Inside the room where Biden administration officials and college leaders game planned college admissions after affirmative action

Once the program started, the message from Biden administration officials to colleges was clear: You can’t ignore the justices, but the decision can’t be an excuse for colleges to shy away from building diverse classes. That echoed President Joe Biden’s sentiment in the hours following the court’s decision last month. 

“By limiting race in college admissions the Supreme Court has rolled back decades of social progress and totally missed the point that our country’s greatest strength is the diversity of its people,” said James Kvaal, the undersecretary of education. “We’re here today because we’re determined not to let this decision be the last word.” 

Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona used his school principal-style energy to extol the college leaders in the audience to take advantage of the moment, telling them “every generation is called upon to renew the promise of America.” He compared this period to the beginning of the pandemic, when college leaders had to determine how to keep their institutions running with everyone stuck at home. 

“For many of us the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action feels like a new low point,” he said. “Our colleges have lost the most effective tool they’ve ever had for building diverse campus communities.” 

Referencing challenges public colleges in states that already banned affirmative action faced maintaining similar shares of underrepresented students, Cardona told the audience, “we can not allow that kind of backsliding to happen on a national scale – and we’re not.” 

Legal guidance is coming

In addition to words of encouragement, the Biden administration has said it would provide colleges with legal guidance on how to maintain diversity without running afoul of the law. On Wednesday, Biden administration lawyers said that document would be available in August. In the meantime, Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary for the office of civil rights at the Department of Education, told the audience, “lawful avenues remain open to colleges and universities,” to achieve that objective. 

“I have heard about groups who are not the Department of Education or the Department of Justice sending schools notifications about what they say the law is and what they want you to do,” she said. “I offer you this, you will know when you hear from us,” she said, adding that Congress assigned her office and the Department of Justice with the responsibility to enforce the law surrounding discrimination in schools.  

Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, offered an example from her personal experience to illustrate the ways in which colleges can legally consider how a student’s race has impacted them. 

“For instance, maybe that would be a university considering an essay from a Black student who discussed her interest in becoming a civil rights attorney after going on a field trip to a courthouse,” to hear arguments in a landmark civil rights case, she said. 

“The bottom line is this: Institutions of higher education remain free to consider any characteristic of a student that bears on the institution’s admissions decision, such as courage or determination,” she added. 

Leaders talk funding, other challenges

College leaders in the room seemed largely receptive to the pitch from the Biden administration – that maintaining diversity in higher education is not only possible, but imperative in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision. Indeed, that’s why they were there. But they repeatedly discussed the challenges enrolling and graduating larger numbers of Black, Latino and low-income students, with frequent nods to the cost of diversity and the foundation leaders in the room. 

One reality underpinning the event was that even before the Supreme Court banned the use of affirmative action in college admissions, the higher education system struggled to achieve equitable outcomes. Research released days before the summit found that students from the top 1% were twice as likely as middle-class students with similar standardized test scores to attend a handful of selective colleges that have an outsized influence on the nation’s leadership. 

Much of that difference had to do with advantages colleges gave them in admissions, including viewing the non-academic qualifications of students who attend private high schools more favorably, nudges for recruited athletes and legacy preferences for students whose parents attended a given school. 

Throughout the day, higher education leaders and officials lamented that colleges with the largest resources to push students to and through school – like those that were the focus of the study – educate a small share of the nation’s college students. At the same time, the community colleges and regional public schools doing the yeoman’s work of educating the nation’s low-income students and students of color often struggle to receive funding. 

The future of longstanding admissions practices that can tip the scale in favor of wealthy students, like giving a preference to legacy applicants, also pervaded officials’ and college leaders’ remarks. Those policies have received increased scrutiny in the wake of the affirmative action decision, with some schools dropping them. The Department of Education is also investigating a complaint from a group of civil rights organizations about Harvard University’s legacy policy. 

Cardona urged “more of our elite institutions with incredibly high graduation rates step up their enrollment of Pell grant recipients, rankings be damned.” As part of that process the schools could consider changing the weight they place on various elements of a student’s application, he said. 

