A Strategy Roadmap For The End Of Affirmative Action

In the next few weeks, the Supreme Court is poised to end the practice of affirmative action, and the use of race in college admissions. This will pose a major challenge for colleges and universities looking to build a diverse class of incoming students.

Historical data from states like California and Michigan show that an affirmative action ban is usually followed by substantial drops in Black and Hispanic enrollment. For example, in Michigan, Black enrollment at the flagship University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor dropped from 8% to 4% after an affirmative action ban in 2006. Over the same time frame, the Black share of high school graduates actually rose from 16% to 19%.

Thus, the Supreme Court’s impending decision in the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and University of North Carolina cases poses an existential threat to Black and Hispanic representation at U.S. colleges and universities. If colleges and universities do not adjust their recruitment strategies and admissions policies, they could see Black and Hispanic student enrollment drops of 50-75%!

Developing a post-affirmative action strategy

Diverse student enrollment is not a lost cause. In fact, if enrollment leaders and institutional cabinets take decisive action now, they can mitigate the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision and forestall the looming plunge in student of color enrollment.

There are three key elements to the optimal strategy.

1. Expand the recruitment pool to reach more students of color
2. Update admissions policies to make students of color more admissible.
3. Build a legal defense plan

Colleges and universities that implement this strategy will likely be able to weather the storm. Colleges that do not are likely to see a collapse in Black and Hispanic representation on campus. Today’s column will focus on techniques that institutions can use to expand their recruitment pool. Next week, a follow-up column will lay out a roadmap for updating admissions policies and developing a legal defense plan

Expanding the recruitment pool to reach more Black and Hispanic students

One of the core challenges presented by the end of affirmative action is its impact on the pool of students available for recruitment. Black and Hispanic students tend to have weaker traditional admissions metrics like grades and (especially) test scores. Historically, this has been offset at institutions by the practice of holistic admissions: namely the consideration of race.

Once the SFFA case is decided, this pathway will no longer be viable. A review of the data at numerous institutions shows that somewhere between 50% and 75% of currently enrolled students of color would no longer be admissible without the consideration of race.

The only way to respond is to increase the size of the recruitment pool – cast a wider net to reach more qualified students of color. Based on the data above, most institutions should aim to double, triple, or even quadruple the volume of Black and Hispanic students in their enrollment funnel.

So how can institutions reach more qualified students of color?

Once again, there are three key techniques that institutions can use to expand their recruitment pool:

1. Expand their presence in diverse geographies
2. Build direct relationships with high schools and CBOs
3. Identify diverse populations with environmental data.

Expanding recruitment presence in diverse geographies

An analysis of student profile data from CollegeVine’s recruiting network shows that the greatest recruitment opportunity for high-GPA Black students lies in the Southeast and on the eastern seaboard. This encompasses states like Georgia, Texas, New York, and Florida, where many institutions already have a recruitment presence. But states like Ohio, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama are also critically important.

The recruitment map for high-GPA Hispanic students is flipped – southern and western states predominate. Once again, most institutions will have a presence in California, Texas, Florida, or New York. But it pays to also build a presence in states like Colorado, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada for Hispanic student recruitment.

Building direct connections with districts and CBOs

It is necessary but not sufficient to merely maintain a recruitment presence in geographies with a large volume of high-performing students of color. It is also critical to change the nature of how an institution recruits in both new and established territories. Most colleges and universities maintain strong relationships with high schools and community-based organizations (CBOs) in their region or state. But in out-of-state markets, most institutions prioritize developing their brand in and relationships with affluent suburban school districts that are overwhelmingly white and Asian American.

Expanding the recruitment pool will require an expansion of relationships with school districts and CBOs. A college or university in Minnesota or Missouri looking to maintain Black or Hispanic enrollment after the end of affirmative action will have to go out of state to reach a sufficient volume of admissible students. And it will have to develop new relationships with school districts and CBOs that serve students of color.

Using race-neutral environmental data to reach students of color

In fact, geography is a useful tool for offsetting the impact of diktats around race-blind college admissions. In Texas, for example, the University of Texas System and Texas A&M campuses responded to an affirmative action ban by centering geography. By offering admission to the highest-performing students in every school district (top x% of the graduating class), public institutions in Texas have seen a much smaller impact on Black and Hispanic enrollment than in states like California and Michigan.

A blanketing policy at the district level is manageable within an individual state, but virtually impossible to implement for nationwide recruitment. Luckily, environmental data provides a powerful tool that enables a similar outcome.

Environmental data for school districts and neighborhoods provide insights into the types of economic, social, and educational barriers and opportunities faced by different students based on their geography. Poverty levels, household structure, wealth, crime, education, and school funding all play a role in a student’s ability to develop the kinds of traditional application metrics that make them stand out when reading an application.

CollegeVine collapses the variables above into a single 0-100 measure called Environment Index. A higher Environment Index generally corresponds with a higher volume of structural challenges that a student faces on their educational journey.

For a bevy of historical and present-day reasons that are too complex to get into in this column, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to face substantial headwinds on their educational journey. Analysis of Environment Index data validates this – the population of students with an Environment Index of 50 or higher is about 60% nonwhite while the population of students with an Environment Index of 80 or higher is about 85% nonwhite.

So environmental data is a powerful, race-neutral way of reaching a disproportionately Black and Hispanic group of students. And crucially, it is actually race-neutral. The population of students with an Environment Index above 85 includes many Black and Hispanic students. But it also includes white students from communities ravaged by the opioid crisis in rural West Virginia and poor Asian American students living in the Bronx.

Incorporating environmental data into a recruitment strategy will allow colleges and universities to legally expand their pools of admissible Black and Hispanic students.