Civilrights.org

Executive Summary

The Fifth Circuit's Hopwood v. Texas ruling, repudiating the diversity rationale as a compelling interest for race-conscious admissions, dramatically
restricted higher education opportunities for students of color in Texas. The recent Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger overrules Hopwood and reaffirms that student body diversity is a compelling governmental interest that warrants the use of affirmative action at colleges and universities. Also, the Supreme Court ruling provides guidance about what is required to narrowly tailor affirmative action, so that race is one factor among many and so that all applicants are given the benefit of individualized review. In Blend It, Don't End It, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Americans for a Fair Chance (a project of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund), the Equal Justice Society, and the Society of American Law Teachers, assess racial and ethnic diversity in Texas higher education at the flagship undergraduate campuses, law schools, and medical schools.

This report primarily focuses on opportunities for African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians. Asian Pacific Americans are also dis-cussed in some Sections, but the data are not as complete, which reflects the fact that admission figures are generally unavailable for the diverse ethnic/national subgroups within this umbrella category. Likewise, this report does not focus on the barriers women continue to face in higher education, especially as they relate to access to opportunities in underrepresented fields including the sciences, mathematics, engineering, and business.

Blend It, Don't End It recommends that the benefits and lessons of the Texas Ten Percent Plan currently in place--which guarantees admission to any public university in Texas to Texas students ranked in the top tenth of their high school class--be woven together with the constitutionally permissible consideration of race in admissions. While the Ten Percent Plan has important benefits, our comprehensive review of the evidence confirms that the Ten Percent Plan and other race-neutral measures cannot wholly replace the affirmative action policies and programs needed to achieve racial diversity at the University of Texas at Austin, and particularly at Texas A&M University.

Blend It, Don't End It also documents that the Ten Percent Plan contributed significantly to socioeconomic, geographic, and racial/ethnic diversity, particularly at UT-Austin. We therefore strongly oppose legislative proposals to repeal or cap the Ten Percent Plan, which would likely undermine the college aspirations of rural as well as low-income students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Others urge modifying the Ten Percent Plan so that it no longer guarantees admission to flagship campuses, but we conclude that such a proposal is ill-conceived because it would eliminate the key feature of the Ten Percent Plan and would diminish the flagship institutions' accountability to all Texans.

Blend It, Don't End It showcases seven ways that universities can affirm their support for student body diversity by implementing and/or maintaining legally permissible affirmative action, including: (1) looking beyond the numbers to holistically evaluate each applicant; (2) developing a diversity policy statement; (3) documenting the educational benefits of diversity and, if applicable, the institution's prior record of discrimination; (4) developing broad diversity goals and maintaining sound criteria; (5) reviewing legacy policies and evaluating the potential disparate impact on students of color; (6) periodically reviewing whether there are workable race-neutral alternatives to affirmative action; and (7) eliminating other artificial barriers to inclusion.

Among the significant educational findings at the Texas flagship undergraduate universities, law schools, and medical schools are the following:

At Texas A&M University at College Station, African Americans and Latinos constituted 18.8% of freshmen enrollments at A&M in 1995, shortly before Hopwood. This dropped to an average of 12.1% in the first six years of the Texas Ten Percent Plan (1998-2003). Moreover, the situation at Texas A&M has not improved since 2000. In 2003, the proportion of African Americans and Latinos (12.6%) was still one-third lower than in 1995 despite the fact the percentage of Texas high school graduates who are Black and Latino increased significantly over the same period. We conclude that Texas A&M was seriously mistaken when it recently concluded that it can significantly improve diversity without affirmative action, and we urge the institution to revisit this decision.

The situation at the University of Texas at Austin under the Ten Percent
Plan is best characterized as "good but not good enough." The proportion
of African Americans and Latinos in 1995 (17.5%) increased slightly to an average of 17.8% under the Ten Percent Plan in the years 1998-2003. The trend, though somewhat uneven, is also in a positive direction. However, during the first five years of the Ten Percent Plan, there was a widening "opportunity gap" between the percentage of Black and Latino Texas high school graduates, and the percentage of Black and Latino
freshmen at UT-Austin. Even in 2003, when Black/Latino enrollments
rose to 20.6%, up significantly from the prior year, the opportunity gap nonetheless remained wider than it had been in 1995 with affirmative
action.