The dismantling of racial quotas or even goals in higher education, begun by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Bakke decision 27 years ago, may be completed by the winner of this year’s presidential contest.

John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama largely agree that whatever preferences colleges and universities give to prospective students should be based more on socioeconomic factors, such as income and family situation.

Those were just two conclusions from a seminar on diversity held Thursday in conjunction with the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn. The diversity panel of political operatives and pundits included former White House advisor Karl Rove, political commentator Armstrong Williams and journalist Tara Wall.

“Obama is against racial quotas, and he is pretty much on the same page with John McCain,” said Wall. The buzzword nowadays on that score is “affirmative access,” she said.

But don’t expect to see minority enrollment levels falling further because panelists said they expect states to continue to press for nonracial measures that promote diversity, along the lines of laws in Texas and Florida that give compulsory admission to students based on class rank.

“We’re a merit-based party in terms of opportunity,” said Al Cardenas, former chairman of the Republican Party and now a Florida political operative. But the most important obstacles to higher education degrees for Hispanic and African-American youths are high school and college drop-out rates, Cardenas said. “We really need to address that.”

Nonetheless, two other related but seemingly conflicting points met broad agreement among panelists: Affirmative action and race are taking a back seat in this year’s campaign, but Republicans must find ways to garner more votes of women and people of color or they face losing many more elections than they have in recent years.

The Republican Party simply cannot concede one quarter of the population to the Democrats, panelists said.