Higher Ed Braces for Supreme Court Affirmative Action Decision
The Supreme Court is expected to deliver a decision on race-conscious admission practices used to promote a diverse student body. According to GBH’s Kirk Carrapezza, who reviews the background of the debate and the effects of a potential ban, the case could “upend 40 years of legal precedent and fundamentally alter the landscape of higher education by making race considerations in college admissions illegal.” For NPR, journalist Jay Caspian Kang discusses affirmative action’s origins in the civil rights era, what it does and doesn’t achieve, and what a more equitable education system could look like.
A new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce explains that race conscious admissions have never been an adequate remedy for the vast inequities in American higher education. The Chronicle covers the report, which reads, “The Supreme Court will have ripped the bandage off the wound, leaving us no choice but to tend to the segregation, inequality, and bias in education and broader society” that hinder underrepresented minority students applying to selective colleges. If race conscious admissions are banned, the report authors argue that sweeping reforms will be required to offset the declines in underrepresented minority students. However, selective colleges, the report says, “would have to take steps they have been loath to consider, such as eliminating admissions preferences for legacy students, student-athletes, and other groups now favored, such as wealthy students who won’t need financial aid.”
The Washington Post explores the possibility of an exception for race-conscious admissions at military academies. More than 30 prominent retired generals and admirals argue in an amicus brief the court should uphold race-conscious policies because of the importance of diversity within military leadership. In oral arguments in October, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar said, “Our armed forces know from hard experience that when we do not have a diverse officer corps that is broadly reflective of a diverse fighting force, our strength and cohesion and military readiness suffer. So it is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity within the officer corps. And, at present, it’s not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions, including at the nation’s service academies.” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked whether “it might make sense for us not to decide the service academy issue in this case?”
For WBUR’s The Common, MassLive Reporting Fellow Alvin Buyinza discusses how a ban on race-conscious admissions could impact diversity on many of the highly selective campuses in the “college town” Boston area. Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey created a new advisory council to provide guidance on the pending decision. “We want to send a clear message to students of all backgrounds – you are welcome here in Massachusetts,” Gov. Maura Healey said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor the Supreme Court and any future decisions, and work with the advisory council to inform any additional action needed at the state level to keep Massachusetts welcoming and inclusive of all students.”
In a Student Voice column in the Hechinger Report, Erick Ramirez Manriquez, a sociology PhD student at UC San Diego studying the impact of race on students’ identity construction and educational attainment, draws on his experience in California after the state banned affirmative action. He writes that, “If affirmative action is banned nationally, we will decrease the chances of finding Latino and Black mentors in prestigious colleges and occupations.” And he fears that “Black and Latino students will begin believing, as I did, that they belong in lower-tiered educational institutions and occupations.” He states, “If we genuinely want to provide transformative change and move forward to producing critical and diverse leaders, we must allow affirmative action to give historically marginalized students an opportunity to no longer be historically marginalized.”
Mental and Emotional Health
NPR Up First explores how colleges looking to improve retention and grappling with a student mental health crisis are considering “ungrading” or doing away with traditional letter grades. This can also mean getting a written assessment of skills throughout the semester and reading about how your skills developed; deciding how you want to be assessed; and could mean more standardized pass/no-pass options.
According to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2021, suicide and homicide rates for children and young adults ages 10-24 in the US were the highest they’ve been in decades. Suicide and homicide were the second and third leading causes of death for this age group. The homicide rate for this age group in 2021 was the highest it’s been since 1997, and the suicide rate was the highest on record since 1968.
Other news:
The New York Times reports that, despite the emerging opinion that social media in some forms can have negative effects on teenagers’ mental health, the concern has little evidence to back up the claim, leavings parents, policymakers and other adults without guidance.
In the recent health and wellness–centered Student Voice survey in Inside Higher Ed, two-thirds of students (66%) strongly or somewhat agree that they know where to seek help on campus if they or a friend are experiencing a mental health crisis. Students who say their mental health is poor are also most likely to strongly disagree that they know where to go on campus in case of a mental health emergency. Regarding the implications for campus mental health awareness efforts, Angela M. Stowe, director of student counseling services at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, advocates a “multimodal, saturation-based approach to building and increasing this kind of knowledge across an institution.” This includes promotion by faculty and staff members, using multiple channels like fliers, social media, emails, and tabling events, and also utilizing apps and other technology solutions.
