Affirmative Action Fallout:

Graduate-level programs once aimed at minorities now opening up to all students in efforts to avoid legal challenges
By Ronald Roach

Race-conscious affirmative action in higher education survived a close challenge in 2003 when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race was a valid academic admission criteria in the Grutter v. Bollinger case. Two years later, a number of “pipeline” programs to help under-represented minorities gain admission to and complete graduate school have modified their eligibility requirements, opening their participation to all students in an effort to avoid legal challenges. 

Civil rights activists have used the two-year anniversary of the court’s landmark decision as a launching point to criticize the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. During the Bush administration, the office has prompted many colleges and universities to change or drop race- and ethnic-specific academic enrichment and scholarship programs.

The NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund made its dissatisfaction with the Education Department known in a June 23 letter to Margaret Spellings, the U.S. Secretary of Education.

“As we mark the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger, we have a grave concern that the Department of Education is undermining these decisions. ... Presumably with the backing of your office, groups opposed to affirmative action have sent out similarly worded letters to colleges and universities across the nation threatening to file complaints to OCR if any and all race-conscious measures are not eliminated.”

Those advocating such affirmative action programs are growing increasingly alarmed that the backlash will spread. Several organizations, which support high-profile graduate school diversity efforts, have taken steps to avoid attacks by anti-affirmative action groups. Influential graduate pipeline programs administered by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Association of American Medical Colleges, for example, have undergone significant modifications since 2003. To many, such changes have raised the concern that these programs now face a dilution of their original aims and goals — which is to boost the number of under-represented minorities in specific academic and professional areas.