Study Says: U-M "Greatest Offender"
in Using Race Bias in Admissions

By Benjamin Kepple

The University of Michigan is "by far the greatest offender" among Michigan's public colleges and universities when it comes to using racial preferences, said a report released last year by the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), a Washington D.C. public policy think-tank. In addition, only the U-M at Ann Arbor would experience a significant decline in black enrollment if the University were to admit students on a colorblind basis, the report stated.

The study "shows race is not just one factor out of many, but a major force in deciding who gets in the University of Michigan," said John J. Miller, then vice president of CEO. "There is a double standard at U-M."

University officials continue to stand by their claim that their admissions policy is legal and acceptable.

"The University of Michigan will continue to use race as a factor in making admissions decisions as long as it is lawful to do so, and has no intention of changing this policy," said the Office of University Relations in a press release. Nancy Cantor, University Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, stated that "we evaluate each student's application using a broad set of factors. ... We make human judgments and these judgments cannot be made simply by looking at test scores and grade point averages."

But the legality of the University's admissions policy is being questioned. Two lawsuits filed by the Center for Individual Rights (CIR), one on behalf of two white applicants denied undergraduate admission to the University, and the other on behalf of a white student denied admission to the Law School, are working their way through the legal system. In addition, the recent scrapping of affirmative action in California, and the Hopwood v. University of Texas Law School case (which ended affirmative action in the jurisdiction of the national Fifth District Court), are still quite fresh in the minds of University administrators. The University makes no secret about using racial preferences in its admissions policies, and according to the CEO study, there is a great deal of preference given.

"Schools routinely reject white and Asian students with higher test scores than black and Hispanic students who are admitted," said the CEO in its report. "These rejected students, however, usually have lower GPAs than black and Hispanic students who are admitted. Despite this, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor refused admission in 1995 to hundreds of white and Asian students who had both higher test scores and GPAs than the black admittee median."

Specifically, 613 students (564 whites and 49 Asians) were rejected by the U-M in 1995 despite having higher ACT scores and GPAs than the black admittee median. 266 students were rejected despite having higher SAT scores and GPAs than the black admittee median.

According to the report, "in various individual instances, these differences in qualifications were astoundingly large. 49 of these individuals had ACT scores greater than 29, 77 had combined SATs greater than 1200, and most amazing of all, 4 had SATs greater than 1400."

The report also suggests that the use of these racial preferences in admissions is a major factor in the lower graduation rates of black and Hispanic students.

"We cannot prove that conclusively with these rates, although these numbers are conducive with the hypothesis" that graduation rates will fall thanks to racial preferences, said Miller. A similar CEO study looking at higher education in Colorado conclusively proved that racial preferences caused a drop in graduation rates. "If blacks and Hispanics are not graduating as high as whites and Asians ... it makes intuitive sense," Miller said.

University officials harshly attack such a proposition.

"Students of color graduate at a vastly greater rate here than those at many other institutions," said Cantor. "This deflates CEO's argument that the U-M admits unqualified students of color. To follow the CEO theory, our graduation rates for students of color, supposedly unqualified for admittance, would be lower than other schools. In fact, the opposite is true."

However, the CEO report does not claim that the admittees to the University are unqualified, but rather that those beneficiaries of racial preference may be less qualified than many white and Asian rejectees. These students, who may have lesser levels of qualification, are then placed into an academic arena of students admitted under higher standards. According to the report, "if students gain admission to college for any reason other than their academic preparation, it is likely that they will face more hurdles in school compared to their peers who have been admitted under a higher standard."

The most controversial statistic in the CEO report, and one to which the media has given a great deal of attention, states that a black applicant is 173.7 times more likely to be selected over an equally qualified white applicant.

"Critics of race preferences argue that as better schools reach down into the applicant pool to accept minorities, [a qualifications gap will arise] between white and minority enrollees," according to the CEO report. "If this is the case, then there should be a positive relationship between the quality of the school, and the white-minority gap in qualifications.

Dr. Robert Lerner, senior author of the CEO study, noted that the chance of race playing a factor on an admissions decision at U-M is six times as large as the odds of getting lung cancer if one smokes throughout one's entire life.

"No other possible factor or variable could come close to account for it," Lerner said. "There is no possible way being an athlete or a [legacy] could even come close" to race as a factor in admissions. MR

This article was published in the New Student Issue of The Michigan Review (Volume 18, Number 1).
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