University of Michigan Avoids Any Big Diversity Drop from Preference Ban

Back in 2006, when Michiganders were voting on a proposal to ban public colleges and other state and local agencies from using affirmative-action preferences, the University of Michigan warned that the passage of such a measure would lead to a huge drop in black, Hispanic, and Native American enrollments on its Ann Arbor campus. The university issued similar warnings in previous years when its ability to use affirmative-action preferences was being challenged in court.

Preliminary admissions numbers for the coming fall recently released by U of M show that such predictions have not come true. In the first full admissions cycle after it was precluded from considering applicants' race, the share of its incoming freshman class that is black, Hispanic, or Native American fell from 10.85 percent to 10.47 percent--a decline, yes, but small enough to go largely unnoticed.

A statement issued by the university described several steps it had taken to try to maintain racial and ethnic diversity. Its undergraduate-admissions office hired additional employees, expanded its hours of operation, and used Descriptor PLUS, a geodemographic search tool developed by the College Board, to identify high schools and neighborhoods that are underrepresented on its campus. The university also stepped up its outreach in communities such as Detroit. (See full Chronicle of Higher Education blog coverage, with a link to the university's statement, here.)

Given that the University of Michigan's enrollment has never been as racially diverse as the state it serves, it's worth asking why Michigan did not take such steps earlier. As the book Color and Money discusses in depth, it often has taken the shock to the system delivered by ban on affirmative-action preferences to get colleges to get serious about finding workable alternatives. When they do get serious, the workable alternatives suddenly appear.

Special News Bulletin: Not All Asian Americans Are Alike!!!

A report released this month by a collaborative involving the College Board and two New York University institutes tells the world what just about anyone who reads a newspaper or even leaves their house has known for decades: the stereotype of Asian Americans as the "model minority" is horribly simplistic. While some segments of the Asian American population, such as those whose families came over from Japan or India, are doing incredibly well in educational and economic terms, others, such as Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian Americans, are struggling with low education levels and high levels of poverty.

The report offers valuable demographic information about various segments of the Asian American population, but it is also missing a few things. It says little about how colleges tend to lump all Asian American populations together--by giving them just one "Asian American" box to check on applications--and then, often, hold them to admissions standards that are every bit as high as, if not higher than, those applied to white students. In its discussion of affirmative action, the report made no reference to a recent study (discussed here) that found Asian American enrollments rose at several elite public universities after they were barred from considering applicants' race.

Chronicle of Higher Education coverage of the report is available to subscribers here.

A Dissident Voice Roils a Disney World Diversity Conference

This year's National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education witnessed some excitement beyond what was promised by its locale, Disney World.

One of the nation's leading proponents of diversity in higher education, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, director of Brown University's Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America, delivered a speech taking conference attendees to task for not doing more to advocate for black, Hispanic, and Native American students and faculty members. She went so far as to suggest that colleges let people attend this attend this annual conference—typically held in family-friendly tourist destinations—to reward them for not making waves.

Calling herself "a hard-nosed critic from the inside," Ms. Hu-DeHart said, "Let's face it: Diversity has created jobs for all of us. It is a career. It is an industry."

"We do what we need to keep our jobs," she said. "But as long as we keep doing our job the way we are told to do it, we are covering up for our universities."

"You all are covering up," she said. "You all are complicit in this."

She alleged that people who work in college offices dealing with diversity and minority issues help their institutions create the impression that they are far more concerned with diversity and equity than is actually the case. Her advice to the college chief diversity officers in the crowd? Quit and renegotate your contract to give you more power.

Chronicle of Higher Education subscribers can find full coverage of her speech here and an analytical story following up on the conference here.

New Federal Report Sheds Light on Hispanic Immigrants' Education Problems

A new report from the U.S. Department of Education finds that the nation's rapidly growing Hispanic population is having some serious academic problems, mainly due to the difficulties many Hispanic immigrants are having in assimilating.

As of 2007, just 34 percent of the nation's Hispanic population in the 25-to-29 age bracket had completed at least some college, compared with 66 percent of white and 50 percent of black U.S. residents in the same age group, the report found. Although Hispanic people have made some gains in this area since the early 1970s, their progress has been slower than that of other groups, so that gaps between white and Hispanic students have widened.

Where the report differentiates between native and foreign-born Hispanics, its findings make clear that many of the educational problems being broadly attributed to the Hispanic population are mainly the problems of Hispanic immigrants. In looking at the Hispanic population in the 16-to-24 age range, for example, the report finds that 12 percent of those born here, and 36 percent of those born abroad, have left high school with neither a diploma or GED.

Hispanics born outside the United States account for 7 percent of the nation's 16- to 24-year-old population, but they make up 28 percent of all U.S. residents in that age group who are not enrolled in high school and have not earned a high-school diploma.