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The Compelling Need for Diversity in Higher Education
EXPERT REPORT OF WILLIAM G. BOWEN
Gratz, et al. v. Bollinger, et al., No. 97-75321 (E.D.
Mich.)
- Statement of Qualifications:
I am
currently the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; I have held
that position
since 1988. Prior to that, I served as president of Princeton
University for sixteen
years, from 1972 to 1988, and as provost for five years, from 1967 to
1972. I was a
Prosssor of Economics at Princeton University from 1965 until 1988; I
had been a member
of the faculty since 1958. I currently serve as a member of several
corporate boards,
including American Express and Merck & Co., Inc. I have written
extensively about
issues of higher education, including the consideration of race in
admissions. A complete curriculum
vitae, including a list of publications, is attached hereto as
Appendix A.
- Information Considered in Forming Opinions:
My opinions
are based, in large part, on The Shape of the River: Long-Term
Consequences of
Considering Race in College and University Admissions, William G.
Bowen and Derek Bok,
Princeton University Press (1998). A copy of the book will be provided
upon request.
- Other expert testimony; compensation:
I have not
testified as an expert at trial or by deposition within the preceding
four years. I am not
receiving any compensation for my work in connection with this
matter.
- Opinions to be expressed and the
basis and reasons
therefore:
Higher
education plays a unique role in our society. The obligation of a
university is to the
society at large over the long run, and, even more generally, to the
pursuit of learning.
Although this may seem amorphous, there is no escaping a university's
obligation to try to
serve the long-term interests of society defined in the broadest and
least parochial
terms, and to do so through two principal activities: advancing
knowledge and educating
students who will in turn serve others, within this nation and beyond
it, both through
their specific vocations and as citizens. Universities therefore are
responsible for
imparting civic and democratic values that are essential to the
functioning of our nation.
Our society -- indeed, our world -- is and will continue to be
multi-racial. We simply
must learn to work more effectively and more sensitively with
individuals of other races,
and a diverse student body can make a profound and direct contribution
to the achievement
of this end. In the 1960s, barely one percent of law students and two
percent of medical
students in America were black. At that time, few leading professional
schools and
nationally prominent colleges and universities enrolled more than a
handful of blacks.
Late in the decade, however, selective institutions set about to change
these statistics,
not by establishing quotas, but by considering race, along with many
other factors, in
assembling a diverse student body of varying talents, backgrounds, and
perspectives.
Schools sought to achieve diversity to cross the racial borders that
separated large
segments of society and to reap the educational benefits to all
students of learning on a
diverse campus, in which they would transcend the misperceptions and
stereotypes that had
been borne of racial separation. These selective institutions
recognized that a student
body containing many different backgrounds, talents, and experiences
would be a richer
environment in which all students could better develop into productive,
contributing
members of our society.
Amid much passionate debate, there has been little hard evidence of
how these policies
work and what their consequences have been. To remedy this deficiency,
Derek Bok and I
examined the college experiences of more than 60,000 students --
approximately 3,500 of
whom were black -- who had entered 28 selective colleges and
universities in the fall of
1976 and the fall of 1989;(1) we also
surveyed a sub-set of
these students (with a survey response rate of about 80%) and thus
studied the later life
experiences and views of 30,000 students. This massive database, built
jointly by the
schools and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for the first time links
information such as
Scholastic Assessment Test ("SAT") scores and college majors
to experiences
after college, including graduate and professional degrees, earnings,
and civic
involvement. Most of our study focused on African-Americans and whites,
because the Latino
and Native American populations at these schools were too small in 1976
to permit the same
sort of statistical analysis. Nevertheless, many of the findings may be
applicable to
these groups as well. Our conclusions are set forth in The Shape of
the River:
Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University
Admissions,
William G. Bowen and Derek Bok, Princeton University Press (1998). This
report attempts to
summarize some of our findings. My testimony in this case will draw
upon the book, as well
as my 40 years of experience in academia, including my tenure as
provost (five years) and
president (16 years) of Princeton University, and my experience as a
member of several
corporate boards.
As a necessary predicate, a university must have the freedom to
decide which students
it will admit and which criteria it will use in its admissions
decisions. This academic
freedom is crucial in order for a school to fulfill its mission. At
bottom, admissions
officers must decide which set of applicants, considered
individually and collectively,
will take fullest advantage of what the college has to offer,
contribute most to the
educational process in college, and be most successful in using what
they have learned for
the benefit of the larger society.
