Affirmative Action is here to stay — at least in Maryland

As some colleges and universities are looking to enrollment as a way to make up for major budget deficits, a study by the University of Maryland reports eliminating affirmative action would have serious “negative ramifications.”

The study, published in the Journal of Public Economic Theory, studied admissions patterns in universities with differing levels of competitiveness across the country, including how institutions responded to historic problems of attracting minority students as well as the “on-paper qualifications” of minority applicants, in order to get a better understanding of how the practice “plays in diversifying the nation’s colleges and universities.”

Researchers found if affirmative action was eliminated, the population of minority students at universities would decrease 35 percent.

Total minority undergraduate enrollment across the country more than doubled from 1.9 million to 4.7 million between 1976 and 2004, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The same survey says white undergraduate enrollment grew by only 15 percent during the same period.

A few other states have experimented with eliminating affirmative action policies. The good old Sunshine State of the West passed Proposition 209 in 1996, which amended the California state constitution to ban public institutions from considering race, sex or ethnicity when admitting students. It passed with 54 percent of the vote. In November 2006, Michigan’s state constitution was similarly amended with the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.

Across the country, fewer students and their families — white or otherwise — are going to have the ability to pay for higher education in the coming years. From a financial standpoint, as well as a demographic one, doing anything to turn off students doesn’t make much any sense.


Higher ed never sleeps

but after one long semester, I needed to.

While I took a break from College Ave, higher ed news came more quickly than ever. I’ll spend the next few weeks trying to bring everything up to date.

But for now …

As  colleges and universities prepare to release budgets (read: tuition hikes)  for the next academic year, a new study may give students a better idea of where their money is going — and what administrators are  doing with it.

The study — analyzed in an article in The New York Times last week  — showed students are not only “covering more of what it costs to educate them,” but also that what they do cover might not go toward what they thing it does.

The report, sponsored by the Delta Project on Postsecondary Education Costs, Productivity and Accountability, examined nearly 2,000 private and public non-profit colleges and universities, which amounts to more than 75 percent of higher education enrollment, from 2002 to 2006.

The study found a number of trends , including:

* Most of the new money in higher education is coming directly from tuition and fees — and the private gifts, grants and contracts colleges do receive is restricted by the donor, and therefore, not available for “core educational programs.”

*Nearly 75 percent of spending increases at private research universities were fueled by an increase in tuition.

*The share of costs represented by student tuition rose from about a third to nearly one-half at public four year institutions, and at private colleges, students pay between 75 and 85 percent of the full cost.

* Nearly all of the revenue institutions did receive from student tuition increases (about 92 percent)
were used to offset other losses

The authors of the study wrote they hope their research forces colleges and universities to be more “transparent” with, and more accountable for, their spending. But the study’s data is from records predating the country’s current economic recession. Were they to  analyze data from the past two fiscal years, the results would inevitably be worse. Either way, nothing is likely to change unless students start to demand some transparency, too.