Affirmative Action Ruling Did Not Boost Enrollments At Law, Medical Schools

11-13-97
University Park, Pa. -- The legal heart of today's affirmative action policies, the Bakke decision, did not generate dramatic results, as claimed by supporters and detractors. In a new book, two political scientists argue that the 1978 legal ruling did not significantly increase or decrease minority enrollments at U.S. medical and law schools.

The authors question whether the energy spent debating affirmative action might be better directed at finding more effective ways to combat discrimination and enhance opportunities.

"Bakke's effect on minority enrollment was far less than either supporters or opponents predicted," said Susan Welch, professor of political science and dean of the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State. "It produced almost no change in pre-Bakke levels of minority applications and enrollment or admissions decisions made about minorities."

"However, the decision was significant because it legitimized and institutionalized the practice of affirmative action in higher education," said co-author John Gruhl, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska. Their book, "Affirmative Action and Minority Enrollments in Medical and Law School," will be published by University of Michigan Press later this year. Highlights from the book were presented at the American Political Science Association in August.

The Bakke decision was a 1978 Supreme Court ruling that struck down quotas but approved the use of race as one factor in admission policies at colleges and universities. In the case, Regents of University of California v. Bakke, a white student sued for reverse discrimination after being rejected for medical school.

In their study of African American enrollment in medical schools, the two researchers found the greatest jump -- from 200 to 1200 -- occurred between 1965 and 1975, three years before the Bakke court case. Then, from 1975 to 1985, enrollments were stagnant, rising only gradually, rather than rapidly as predicted. In the 1990s, however, the numbers climbed sharply to a peak of more than 1,500.

The trends were generally similar for Hispanics, except that the 1975-85 period reported slow upward growth, leveling off in the late 1980s. "The steep upward climb in minority enrollment had reached a plateau before Bakke and would not resume again until more than a decade after the decision," said Welch.

The researchers saw similar conclusions in reviewing African American and Hispanic first-year enrollments in law schools. For African American students, enrollment stayed stagnant from 1975 to 1986, followed by a rather sharp increase beginning in 1987. Hispanic enrollments rose slowly but fairly consistently from 1969 to 1995.

The more influential factors affecting minority applications and enrollments may have been the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which eliminated legal barriers to discrimination; the growing middle class in the African American community; and the large increase in the number of college educated minorities in the late 1980s and 1990s. More families could afford to send their children to professional schools, said Welch and Gruhl.

"Current affirmative action policies are an extremely unsophisticated and blunt instrument whose diverse beneficiaries are not easily understandable to a wider public," Welch said. "The current focus of affirmative action appears to have shifted from compensation for historical wrongs against African Americans to promoting diversity by giving extra opportunities to those from a variety of ethnic groups. A narrowly drawn affirmative action policy with specific, well-defined targets might win more support."

"Recent attacks on Bakke either in the courts or in the states have caused considerable anxiety among supporters of affirmative action and some celebration among opponents," Gruhl said. "But affirmative action alone can make only a little difference in improving the equality of educational and employment opportunity."

The researchers also surveyed admissions officers in medical and law schools about their perceptions of the decision's impact and of their admission policies.

"Over three-quarters of the medical school officials and 63 percent of the law officials claim it affected policies not at all," Welch said. "Only a small minority of schools reported that Bakke changed rather than reaffirmed their admission policies."

"Perhaps, a better route is for Americans to come together and devise more effective ways to overcome racial discrimination," she said. "Vigilant enforcement of existing anti-discrimination laws, especially in housing and employment, along with renewed government attention to issues of educational opportunity in our inner cities and rural areas are strategies likely to win more public support than affirmative action."

For example, Welch and Gruhl, who both personally are supporters of affirmative action, noted that the Texas legislature passed a law in 1997 to circumvent a federal court ruling outlawing the use of race in admissions and to offset falling minority applications at the University of Texas. The law essentially substitutes geography for race, requiring all state universities to admit all applicants from Texas high schools who graduated in the top 10 percent of their class. This takes in account racially segregated neighborhoods.

"Affirmative action is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for diversity, and the diversity that many institutions are striving for goes beyond affirmative action categories," the political scientists noted. "The Bakke ruling's actual impact is modest, with its potential effects dwarfed by economic conditions, the dramatic growth in higher education over the last four decades, the increasing ethnic pluralism of American society, and changing attitudes and educational opportunities opened by the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

**vf**

EDITORS: Dr. Welch is at (814) 865-7691, and Dr. Gruhl is at (402) 472-2341

Contacts: Vicki Fong 814-865-9481 (O)/814-238-1221 (H) vyf1@psu.edu