Taking Action to Admit
UCLA tweaks its admissions process to stop the black student enrollment decline
University of Michigan administrators also have started using a demographic software program called Descriptor PLUS from the College Board, the SAT company. Using census and College Board data, the program helps schools find and target prospective students from disadvantaged or underrepresented neighborhoods and high schools. The Descriptor data include the percentage of "nonminority" students, family income, and parents' educational levels in those areas. Descriptor PLUS, which costs $15,000 a year and is currently in use by about 40 U.S. colleges, "helps us identify clusters of students without using race, ethnicity, or gender," says Lester Monts, senior vice provost for academic affairs at Michigan.
Education officials in states with bans are helping one another. In February, the University of Michigan convened a meeting of counselors and financial aid experts from the University of Texas, the University of Washington, UC-Berkeley, and the University of Georgia to swap ideas.
State schools are working to fund scholarships through private organizations. Peter Taylor, a former UC regent and former president of the UCLA Alumni Association who helped spearhead UCLA's massive fundraising campaign, says, "We went to some of UCLA's fervent and longtime supporters, but we also went to African-American alumni and said, 'If you are upset, it's time to put your money on the line.'"
Overall, at schools where affirmative action admissions have ended, a combination of enrollment strategies will most likely take their place. But experts say the emphasis should be on closing the "achievement gap"— differences in things such as SAT scores—between minority students and their white counterparts in the primary grades. "A hope was that the end of affirmative action would lead to increased attention and action at the K-12 level," said Anthony Lising Antonio of the Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research. "But we haven't seen that."
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