Observations on the Report “Undergraduate Admissions Process”: A Document Prepared for the Board of Regents by UW-Madison Admissions Director Rob Seltzer, dated July 6, 2001 Memo dated August 28, 2001Will campus administrators succeed in defending UW-Madison’s undergraduate admissions process at the Board of Regents next meeting? Can they continue to justify using race/ethnicity as a basis for accepting and rejecting applicants?
The Board’s response may hinge on a recent report (July 6, 2001) describing the admissions process at UW-Madison. That report, prepared at Regent request by Admissions Director Rob Seltzer, is disappointing. Its 1 ½ pages provide little more information than is already found in the campus admissions brochure (of doctored photo fame). Moreover, Seltzer’s description differs importantly from that offered by Chancellor Wiley at a mid-March meeting when admissions policy was discussed by three Regents, Seltzer, Wiley, and other UW officials. (For details, see the March, April, and May memos to the Board referred to in my cover letter.)
The report’s vagueness is hardly surprising. At that same March meeting, the Regents asked for all available documents describing the admissions process. In replying, Seltzer made the startling claim that no written information is available because his office relies on an “oral tradition.”
Asked to elaborate, Seltzer said newly hired staff members learn how to perform their duties by working directly with current staff members. Hence, his office has no need for any written material. But, one wonders, if the admissions process is so important and complex, how can the large Admissions Office staff operate effectively and fairly without written guidance?
The Seltzer report offers the usual defense for using race/ethnicity in admissions decisions. That defense relies heavily on two assertions. First, diversity produces important educational benefits for students. Second, greater diversity is needed to ensure that employers hire our graduates. Yet, the report provides no evidence to support the validity of either assertion.
Though it seems reasonable to believe that greater diversity may produce educational benefits, the difficulties of documenting those benefits and their magnitudes are formidable. Those difficulties are revealed by the Center for Equal Opportunity’s devastating critique of the University of Michigan’s extensive effort to provide such documentation in its brief by U of M Professor Gurin. To the best of my knowledge, we know little or nothing about the positive educational benefits of diversity at UW-Madison.
The other assertion is also problematic. Employers may say they value diversity and hence will not recruit non-targeted graduates because our graduates have not been sufficiently exposed to minorities during their collegiate years. That was the burden of the comments by several large employers presented at a Regent meeting several years ago. But, the key question is whether these employers are acting on what they say. Have they ceased their recruitment at UW-Madison? Or have they reduced it for the reasons they stated? A check with campus career office officials in several of our colleges is instructive. They report that recruiters say they wish there were more minority graduates to interview and hire. Yet, apparently none of the recruiters have said they will stop or have stopped recruiting here because there are not enough minority graduates to make their visits worthwhile. Nor have they said they will stop or have stopped recruiting our non-minority graduates because of their lack of extensive interaction with targeted minority students. In short, the argument that lack of diversity is seriously narrowing the employment prospects of our graduates does not hold up to empirical scrutiny.
What seems so obviously lacking in the defense of diversity is any mention of the benefits diversity brings to minority students who have been admitted because of their race/ethnicity. Surely, the most important consideration in admitting students is how they as individuals can benefit from their educational experience here, not how their presence on campus serves institutional purposes, such as increasing minority enrollment so the campus leaders can congratulate themselves on having achieved a race/ethnically diverse student body.
The sad fact is that a sizeable proportion of targeted minorities are admitted and recruited based on their race/ethnicity, without careful attention to their prospects for success at this campus and eventual graduation. If this lack of attention had just recently been discovered, it might be excused. In fact, campus officials have known for decades, but failed to acknowledge. that the prospects for success among minorities admitted on the basis of their race/ethnicity are embarrassingly low relative to minorities admitted competitively (without regard to their race/ethnicity). While many factors contribute to this difference, disparities in prior academic achievement are a major contributing factor.