Cardona said he didn’t have anything against legacy students who were successful in high school, but he added, “I am in awe of the straight A student,” who attended a low-income high school and “spent hours on the bus every week to take an AP class that wasn’t offered at her school.”

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who served as chancellor of California Community Colleges for six years, decried participants’ use of the word elite throughout the day to refer to schools that accept a small share of students. Instead, he said, the word should be reserved for colleges that educate the bulk of students in their community. 

“That is elite, the others are rejective,” he said.  

The head of one of those selective schools, Christina Paxson, the president of Brown University, highlighted some of the steps her college has taken to increase the number of low-income students in its ranks. Those include meeting 100% of students’ financial need and not including loans in financial-aid packages. 

Still, she acknowledged Brown only serves a small slice of the college-going population, which means a small share of low-income students are getting access to this generous financial aid. “We’re lucky we’re doing things that a lot of public institutions and other institutions simply can’t afford to do,” Paxon said. “I’m a huge advocate of increasing support for public institutions.”

Other college leaders acknowledged how funding challenges at institutions of all types can play a role in the students they admit.

“When we think about why do some schools give a leg up to legacies, why do the top 1% get admitted more often, more quickly – because of money,” said L. Song Richardson, the president of Colorado College. “Full pay students across the country are gold. Period.” 

Richardson described getting rid of legacy admissions as “tinkering around the edges” of fixing the higher education system. She urged the audience to go beyond axing legacy preferences and test-optional policies to “fix the inequitable and broken” education system. 

“I am a fan of affirmative action, I was a beneficiary of affirmative action and I will also say that I think affirmative action made us complacent,” she said. 

College and state leaders highlighted some of the tactics they’ve used to successfully boost the share of underrepresented students in colleges and universities. None of the strategies are new, and there are reasons – including cost, bureaucracy and a lack of will – why they still haven’t been more widely adopted. 

Leaders vow to double down on long standing strategies

Still, stakeholders emphasized their intention to “double down” on these tactics in the wake of the decision, including: 

Increasing college affordability: Cardona encouraged college leaders to expand need-based financial aid to help remove the barrier of cost for students of earning their degree. Various state and public college leaders also touted programs that make their public colleges free or nearly free for a wide swath of residents. 

Boosting community college transfer: Though students are often encouraged to start the college education at a community college to get a sense of what they want to study and to save money, transferring from a two-year college to a four-year school and then graduating in a timely manner can be challenging. 

That’s because four-year colleges may not take credits students earn at community colleges or they take them but don’t apply them towards a student’s degree, slowing down their progress. And that’s even when four-year schools provide a path to admission. 

Since Black, Latino and low-income students are overrepresented in community colleges, making it easier for community college students to transfer to four-year schools could go a long way in diversifying those campuses. 

“For us transfer is of crucial importance,” said Juan Salgado, the chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago. “We can’t allow them to have to redo things they’ve already done,” he said of community college transfer students. 

“We have high quality education at our community colleges, accept our high quality students,” he added. 

Direct admissions: Dennis Olson, the commissioner of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, shared his state’s experience with direct admissions, or letting students know they’ve gotten into a college before they apply. 

Minnesota is expanding a pilot program the state launched a few years ago providing students on track to graduate high school with a list of colleges that they’ve been admitted to, he said. All they have to do is fill out a free application to claim their spot. 

For some students, whose families may have little experience with college or who don’t see themselves represented among the nation’s college students, applying can be daunting. 

Merhawi Tesfai, a first year doctoral student at the University of California Los Angeles and a student representative on the UC system’s board of regents, offered evidence of that dynamic first hand. Tesfai transferred to UCLA from a community college for his first degree, but he almost didn’t have the opportunity. 

“When I first was applying to UCLA I almost didn’t do it because I knew how competitive it was,” he said. “I’m glad I took the chance.” 

Direct admissions helps to eliminate some of that angst, Olson said. It’s “that dream school saying you’re ready for us and we’re ready for you, take the next step.”