This week’s Supreme Court Ruling upholding a Texas plan for building diversity in state universities was welcomed by admissions officers across the U.S. as a win for racial equality.
The ruling gives colleges permission to consider the race and ethnicity of students during the admission process, as a way of ensuring that students of various backgrounds are welcomed into the student body. The University of Texas admits 10% of graduates from any high school across the state based mainly on academic performance. But for the many other students who apply, the school considers a variety of factors, including race. The important outcomes of the new ruling are that the court appears to value diversity on college admissions, but does not want to dictate a single, strict approach to achieving it – preferring instead to allow various colleges and universities to come of with their own individual approaches.
The ruling does not, however, open the floodgates to race-based admissions. Many states have banned so-called “affirmative action” policies by schools, and the new ruling does not overturn those bans. Read more here