Any college or university to which admissions is highly competitive,
such as the
University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, has far more applicants who
possess all the basic
qualifications than it has places. Some candidates (a relatively small
number) are so
outstanding in every respect that they are obvious choices for
admission by any standard.
The real problems of choice arise in deciding which individuals to
admit from among the
large group who also have very strong qualifications, who are thought
capable of doing the
work and doing it well, but who are not so clearly outstanding as to be
placed in the very
top category.
In my experience, in deciding among this group, a school does
not start from the
premise that any applicant has a "right" to a place in a
college or university.
Instead, the starting premise is that a school has an obligation to
make the best possible
use of the limited number of places in each entering class so as to
advance as effectively
as possible the broad purposes the school seeks to serve. Within the
very real limits
imposed by the fallibility of any selection process of this kind, a
school should try hard
to be fair to every applicant; but the concept of fairness itself has
to be understood
within the context of the obligations of a university. Accordingly, in
making these
difficult choices among well-qualified candidates, considerations other
than just test
scores and grades come into play.
The relevance of these other considerations is based on the premise
that the overall
quality of the educational program is affected not only by the
qualities of the individual
students who are enrolled, but also by the characteristics of the
entire group of students
who share a common educational experience. While I believe this to be
true for graduate
programs too, my own experience confirms the importance for
undergraduate education and,
as a consequence, affects admission decisions much more significantly
at that level. If
there is a difference, it is only one of degree, related partly to the
ages and
experiences of the students, partly to the purposes of their
educational programs and
especially to the emphasis given to academic specialization, and partly
to the respective
roles of extracurricular and curricular activities.
In a residential college setting, in particular, a great deal of
learning occurs
informally. It occurs through interactions among students of both
sexes; of different
races, religions, and backgrounds; who come from cities and rural
areas, from various
states and countries; who have a wide variety of interests, talents,
and perspectives; and
who are able, directly or indirectly, to learn from their differences
and to stimulate one
another to reexamine even their most deeply held assumptions about
themselves and their
world. As a wise graduate of Princeton University observed in
commenting on this aspect of
the educational process, "People do not learn very much when they
are surrounded only
by the likes of themselves."
It follows that if, say, 2,000 individuals are to be offered places
in an entering
undergraduate class, the task of an admissions office is not simply to
decide which
applicants offer the strongest credentials as separate candidates for
the college; the
task, rather, is to assemble a total class of students, all of whom
will possess the basic
qualifications, but who will also represent, in their totality, an
interesting and diverse
amalgam of individuals who will contribute through their diversity to
the quality and
vitality of the overall educational environment.
This concern for the composition of the undergraduate student body,
as well as for the
qualifications of its individual members, takes many forms. While a
school is of course
interested in enrolling students who are good at a great many things
and not
one-dimensional in any sense, it should also try to enroll students
with special interests
and talents in the arts and in athletics; it should seek a wide
geographical
representation; it should admit foreign students from a variety of
countries and cultures;
it should recognize the special contribution that the sons and
daughters of alumni can
make by representing and communicating a sense of the traditions and
the historical
continuity of the university; it should enroll students from a range of
socioeconomic
backgrounds; and it should work consciously and deliberately to include
minority students,
who themselves represent a variety of experiences and viewpoints.
We must accept as a fact of life in contemporary America that the
perspectives of
individuals are often affected by their race as by other aspects of
their background. If a
university were unable to take into account the race of candidates, it
would be much more
difficult to consider carefully and conscientiously the composition of
an entering class
that would offer a rich educational experience to all of its members.
The unplanned,
casual encounters with roommates, fellow sufferers in an organic
chemistry class, student
workers in the library, teammates on a basketball squad, or other
participants in class
affairs or student government can be subtle and yet powerful sources of
improved
understanding and personal growth.
Indeed, the data in our study prove what I have observed for years
through experience
-- that diversity is valued and that "learning through
diversity" actually
occurs. Our study indicates that diversity is a benefit for all
students, minorities and
nonminorities alike. Moreover, the data overwhelmingly demonstrate that
minority students
admitted to selective schools had strong academic credentials,
graduated in large numbers
and did very well after leaving college. By every measure of success
(graduation,
attainment of professional degrees, employment, earnings, civic
participation, and overall
satisfaction), the more selective the school, the more blacks achieved
(holding constant
their initial test scores and grades).