The Seltzer report’s less explicit defense of diversity rests on the belief that using race/ethnicity is “okay.” The reason given is that that race/ethnicity is only one among many factors used in admitting under-represented minorities (blacks, hispanics, American Indians, and SE Asians). This is the so-called “Bakke defense” whose many weakness have been pointed out, by among others Dershowitz and Hanft in their law review article included in the packet of materials mailed to Regents by Regent Mohs. The question remains: Is using race/ethnicity ever appropriate in making admissions decisions?
The Seltzer report is also inadequate because it glosses over three crucial considerations.
One is faculty legislation on admissions policy. Both the Seltzer report and the admission brochure fail to mention an important faculty-established criterion for evaluating applicants. This criterion is expressed in phrases such as “reasonable probability of success”, “maximizing the success of students”, “likelihood of graduation”, and “likelihood of academic success”. The only reason for admitting students is the informed prediction they are equipped to succeed and graduate.
Yet, the evidence shows that minority students admitted based on their race/ethnicity are much less likely to succeed than are other minority students, those who are admitted on the same basis as non-minority applicants. Both the High School Rank Percentile and the Composite ACT Score are good predictors of academic success. Yet, much less weight seems to be given to these predictors in evaluating targeted minority applicants than is the case for non-targeted applicants. Is the Admissions Office ignoring a critical faculty-established criterion for admission merely to boost minority enrollment?
Second is the concept of fairness. In a democratic society everybody should be treated equally, including young people applying to UW-Madison. This means that applicants should be evaluated for their likelihood of success, not because of skin color or ethnicity.
Yet, a close reading of the Seltzer report reveals that race/ethnicity is a decisive factor. Minority applicants who are not admitted competitively receive “additional consideration in the review process.” By contrast, non-minority applicants (whites and Asian Americans) who are not admitted competitively do not qualify for this “additional consideration.” Is this not clear evidence that race/ethnicity is central to the admissions process?
Finally, state law governing the UW System states: “No student may be denied admission to, participation in or the benefit of, or be discriminated against in any service, program, course or facility of the system or its institutions or centers because of the student’s race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, disability, ancestry, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status or parental status.” (Wis. Stats. 36.12).
Seltzer’s report ignores the legal issue posed by state law. And, strangely, the UW-Madison’s admissions brochure, while mentioning prohibitions against race/ethnic-based discrimination, fails to make clear the context for prohibiting such discrimination. The point is that discrimination based on race/ethnicity is explicitly prohibited in admissions, as it is in campus services, programs, courses, and facilities. Why is there no mention of the prohibition of discrimination in admissions? Is this an oversight? What hasn’t the legal services office spotted this omission? Does the goal of diversity justify flouting state law? Does the goal of diversity require flouting state law?
These powerful arguments for eliminating race/ethnicity-based admission preferences are not new. They have been made in the past. They have been ignored. Now, finally, the Board of Regents is going to examine them.
What are the Board’s options? The Board can decide to accept the inadequate Seltzer report as a full and accurate description of the admission process, and that will end the discussion, at least for now. Or, it can request a more detailed report and reschedule its discussion for a later meeting. Whether more detail will make a more persuasive case for accepting the report is not obvious. Indeed, the vagueness of the Seltzer report may indicate that saying anything more would weaken rather than strengthen the case for continuing to give preferential treatment in admissions to targeted minority applicants.
Or, the Board can reject the Seltzer report, for some or all of the reasons presented here and elsewhere. If the Board rejects the Seltzer report, and I hope it does, it must take decisive action to end using race/ethnicity in admissions decisions not only at UW-Madison but also elsewhere in the UW System. Such action means eliminating all references to race/ethnicity in the Board’s policy statements dealing with admissions policy and practices. It means instructing UW System campuses to revise their admissions policies and procedures so the race/ethnicity of applicants can have no bearing on admissions decisions. More difficult but ultimately more important, it means establishing a new “culture” throughout the UW System that treats all applicants equally and fairly.
