Over the past 50 years, affirmative action has helped transform college student populations from monotone to vibrant and diverse.
The positive impact of affirmative action on the diversity of college campuses is hard to deny. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that affirmative action programs have doubled, and in some cases tripled, the number of minority applicants to colleges and universities. When California banned affirmative action in 1998, minority admittance at UC Berkeley dropped 61 percent, and, at UCLA, it fell 36 percent.
Recently, Michigan banned affirmative action for admittance to public universities, and the U.S. Supreme Court may rule on it on a federal level soon. The process that was created during the height of the Civil Rights movement in America may soon be officially considered outdated, and even unfair, by the higher judicial powers.
So if affirmative action appears to be on its way out, what can colleges do to ensure their campuses still have enough variety in race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic backgrounds? A few initiatives that could help bridge the loss of affirmative action gap include:
Targeted high school recruiting
The demographics of high schools are readily available, along with the socioeconomic status of them. Colleges that are serious about recruiting a diverse population should target schools with students in the particular demographic they would like to see more of on their campuses. This will not automatically translate into more of those students, but it will mean more consideration from these high schoolers of the colleges that seem to want to help them succeed the most.
First-generation college student support