It is true that compared with their extremely high-achieving white
classmates, black
students in general received somewhat lower college grades and
graduated at moderately
lower rates. The reasons for these disparities are not fully
understood, and selective
institutions need to be more creative in helping improve black
performance, as a few
universities already have succeeded in doing. Still, 75 percent
graduated within six years
from the school they first entered, a figure well above the 40 percent
of blacks and 59
percent of whites who graduated nationwide from the 305 universities
tracked by the
National Collegiate Athletic Association. Moreover, blacks did not earn
degrees from these
selective schools by majoring in easy subjects. They chose
substantially the same
concentrations as whites and were just as likely to have difficult
majors, such as those
in the sciences and engineering. These and other findings refute the
argument that when
black students are admitted to schools where many other students have
stronger academic
qualifications than their own -- as measured by grades and test scores
-- that those
students not only will drop out, but that they would have been better
off attending a less
selective institution.
Although over half of the black students attending these selective
schools would have
been rejected under a race-neutral admissions regime -- that is, if
only the same
proportions of black and white students had been admitted within each
SAT interval -- they
have done exceedingly well after college. Fifty-six percent of the
black graduates who had
entered these selective schools in 1976 went on to earn advanced
degrees. A remarkable 40
percent received either PhDs or professional degrees in the most
sought-after fields of
law, business and medicine, a figure slightly higher than that for
their white classmates
and five times higher than that for blacks with bachelor's degrees
nationwide. (As a
measure of change, it is worth noting that by 1995, 7.5 percent of all
law students in the
United States were black, up from barely 1 percent in 1960; and
8.1 percent of
medical school students were black, compared with 2.2 percent in the
mid-1960s. Black
elected officials now number more than 8,600.)
By the time of our survey, black male graduates who had entered
selective schools in
1976 were earning an average of $85,000 a year, 82 percent more
than other black male
college graduates nationwide. Their black female classmates earned 73
percent more than
all black women with bachelor's degrees. Not only has the marketplace
valued the work of
these graduates highly, but the premium associated with attending one
of these selective
institutions was substantial. Overall, we found that among blacks with
similar test
scores, the more selective the college they attended, the more likely
they were to
graduate, earn advanced degrees and receive high salaries. This was
generally true for
whites as well.
Despite their high salaries, the blacks in our study were not just
concerned with their
own advancement. In virtually every type of civic activity, from social
service
organizations to parent associations, black men were more likely than
their white
classmates to hold leadership positions. Much the same pattern holds
for women. These
findings should reassure black intellectuals who have worried that
blacks -- especially
black men -- would ignore their social responsibilities once they
achieved financial
success.
Were black students demoralized by having to compete with whites
with higher high
school grades and test scores? Is it true, as Dinesh D'Souza asserts in
his book
"Illiberal Education," that "American universities are
quite willing to
sacrifice the future happiness of many young blacks and Hispanics to
achieve diversity,
proportional representation, and what they consider to be multicultural
progress"?
The facts are very clear on this point. Far from being demoralized,
blacks from the most
competitive schools are the most satisfied with their college
experience. More than 90
percent of both blacks and whites in our survey said they were
satisfied or very satisfied
with their college experience, and blacks were even more inclined than
whites to credit
their undergraduate experience with helping them learn crucial skills.
We found no
evidence that significant numbers of blacks felt stigmatized by
race-sensitive policies.
Only seven percent of black graduates said they would not attend
the same selective
college if they had to choose again.
Former students of all races reported feeling that learning to live
and work
effectively with members of other races is important. Large majorities
also believed that
their college experience contributed a lot in this respect.
Consequently, almost 80
percent of the white graduates favored either retaining the current
emphasis on enrolling
a diverse class or emphasizing it more. Their minority classmates
supported these policies
even more strongly.
Some critics allege that race-sensitive admissions policies
aggravate racial tensions
by creating resentment among white and Asian students rejected by
colleges they hoped to
attend. Although we could not test this possibility definitively, we
did examine the
feelings of white students in our sample who had been rejected by their
first-choice
school. They said they supported an emphasis on diversity just as
strongly as students who
got into their first-choice schools.
Our findings also clarify the much misunderstood concept of merit in
college admission.
