Austin, Texas
While the University of Texas and Texas A&M
University have experienced a decline in minority applicants because of
the Hopwood ruling, officials at Stephen F. Austin State University in
eastern Texas anticipate an increase in minority enrollment this fall.
“I don’t think Hopwood is going to be of a significant impact,”
said Roger Bilow, director of admissions at the small independent
university in Nacogdoches, about 150 miles northeast of Houston.
Although Bilow does not have a racial breakdown of the applicants
for fall 1997, he said aggressive minority recruiting has increased
campus diversity and will maintain it despite the court ruling that
ended affirmative action in recruiting, admissions, financial aid and
scholarships in Texas higher education. Last fall, 892 of the
university’s 11,690 students were African American, a larger percentage
of the student body than those who attended the University of Texas
(UT) or Texas A&M.
But a more important factor may be the school’s size.
“We don’t have the luxury of a cap on enrollment [like UT and Texas
A&M],” Bilow said, so the university can offer partial scholarships
to more students and be more flexible in admissions. The other two
institutions are flooded with admission applications each year and, as
a result, they have set limits on the number of students they accept
annually and have more stringent admissions requirements.
Discussions about Hopwood often have focused on the state’s
flagship universities because although historically they have enrolled
few minorities, they receive more state appropriations than other
public universities. UT and Texas A&M enrolled about 48,000 and
38,000 students last year, respectively. The universities also have
been negatively perceived by many African Americans because of
segregation and ongoing, highly publicized racial incidents in recent
years. Hopwood, which originated at the UT law school, exacerbates the
perception that the university is not welcoming to minorities.
