best we could," says
financial-aid director Marvin Carmichael. "To say we had 100% agreement
would be false." Mr. Carmichael adds that Clemson has turned down a number
of potential donors who offered to endow race-exclusive scholarships.

One minority scholarship Clemson opened to all races is named after Harvey
Gantt, Clemson's first black student and the first African-American mayor of
Charlotte, N.C. The 60-year-old Mr. Gantt, a substantial donor to the
scholarship fund, says he was unaware of the change and finds it
disconcerting. "They can call it anything they want as long as the intent of
it is that we get minority students who otherwise might not have a chance to
go to Clemson," Mr. Gantt says.

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