Many people suppose that all students with especially high grades and
test scores
"deserve" to be admitted and that it is unfair to reject them
in favor of
minority applicants with lower grades and test scores. But selective
colleges do not
automatically offer admission as a reward for past performance to
anyone. Nor should they.
For any institution, choosing fairly, "on the merits," means
selecting
applicants by criteria that are reasonably related to the purposes of
the organization.
For colleges and universities, this means choosing academically
qualified applicants who
not only give promise of doing well academically, but who also can
enlarge the
understanding of other students and contribute after graduation to
their professions and
communities. Though clearly relevant, grades and test scores are by no
means all that
matter.
Accordingly, an admissions policy that relied primarily on test
scores would lead to
the rejection of qualified minority students. The fact that,
nationally, blacks are very
underrepresented at the higher levels and very overrepresented at the
lower levels ensures
that they will have substantially lower average SAT scores even if a
college were to use
precisely the same SAT cut-off in admitting white and black students.
For example, if a
school admitted every applicant with SAT scores over 1100 and none with
lower scores, the
white students would still have a higher average SAT score than the
black students because
relatively more of them score at the upper end of the SAT distribution.
This result occurs
even though no racial preference was given in this
hypothetical situation.
As a group, however, the black applicants are highly qualified. Of
the black applicants
at five of the 28 schools for which detailed admission data were
available in 1989, over
90 percent scored above the national average for black test-takers on
both the verbal and
math SATs, considered separately. The large majority of these black
applicants handily
outscored not only the average black test-taker, but also the average
white test-taker.
Moreover, the average SAT score for black matriculants in 1989 was
slightly higher than
the average SAT score for all matriculants in 1951.
Talk of basing admissions mainly on test scores and grades assumes a
model of
admissions radically different from the one that exists today. Such a
policy would mandate
a fundamental change of direction for institutions that recognize the
many dimensions of
"qualification": the importance of a good fit between the
student and the
educational program, the varied paths that individuals follow in
developing their
abilities, and the pitfalls of basing assessments of talent and
potential solely on
narrowly defined quantitative measures. Instead, as I described
earlier, admissions
officers have been "picking and choosing," as we believe they
should always do
-- admitting the candidate who seems to offer something special by way
of drive and
determination, the individual with a set of skills that matches well
the academic
requirements of the institution, someone who will bring another
dimension of diversity to
the student body, or a candidate who helps the institution fulfill a
particular aspect of
its mission.
Because other factors are important -- including hard-to-quantify
attributes such as
determination, motivation, creativity and character -- many talented
students, white and
black, are rejected even though they finished in the top 5 percent of
their high school
class. The applicants selected are students who were also above a high
academic threshold
but who seemed to have a greater chance of enhancing the education of
their classmates and
making a substantial contribution to their professions and society.
Seen from the
perspective of how well they served the missions of these educational
institutions, the
students admitted were surely "meritorious."
Could the values of diversity be achieved equally well without
considering race
explicitly? The Texas legislature has tried to do so by guaranteeing
admission to the
state's public universities for all students who finish in the top 10
percent of their
high school class. Others have suggested using income rather than race
to achieve
diversity. The available evidence indicates that neither alternative is
likely to be as
effective as race-sensitive admissions in enrolling an academically
well prepared and
diverse student body. First, the Texas approach would admit some
students from weaker high
schools while turning down better-prepared applicants who happen not to
finish in the top
tenth of their class in academically stronger schools. So long as high
schools differ so
substantially in the academic abilities of their students and the level
of difficulty of
their courses, treating all applicants alike if they finished above a
given high school
class rank provides a spurious form of equality that is likely to
damage the academic
profile of the overall class of students admitted to selective
institutions. Instead of
being an effective substitute for race-sensitive admissions policies,
this approach could
well have the effect of diminishing the pool of students who can
compete effectively for
the most demanding positions of leadership in business, government, and
the professions.
Second, income-based strategies are unlikely to be good substitutes
for race-sensitive
admissions policies because there are simply too few blacks and Latinos
from poor families
who have strong enough academic records to qualify for admission to
highly selective
institutions. Children from poor black and Hispanic families make up
less than half of all
poor children and are much less likely than poor whites to excel in
school. For example,
the data show that among all students from families with incomes under
$20,000 who also
finished in the top tenth percent of their high school class, only one
in six is black or
Hispanic. Thus, moving from a race-sensitive admissions policy to a
class-based one would
substantially reduce the minority enrollments at selective
institutions, and severely
impair current efforts to achieve racial diversity.