Taking a principled stand against continued use of race/ethnicity in admissions decisions will not be easy. Doing so will require the Board of Regents as a group to exercise its moral and legal authority to lead and govern the University. Doing so will also require individual Regents to screw up their courage and do what is right rather than what is expedient.
Are the Regents up to the challenge? I hope so. Indeed, we should all hope so.
UW diversity tied to minorities’ high school success
Reprint from the The Capital Times, March 12, 2003Understanding the UW-Madison‘s admission policy for undergraduate minority students is difficult. Campus officials are reluctant to describe in detail how the admission process works. When they do speak about it, their descriptions invariably differ, enough to make one wonder exactly how admissions decisions are made. The latest description by Provost Peter Spear, for example, differs from that of his boss, Chancellor John Wiley, and his differs from that of Admission Director Rob Seltzer.
What is going on? Why can‘t they get their story straight? Or is the “holistic“ admission process so complicated that nobody really understands it? Why is there no written manual explaining exactly how the process works?
The difficulty of understanding the admission process is apparent from the Provost‘s recent op-ed columns attempting to justify the affirmative action-based approach currently used by UW-Madison. Spear contends the campus “. . . admission goal is to select students who can succeed . . . and . . . will contribute to the university community.“ But he fails to explain the meaning of two crucial words: “succeed“ and “contribute“.
By success, does he mean academic success, as measured by grade-point average? Or does he mean the likelihood of graduating? If success means academic performance, why doesn‘t UW-Madison publish the first-year grade-point average of minority freshmen? Why not also publish data on high school class rank and ACT scores for enrolled minority students? Every fall campus press releases exclaim about the ever-higher ACT scores of entering freshman and the high percentages of them (about half) graduating in the top tenth of their high school class. Why not publicize similar information for entering minority freshmen?
Information on the academic performance of minorities as a group is not enough, because it fails to reveal the impact of the double standard used in admitting minorities. Enrolled minority students can be divided into three groups. First, those who are admitted competitively, without reference to their race/ethnicity. Second, those who fail to meet the minimum admission requirements because they did not graduate in the upper half of their high school class. Third, those whose records fall between these two groups–they meet the minimum admission requirement but would not be admitted competitively. Information on the academic performance of these three distinct groups, both when they enroll here and during the course of their degree work, could easily be provided by the Provost‘s staff.
But, if the primary measure of success means the likelihood of graduating, why not calculate and publish six-year graduation rates for these same three groups of minority students? If the results show no appreciable difference in graduation rates, the Provost‘s contention would be demonstrably correct. If, however, graduation rates differ appreciably, then the much-discussed “holistic approach“ to campus admissions needs to be reviewed and perhaps changed.
Even more difficult is figuring out the meaning of Spear‘s phrase “contribute to the university community.“ Do minorities, many of them not academically competitive, contribute simply by being enrolled because they increase diversity and thereby reduce concerns among administrators, as well as some faculty and students, about the dominance of white faces on Bascom Hill? Or, does the predominantly white student population find its education enhanced merely by seeing more minority faces on Bascom Hill, knowing many of these minority students–but not which particular students–gained admission because of their race/ethnicity?
And, what is the merit of having “our community“ [student body] “reflect the world in which we live“? Suppose the state‘s minority population of high school graduates is 10 percent. Does this mean that minorities among entering UW-Madison freshmen should equal this same 10 percent? Currently, minorities represent about nine percent of entering freshmen. Is this gap of one percentage point really that serious? Would eliminating that gap reduce the percentage of white faces on Bascom Hill enough so that proponents of diversity would be satisfied? Or does achieving diversity require reducing the percentage of white faces on Bascom Hill to say 85 percent or even 80 percent?
The reality of “the world in which we live“ is clear. Perhaps as few as one-third of Wisconsin‘s minority high school graduates would be admitted to UW-Madison based on using a competitive, color-blind admission standard. The sad fact is that campus diversity goals for minority enrollment cannot be reached until substantially more minority high school graduates are as well academically prepared and motivated for college as non-minority high school graduates.