Still, the practice of factoring race into the admissions process faced repeated attacks. The number of Latino undergraduates also rose during that time. And between 19, the percentage of Black undergraduates doubled. In 1965, Black students accounted for roughly 5% of all undergraduates. What has affirmative action in college admissions actually achieved?Īfter generations of near total exclusion of Black students and other students of color, colleges and universities began admitting more diverse groups in the 1960s and 70s, and soon thereafter incorporated race-consciousness into their admissions policies.ĭata shows that the rise of affirmative action policies in higher education has bolstered diversity on college campuses. Justice Lewis Powell noted that achieving diversity represented a “compelling government interest”. In 1978, the supreme court narrowly rejected the use of “racial quotas”, but noted that colleges and universities could use race as a factor in the admissions process. The practice was challenged when Allan Bakke, a white man who was twice denied entry to the medical school at the University of California at Davis, sued the university, arguing that its policies, which included allocating seats for “qualified” students of color, discriminated against him. That effort, known as the Revised Philadelphia Plan, would later influence how many schools approached their own race-conscious admissions programs. In 1969, President Richard Nixon’s assistant labor secretary, Arthur Fletcher, who would eventually be known as the “father of affirmative action”, pushed for requiring employers to set “goals and timetables” to hire more Black workers. The prohibition was added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. President Lyndon Johnson took it one step further in 1965, barring public and private organizations that had a federal contract from discriminating based on race, color, religion and national origin. The concept of affirmative action originated in 1961 when President John F Kennedy issued an executive order directing government agencies to ensure that all Americans get an equal opportunity in employment. What was affirmative action designed to do? Ultimately, it hopes that race considerations will be nixed from the admissions process entirely, and replaced by race-neutral or “color-blind” policies. SFA has brought cases against Harvard University, the nation’s oldest private university, and UNC, the nation’s first public university, to challenge their affirmative action policies, which the group contends favors Black and Latino students.

Opponents of affirmative action, such as the advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions, argue that considering race as a factor in the admissions process amounts to racial discrimination – particularly against Asian Americans. At the University of North Carolina, for example, in a state where 21% of people are Black, just 8% of the school’s undergraduates are Black. Even with race-conscious admissions, however, many selective public and private colleges and universities struggle to enroll diverse student populations that accurately reflect society.

Affirmative action