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.
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