In a tongue-in-cheek op-ed in the New York Times, Dr. Garfinkle-Crowell, a psychiatrist in private practice and founding director of the Academy for Medicine and the Humanities at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, writes about the way her young female patients have “leaned on Taylor Swift as a kind of big sister through the daily agonies of being a teenage girl: unsteady friendships, the 24-hour firing squad of the internet and, of course, the endless longing to feel seen and valued.” Using Taylor Swift lyrics and song titles, Garfinkle-Crowell explains that she is “glad, both for my patients in their midnights and for their populous, shimmering community, that they have someone so articulate, so generous and so endlessly present to talk to.”
Times Higher Education highlights climate anxiety as a student mental health and well-being issue and notes that taking action can help. “Universities are a leading source of research on climate change and how to mitigate its effects, and have acted boldly with steep greenhouse gas emission reductions. To educate, engage and encourage our students to take action is one of the most important roles we have as university leaders.” Research has shown that taking action to address climate change is one of the best ways to address the stress it causes. A study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology states that engaging in “pro-environmental behaviors […] has been shown to attenuate climate anxiety.”
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
In an interactive report, The Hechinger Report analyzes the representation of underrepresented minority students at flagship universities, showing that whether or not they consider race as a factor in admissions decisions, many have had poor records enrolling Black and Latino students. The University of Arkansas, Fayetteville will discontinue its diversity, equity, and inclusion office, Chancellor Charles Robinson announced in an email to the campus Tuesday.
As reported in Higher Ed Dive, effective August 1st, the diversity office’s five staff members will be reassigned to other divisions that focus on student success, human resources, advancement, and equal opportunity. The goal, Robinson said in the email, is for these departments to work together to “expand programs around access, opportunity, and developing a culture of belonging for all students and employees.” Robinson is the university’s first Black chancellor and previously was the vice chancellor for diversity.
Last week, Texas banned diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at its public colleges, the latest state to do so in a national conservative campaign to curb these programs across the country.
In Wisconsin, a fight over DEI programs in the state assembly temporarily blocked the state budget vote. Robin Vos, the Republican Speaker of the State Assembly, proposed cutting $32 million in funding from the University of Wisconsin System next year, a figure he said was equal to the system’s spending on DEI efforts. Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, threatened to veto the entire state budget if the Legislature passed a version that included the cuts.
New legislation in Texas means Transgender athletes at public colleges will no longer be able to participate in sports that correspond with their gender identities. Gov. Greg Abbott said the state was acting to “to safeguard women’s collegiate sports,” despite few transgender college athletes having openly competed nationwide.
The Florida Department of Education Office of Articulation has requested that the College Board audit and potentially modify AP courses to comply with the new Florida laws that restrict classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. This comes several months after the state targeted the AP African American studies course for high school students. Last week, The College Board, which oversees AP nationwide, released a letter that it sent to Florida. The letter stands by the sequence in the psychology course that covers gender and sexual orientation in a unit on developmental psychology. It said: “Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics.” “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.” “We don’t know if the state of Florida will ban this course,” the organization said in a statement Thursday to the AP community. “To AP teachers in Florida, we are heartbroken by the possibility of Florida students being denied the opportunity to participate in this or any other AP course. To AP teachers everywhere, please know we will not modify any of the 40 AP courses — from art to history to science — in response to regulations that would censor college-level standards for credit, placement, and career readiness.”
Student Success
A June survey from McKinsey & Company found that, globally, two-thirds (65%) of students want part of their learning experience to be online. Researchers also found the primary reasons students did not enroll in online courses was because of engagement challenges. Many say online programs are not motivating and they have been easily bored or more easily distracted. The report found that in the U.S., students value asynchronous classes, online program structure, and up-to-date content the most in their online courses. High-tech or expensive features like virtual reality, or simulations, are not ranked highly by respondents.
College Affordability
The Washington Post produces a background on everything to know ahead of the Supreme Court ruling on student loan forgiveness.
Three in five states placed limits or freezes on tuition rate increases at public four-year colleges between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2022, according to a report released Tuesday from the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association. Tuition freezes have become a more popular policy in recent years than just placing limits on tuition increases.
