Beyond Affirmative Action: A New Horizon

After years of travail for the plaintiffs, the Supreme Court announced its decisions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA v. Harvard) and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina on June 29, 2023. The 6–2 majority in SFFA v. Harvard ruled that the race-conscious admission policies of elite institutions in the U.S. violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and were thus unconstitutional. As succinctly put by Chief Justice Roberts in the majority opinion, “[most universities] have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

While Affirmative Action (AA) had the good intention of uplifting marginalized communities and remedying historical disparities in higher education and employment when it was first put into practice in the 1960s, it has failed to accomplish its original objectives, while creating more discrimination in society through over-generalizations that look at students as a group rather than individuals. The majority opinion in the SFFA v. Harvard documents several crucial shortfalls, including the judgment that “the use of these opaque racial categories” means that colleges would “prefer a class with 15% of students from Mexico over a class with 10% of students from several Latin American countries,” merely because the former option provides more Hispanic students.

With lawsuits arising to contest the paradoxical existence of legacy admissions in a country founded on meritocracy, we are finally dismantling the archaic, moribund structures surrounding higher education, brick by brick.

Moreover, Roberts argues that colleges believe there’s an “inherent benefit” in race, stating “Harvard’s admissions process rests on the pernicious stereotype that ‘a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer.’” The dissent echoes the perpetuation of such views, which according to Roberts would manifest in the form of “a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin.”

Most troubling of all, a close examination of Harvard’s admissions data from 2009-2018 yields problematic findings. The relevant graph in one of the amicus briefs demonstrates that the proportions for White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian students were virtually unchanged during that decade, despite drastic fluctuations in the populations of these demographics. Not only does this mean that the AA policies have failed to bring more diversity to college campuses under the current population composition, but the rigidity of Harvard’s admissions essentially replicates the racial quotas expressly prohibited in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978).

Another issue with the status quo is that it completely neglects the warning of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor when she penned the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). She explained that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” adding that the “Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” 20 years after Grutter, the same policies were still being implemented in the same way, implying two things. First, the policies have utterly failed to improve the conditions of communities they were intended to benefit. Second, government institutions are either not aware of the inherently biased tendencies of these policies or are willing to let the current situation persist.

In adherence with America’s core founding principle of individualism, we have the onus of evaluating every individual according to one’s unique life experiences and merits, not through a lens that denigrates one to a mere component of a collective group, determined by one’s creed or other intrinsic qualities.

Of course, the critiques above are not to say that AA has no merit at all. Generally speaking, diversity leads to more beneficial outcomes in educational environments, and a student’s background and the community one belongs to should still play a role in admissions. However, they must be looked at on an individual basis in order to avoid the trope of stereotyping. Wash U’s adjustment in its application to include supplemental essays about one’s community and personal circumstances immaculately achieves such goals. In adherence with America’s core founding principle of individualism, we have the onus of evaluating every individual according to one’s unique life experiences and merits, not through a lens that denigrates one to a mere component of a collective group, determined by one’s creed or other intrinsic qualities.

In fact, some form of AA is needed. Wealth has a strong positive correlation with educational outcomes, so it is imperative to shift to socioeconomic AA that accounts for disparities across social classes. While proponents of traditional AA argue that socioeconomic status is correlated with race, they fail to recognize differences within ethnic groups. For instance, among Asian Americans, Indian Americans have some of the lowest poverty rates in the U.S., at 6%. However, Burmese and Mongolian Americans have some of the highest poverty rates in all of America, both at 25%, much higher than the national average of 12.4%. For these reasons, this new version of AA would inherit the benefits of its past, uplifting low income students into the domain of higher education, while accounting for individual differences. The implementation would not be difficult either, since most colleges already allow students to file their families’ income status during processes such as financial aid. Such a system would optimally provide social mobility for people of all backgrounds on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. While this change has not occurred yet, we are trending in the right direction. With lawsuits arising to contest the paradoxical existence of legacy admissions in a country founded on meritocracy, we are finally dismantling the archaic structures surrounding higher education, brick by brick.

So far, I’ve only discussed the potential alterations that impact college admissions. But we must not limit ourselves to just the scope of higher education. AA has long been a fragile band-aid, enshrouding root issues that remain unresolved. For instance, the racial achievement gap in education between students of color and white students has been static for almost 30 years, despite concerted efforts to close it. The precedence of short-term results in current policymaking, as highlighted by Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, meant that schools failed to develop in the long-run and prepare students for the future. In light of these critical failures, the truth is that America’s entire education system needs a radical overhaul.

In recent years, we’ve seen huge disparities between the array of opportunities offered at public and private schools. Private schools have used their connections and resources to further entrench their pipelines to elite institutions, funneling more students to prestigious universities. On the other hand, public schools, especially those in low-income districts, have experienced nothing but sharp declines in educational quality and student outcomes: a myriad of factors including difficulties onset by the pandemic combine to exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline for students in these places, reducing the chances of kids who grow up in these neighborhoods to ever find their “ticket out the ghetto.”

Rather than lowering educational standards and playing identity politics in the realm of higher education, we must revive the American education system in a meaningful way to prepare this generation for the impending era of AI.

Moreover, the observed deterioration in public schools has been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic. An NPR article from 2022 quantified that reading and math scores in public schools have plummeted to levels achieved nearly two decades ago, while a McKinsey & Company report found that these learning gaps disproportionately affected primarily Black and low-income districts. In response, schools have been watering down their curriculums to help students fare better. But have these measures worked? Oregon recently announced that students no longer had to “demonstrate mastery in reading, writing, and math” to graduate, citing statistics that these tests harm students of color. Merely emblematic of the problem, these so-called “reforms” for equity do not fix anything; they will only leave our students even more behind, completely unprepared for the domain of higher education and future careers.

The core of the issues with America’s public education system lies with money. Currently, the chief determinant of the educational quality in a district is its affluence. How much property tax is paid on average in a given zip code is the primary method of funding public schools. For the moment, at least, public schools in wealthy districts still maintain a decent quality of education and send most of their students to college. Thus, a feasible solution is to use these schools as a benchmark. We can identify the amount they spend per pupil and drastically increase federal or state funding to schools that lack resources right now so that they reach the same level.

We inevitably have to redirect billions in funds to educational subsidies. While this solution will be unlikely due to the lobbying of the military industrial complex and other political concerns, the money would ideally come from our defense spending. Fiscal federalism is another option, with the federal government creating incentives for states to comply with the requirements of funding. The last resort is to levy an “Education Tax” vis-à-vis the rise of AI, which will inevitably face opposition from the public but is exigent with artificial intelligence projected to replace as many as 73 million jobs in the U.S. by 2030. We need to manifest these reforms into reality as soon as possible so that we can better prepare the next generation for an uncertain future. Coupled with the surge of generative AI, public schools ought to use the potential extra funding to tailor their curriculums to emerging technologies, teaching students how to harness these tools and utilize them to improve learning experiences such as through the implementation of basic computer science classes. This ensures students will possess the necessary skills to remain competitive in tomorrow’s job market.

America’s education system is at a crossroads right now. It faces immense challenges to get students up to par with the standards of modern society while simultaneously struggling with the imperative of providing equity for all. The antiquated policies of AA have finally faded away, and it is now the dawn of a new era. In conjunction with socioeconomic AA policies that should logically arise, the U.S. federal government has the obligation of providing every public school district with adequate funding, so that no child is truly left behind. Rather than lowering educational standards and playing identity politics in the realm of higher education, we must revive the American education system in a meaningful way to prepare this generation for the impending era of AI.

Leo Huang ‘26 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at h.yuliu@wustl.edu.

Feature Image Source: Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times