By COLLIN BINKLEY AP Education Writer
New guidance from the Biden administration on Monday urges colleges to use a range of strategies to promote racial diversity on campus after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in admissions.
Colleges can focus their recruiting in high minority areas, for example, and take steps to retain students of color who are already on campus, including by offering affinity clubs geared toward students of a certain race. Colleges can also consider how an applicant’s race has shaped personal experience, as detailed in students’ application essays or letters of recommendation, according to the new guidance.
It also encourages them to consider ending policies known to stint racial diversity, including preferences for legacy students and the children of donors.
“Ensuring access to higher education for students from different backgrounds is one of the most powerful tools we have to prepare graduates to lead an increasingly diverse nation and make real our country’s promise of opportunity for all,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The guidance, from the Justice and Education departments, arrives as colleges across the nation attempt to navigate a new era of admissions without the use of affirmative action. Schools are working to promote racial diversity without provoking legal action from affirmative action opponents.
Students for Fair Admission, the group that brought the issue to the Supreme Court through lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, sent a letter to 150 universities in July saying they must “take immediate steps to eliminate the use of race as a factor in admissions.”
In its guidance, the Biden administration offers a range of policies colleges can use “to achieve a student body that is diverse across a range of factors, including race and ethnicity.”
It also offers clarity on how colleges can consider race in the context of an applicant’s individual experience. The court’s decision bars colleges from considering race as a factor in and of itself, but nothing prohibits colleges from considering “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life,” the court wrote.
How to approach that line without crossing it has been a challenge for colleges as they rework admissions systems.
