Affirmative Action in American University Admissions — Analysis of the Current Policy and Proposals —

Affirmative action as the American universities’ admissions policy began as a means to redress racial discrimination for three main reasons. First is to address the disadvantages against racial minority students in standardized tests. Second reason is that affirmative action can provide blacks with just compensation for the past racial discriminations. Thirdly, affirmative action is designed to promote educational diversity through diverse student body. The test for determining constitutionality of university admission policy is a strict scrutiny standard because racial classification is always subject to a strict scrutiny along with national origin and alienage. So a university’s affirmative action program can pass this test if the university can prove that there is a compelling state interest in acquiring racial diversity; that a specific affirmative action program as a means to achieve diversity is narrowly tailored to satisfy the compelling interest; and that there is no workable race-neutral alternatives. The series of the Supreme Court cases starting from Bakke through Grutter and Fisher have established that universities’ affirmative action programs can pass the constitutional muster because the educational diversity is recognized as a compelling interest and the ‘plus factor’ method in holistic review is recognized as being narrowly tailored to achieve racial diversity. Although affirmative action in college admission seems to be still necessary, the current standard that allows universities to consider the applicant’s race as a ‘plus factor’ in holistic review appears to be standing on constitutionally shaky ground because of the risk of giving too much discretion to admission officials who can abuse this system in covert and hidden manner at the unfair disadvantage to Asian applicants. Instead of plus factor system, it is better to allow the universities to award points to racial minority applicants at a reasonable level that would not be too dispositive but would have meaningful impact in admission decisions. The approach combining the modified point system with the revised legacy and donor admissions and the increased need-blind policy would help the universities in achieving the goal of racial and educational diversity.