Advocating for Equity Without Affirmative Action & SCOTUS

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Five weeks ago, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on two companion cases concerning Harvard and UNC’s race-conscious admissions policies. And while we won’t have their final decision for quite a long time, we have good reason to be alarmed––bolstered by a six-justice conservative supermajority, this ruling will likely mark the fall of affirmative action.?

In my day job, I champion workforce diversity, which starts with the educational equity that enables future leaders of all backgrounds to thrive. And in my lived experience as a woman of color, I know firsthand how necessary and powerful it is to have representation everywhere, from the classroom to the courtroom to the corporate boardroom. Personally and professionally, I understand the impact of losing such a pivotal precedent.

But I also know that we have work to do—no matter the ruling.?

The conversation around diversity in higher education does not begin and end with this case. It goes beyond affirmative action, to the policies and procedures that determine not only who gets into college, but also what experience awaits them on campus and whether they are positioned for success after graduation. Affirmative action is just one tool for improvement––and it has been a valuable but imperfect one. If institutions worried about next spring’s Supreme Court verdict are truly committed to building an educational landscape that reflects the potential and promise of all our communities, they should act now with the other tools at their disposal, and start investing in systemic change.

At the Minority Corporate Counsel Association, we use data to assess the efficacy of diversity, equity, and inclusion solutions. We’ve seen individual policies fall in and out of vogue and witnessed firsthand how implementing the latest fad fix leads to temporary, marginal improvements. We understand that there’s no single silver bullet; real, sustainable transformation comes from critically examining and improving every part of the system.

When it comes to higher education, college admissions is still the place to start. To interrupt unconscious bias, schools should consider if admissions committees are themselves representative of the diverse student body they hope to admit. And even if committees are unable to consider applicants’ race, they can reform admissions processes to equitably consider other factors that are key to realizing a more diverse, representative student body—particularly socioeconomic status. At Harvard, for instance, while racial diversity has slowly increased, the Class of 2025 still overwhelmingly comes from wealth. And many schools continue to give preference to legacy applicants, favoring mostly white and well-to-do students in the process. Household wealth is closely correlated with race—which means schools can still promote diversity by finally ending legacy preference and reforming admissions to consider economic background more explicitly. These are steps they can take without the approval of any court.???

Once students get to campus, they still face racist systems and standards—major barriers to inclusion. Consider University of Pennsylvania Law professor Amy Wax, who has a long history of outrageous comments targeting specific racial and ethnic groups, including falsely disparaging student performance based on race. Her unconscionable behavior directly harms students of color by bringing bias into the classroom, and when universities keep racists like her on their faculty, they are sending a message about who is welcome on campus—and who isn’t.

Professor Wax and her ilk wield the tenure system as a shield. Students and colleagues have called for her removal for over half a decade, but while toothless disciplinary procedures carry on, she’s still teaching. Institutions serious about rooting out racism can publish—and enforce—nondiscrimination policies that create both uniform standards for judging misconduct and transparent guidelines for holding faculty accountable.

Even after students toss their grad caps, higher ed’s inequities have long-lasting consequences. From limiting their career options to impacting how much they can save up for their own kids’ educations, student loans can in many ways hold borrowers back from having a fulfilling adult life after graduation. As with so much else, this burden falls disproportionately on students of color. For instance, Black grads owe an average of $25,000 more in student loans than their white counterparts—and they also tend to carry higher interest rates.

After assembling a diverse class, schools have an obligation to invest in admitted students throughout their educational journey. They can use their hefty endowments to increase aid packages and lower income requirements—or better yet, consider wealth instead of income for a more equitable aid system. More programs can support fellowship grants and loan repayment programs, as many law schools currently do for graduates pursuing public interest careers.?For those universities claiming to drop out of the law school rankings because they were unfairly punished for supporting lower income students who return to their communities to do fellowships, I am eager to see how and what they will do to provide more aid and support.

To be sure, some may argue that being able to consider race as a factor might make all of these interventions more effective. Indeed, it’s no surprise that dozens of schools and businesses have asked the Supreme Court to uphold race-conscious admissions policies, and they’ll have every right to criticize a decision that strikes down affirmative action. But they also have an obligation to look beyond a single policy at what more they can already be doing, at every level.

A diverse, equitable, and inclusive system of higher education doesn’t start or end with the Court’s ruling on affirmative action. It starts and ends with us.??We can start by being honest about our end goal; demanding a better system and standard on how we improve equity.