Unwilling to drop racial preferences in admissions, colleges are now being advised to redefine merit to include race.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court held that colleges and universities can no longer elevate race over merit in their admissions decisions. EducationCounsel, a leading education consulting firm based in Washington, D.C., has devised a clever way to get around this: Redefine merit to include race.
In July, EducationCounsel shared guidance with college and university admissions officers on how they can continue “toward the achievement of diversity and equity goals in light of the Court’s decision.” “As an important initial step,” the firm advised, “consider conducting a data-driven evaluation of whether merit definitions and measures in admissions policies are mission-aligned and have predictive value.” In particular, “reconsider and recalibrate criteria associated with merit in admission, such as grade thresholds, test use practices, and the extent to which student context is considered part of the admissions decision.”
The elimination of standardized-testing requirements for college admissions is nothing new; many schools had done so well in advance of the decision given racial disparities in SAT and ACT performance. What is new — and deeply Orwellian — is EducationCounsel’s attempt to define merit as “an applicant’s skills, knowledge, or character-related qualities that arise from ‘experiences as an individual,’ which may be associated with their racial identity” rather than the applicant’s academic prowess.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the National Review Online (paywall)
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Renu Mukherjee is a Paulson Policy Analyst at the Manhattan Institute.
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