The Research Catalogue
New Findings and Insights on Institutional Practices and Academic Success

This is a digest of sources on issues addressed by the AAAS Capacity Center.  It is updated periodically, sometimes with commentary.  Web links, some accessible only to subscribers, are provided wherever possible, though we cannot assure their viability.

“What Would Ending Affirmative Action Do?”  The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 17, 2005, p. A28, www.blackwell-synergy.co/toc/ssqu/86/2

Disregarding race in college admissions would cause sharp drops in the number of black and Hispanic students at elite institutions, according to a new study [in Social Science Quarterly] by two researchers at Princeton University.  In a race-neutral admissions environment, the number of blacks admitted to our top colleges and universities would drop by nearly two-thirds. (Also see coverage in Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, June 16, 2005, info@jbhe.com)

“The Decline of Affirmative Action,” Inside Higher Ed, June 2, 2005, www.insidehighered.com/news/2004/06/02/survey

Starting around 1995, the percentage of colleges that considered students’ minority status in admissions fell dramatically—so dramatically that it appears [based on College Board survey data] to have gone beyond those states where court rulings or constitutional amendments barred the use of racial preferences.

The results showed that the percentage of private institutions that considered race or ethnicity in the admissions process dropped from 57 percent in 1986 to 45 percent in 2003.  [Study coauthor Eric Grodsky said] the changes "could also be a function in the political landscape at the state level or on the board of regents." He also noted that through the use of percent plans or socioeconomic affirmative action, "some public institutions found that they no longer had to engage in race-based affirmative action to bring in a matriculating class they viewed as sufficiently diverse."  (Also see coverage in Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, June 9, 2005, info@jbhe.com)

“Diversity as Strategy,” Harvard Business Review, September 2004, pp. 1-10.

Through the creation of Workforce Diversity Task Forces, led by its Worldwide Management Council, IBM expanded minority markets by promoting the diversity of its own workforce.  The author, David A. Thomas, calls task forces, what could be thought of as an affinity group with a difference, a “model business practice.”

“Waiting to Attend College: Undergraduates Who Delay Their Postsecondary Enrollment,” NCES 2005152, June 16, 2005 http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005152

This report describes the characteristics and outcomes of students who delay enrollment in postsecondary education. It covers the ways in which the demographic, enrollment, and attendance patterns of students who delay postsecondary enrollment differ from their peers who enroll immediately after high school graduation.  While only a quarter of those who delayed entry first enrolled in bachelor’s degree programs, over half of those who enrolled immediately did so. Further, 40 percent of delayed entrants earned some kind of   postsecondary credential compared with 58 percent of immediate entrants. 

“Opportunity in a Democratic Society: A National Agenda,” Third Annual Nancy Cantor Lecture on Intellectual Diversity, delivered May 18, 2005, at the University of Michigan. http://rca.ucsd.edu/speeches/FinalMichiganPaper.pdf

Richard Atkinson, president emeritus of the University of California, asserts: “Two lessons can be derived from the California experience. The first is that race-neutral admissions policies drastically and demonstrably limit the ability of elite universities to reflect the diversity of a multicultural state in any meaningful way. The second is that we will never resolve the conflict over affirmative action by an appeal to the values invoked on both sides of the issue. The dynamics of the public debate create a situation in which compromise is impossible because each side claims the moral high ground (p. 6).

In broadest terms, it seems clear that Proposition 209 succeeded because its supporters shifted the ground of the debate from a discussion of broad public policy to one of individual rights. They pointed out that affirmative action entails costs, and those costs were unfair to the individuals who were not admitted as a result of the University’s race-attentive policies (p. 11).

We need a strategy that recognizes the continuing corrosive force of racial inequality but does not stop there. We need a strategy grounded in the broad American tradition of opportunity because opportunity is a value that Americans understand and support. We need a strategy which makes it clear that our society has a stake in whether every American succeeds-and every American, in turn, has a stake in our society” (pp. 17-18). 

What seems to divide people is the application of group characteristics to decisions about individuals.  It''''s complicated—we cannot be divorced from our "history" (in racial, ethnic, gender terms)—yet we are wary of over-weighting history in determining one''''s "life chances" (as Max Weber put it).

Diversity and the Ph.D.:  A Review of Efforts to Broaden Race and Ethnicity in U.S. Doctoral Education.  Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, May 2005, www.woodrow.org/newsroom/News_Releases/WW_Diversity_PhD_ExecSum.pdf

“Despite extraordinary support within and beyond academia for affirmative action admissions programs—as evidenced by the University of Michigan case—court challenges have had a significant chilling effect, resulting in a dilution of resources and a weakening of institutional will.”

Foundation President Robert Weisbuch notes:

"These alarming figures make it clear that, while the next generation of college students will include dramatically more students of color, their teachers will remain overwhelmingly white.  We at Woodrow Wilson believe that this situation reflects a national crisis:  the continuing near-exclusion of a third of our population form intellectual leadership."