What would happen if universities were flatly prohibited from
considering race in
admissions? Our findings suggest that over half of the black students
in selective
colleges today would have been rejected. Plainly, the educational
benefits that students
gain from learning from each other would be lost. Furthermore, we can
estimate what else
would be lost as a result:
- Of the more than 700 black students who would have been rejected
in 1976 under a
race-neutral standard, more than 225 went on to earn doctorates or
degrees in law,
medicine or business. Approximately 70 are now doctors and roughly
60 are lawyers. Almost
125 are business executives. The average earnings of all 700
exceeds $71,000, and well
over 300 are leaders of civic organizations.
- The impact of race-neutral admissions would be especially drastic
in admission to
professional schools. The proportion of black students in the Top
Ten law, business and
medical schools would probably decline to less than 1 percent.
These are the main
professional schools from which most leading hospitals, law firms
and corporations
recruit. The result of race-neutral admissions, therefore, would be
to damage severely the
prospects for developing a larger minority presence in the
corporate and professional
leadership of America.
The reasons diversity has become so important at the highest levels
of business, the
professions, government, and society at large are readily apparent. By
the year 2030,
approximately 40 percent of all Americans are projected to be members
of minority groups.
More than $600 billion in purchasing power is generated by minorities
and more than
one-third of all new entrants to the workforce are persons of color. In
this environment,
a diverse corporate leadership can be valuable both to understand the
markets in which
many companies sell and to recruit, manage, and motivate the workforce
on which corporate
performance ultimately depends. The chief executive officers of major
corporations have so
recognized. For example, the CEO of Coca-Cola has stated that,
"[a]s a company that
operates in nearly 200 countries, we see diversity in the background
and talent of our
associates as a competitive advantage and as a commitment that is a
daily
responsibility." Similarly, the CEO of Chrysler has stated that
"we believe that
workforce diversity is a competitive advantage. Our success as a global
community is as
dependent on utilizing the wealth of backgrounds, skills, and opinions
that a diverse
workforce offers, as it is on raw materials, technology and
processes."(2)
My own experience as a member of several corporate boards, including
American Express
and Merck & Co., confirms that these statements are echoed
throughout the business
community. I know that the business world has not failed to recognize
and appreciate the
importance of diversity. Corporations are making significant efforts in
recruiting and
retaining a workforce that values diversity and that can effectively
conduct business
worldwide. There is no question that graduates of universities with
diverse populations --
whether minorities or nonminorities themselves -- offer the advantage
of being valuable
co-workers and managers in this increasingly diverse business
climate.
Race remains a significant factor in our society. Race almost always
affects an
individual's life experiences and perspectives, and thus a person's
capacity to contribute
to the kinds of learning through diversity that occur on campuses. Both
the growing
diversity of American society and the increasing interaction with other
cultures worldwide
make it evident that going to school with "the likes of
oneself" will be
increasingly anachronistic. The advantages of being able to understand
how others think
and function, to cope across racial divides, and to lead groups
composed of diverse
individuals are certain to increase. Moreover, our survey data throw
new light on the
extent of interaction occurring on campuses today and of how positively
the great majority
of students regard opportunities to learn from those with different
points of view,
backgrounds, and experiences.
In sum, the data indicate that there is a statistically significant
association between
attendance at the most selective institutions and a variety of
accomplishments during
college and in later life. If, at the end of the day, the question is
whether the most
selective colleges and universities have succeeded in both enhancing
the learning
experience for all students and educating sizable numbers of minority
students who have
already achieved considerable success and seem likely in time to occupy
positions of
leadership throughout society, I have no problem in answering the
question -- absolutely.
Footnotes
1 The 28 colleges and universities
are: Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Columbia University, Denison College, Duke University, Emory University, Hamilton College, Kenyon College, Miami University (Ohio), Northwestern University, Oberlin College, Pennsylvania State University, Princeton University, Rice University, Smith College, Stanford University, Swarthmore College, Tufts University, Tulane University, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, Washington University, Wellesley College, Wesleyan University, Williams College, and Yale University.
2 M. Douglas Ivester (Chairman and
CEO of The Coca-Cola Company) and Robert J. Eaton (Chairman and CEO of Chrysler Corporation), in Executive Council 1998, pp. 10, 34.
"Compelling Need" Table of Contents
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