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Many institutions were forced by the COVID-19 pandemic to change admissions policies as a response to logistical challenges around testing. However, even as logistical challenges have resolved, pandemic-era changes to higher education testing policies which reduced or eliminated testing requirements have remained in place in many schools. Now, research evidence is beginning to emerge which looks at the effects that reductions to testing requirements are having on undergraduate admissions, making it possible to determine whether those policies are meeting their goals. This review examines the empirical evidence that has been gathered to date to identify trends in the effects of these testing policies and to make recommendations for increasing equity in admissions that institutions may wish to consider as they grapple with another change in higher education admissions: the striking down of race-conscious admissions. We find that test-optional admissions do not benefit equity in all cases, but that some contexts show more promise than others.

The most recent data on the labor force participation rate of individuals who identify as being blind or having vision loss in the United States indicate it is approximately 44%. In 2014, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs promulgated regulations pertaining to Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 to address the continued lack of employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. These reforms had the potential to expand individuals with disabilities' employment horizons as it was estimated that the number of employees who work directly under a federal contract number in the millions. Five years later, it is unclear how federal contractors are implementing these alterations to recruit and retain legally blind individuals. Using quantitative analysis of responses from 140 current/former legally blind employees and job applicants, this research measured the current employment outcomes of the legally blind community in relation to the Section 503 regulations update. Gaps in employment for legally blind individuals existed, especially in regards to the job classifications in which they found the most success and whether the position held was disability-oriented. These results will inform HR professionals, policymakers, and blind advocates on how to proceed in developing effective disability-conscious workplace laws and policies.

Admission to selective colleges has grown more competitive, yielding student bodies that are unrepresentative of the U.S. population. Admission officers report using sorting (e.g., GPA, standardized tests) and concertedly cultivated (e.g., extracurricular activities) and ascriptive status (e.g., whether an applicant identifies as a member of a racially minoritized group) criteria to make decisions. Using latent class analysis, we identified three groupings of institutions based on the admission criteria they claim to value. Public institutions largely practiced a "coarse sieve" approach that relied on sorting criteria. Some private institutions practiced "fine sieve" admissions by emphasizing concertedly cultivated and ascriptive status criteria. A few privates employed the "double sieve" that combined sorting and concertedly cultivated criteria. Results illuminate the shape of the admissions sieve, identifying institutional contexts that inform the admissions practices selective colleges claim to use.

I study student characteristics and academic performance at the University of California, where consideration of an applicant's ethnicity has been banned since 1996 and SAT scores were used in admitting students to the university until fall 2021. I show the following: (1) SAT scores were more important than high school grades in predicting first-year university GPA; (2) the use of SAT scores alone or with high school grades in determining admission is biased in favor of admitting underrepresented minorities and students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged; (3) SAT scores are more important and high school grades are less important in predicting GPA for underrepresented minorities and/or those students from low-income families than they are for those students who are white and/or from high-income families; and (4) the University of California found ways to admit a significant number of underrepresented minorities despite many of them having low SAT scores.

Many institutions of higher learning aim to promote greater racial diversity to harness learning benefits and foster a sense of inclusion. Nevertheless, the institutional pursuit of racial diversity is difficult to benchmark. The current constitutional boundary limits the use of race to promote the diversity in college admissions to a "narrow," "holistic," and "case-by-case" strategy laden with definitional ambiguity. This ambiguity is deepened by constraints, such as institutional history, demographics, geography, and institutional rank, that often go unaccounted for in popular diversity measures. This article creates an expected diversity measure that describes the amount of racial diversity one would expect accounting for the home state of their incoming class. This initial step serves as an example that universities may follow when using their own internal data to account for a richer set of diversity constraints and to better monitor progress toward reaching their racial diversity goals. These measures can free universities from chasing unattainable external judgments on diversity targets, such as national benchmarks, thereby encouraging a more effective redistribution of resources for diversity-related outcomes.

Educational research, policy, advocacy organizations, and higher education policy scholars, have noted the significance of race-conscious admissions in the dismantling of the structural and material racial and class barriers that reflect the historical role of colleges and universities. In this essay, the author enacts a different reading of the issue of higher education policy as it relates to race-conscious admissions by recasting the issue toward the historical scene of black student protest at San Francisco State College during the Black and Third World Liberation Strike in 1968 to 1969. The argument is that this moment in the history of higher education illuminates a central aspect that higher education research and policymakers often understate--the significance of Black student protest as the revolutionary activity that catalyzed the discourse of affirmative action policies in higher education, and that recasting higher educational policy in the context of the anti-colonial politics of struggle that informed Black student protest reveals the limits of race-conscious admissions in the struggle for educational freedom.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 decision in "SFFA v. Harvard" to upend nearly fifty years of legal precedent for race-conscious admissions, this article summarizes arguments grounded in decades of social science research that sought to dispel the erroneous claims put forth by the plaintiffs. In critiquing the inaccuracies and contradictions embedded within the Court's opinion, we argue that SFFA and the Court relied on inaccurate logics regarding race that were devoid of empirical research on the heterogeneity amongst Asian Americans as a racial category. We put forth evidence that contextualizes the racialized experiences of Asian Americans--influenced by historical immigration patterns of exclusion and hyperselectivity--and how they facilitate harmful stereotypes such as the model minority myth. Thus, it is incumbent upon social scientists to actively counteract misinformation and misrepresentation through the continued production and dissemination of empirical research. While race-conscious admissions may no longer be permissible, we contend that universities and colleges are uniquely positioned to reimagine new avenues for enhancing educational access that is rooted in racial equity.

The topic of affirmative action has been a subject of intense debate, with both proponents and opponents offering compelling arguments. Justice Clarence Thomas, an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, has consistently expressed strong reservations about affirmative-action policies, viewing them as a form of reverse discrimination that may "hinder the principles of meritocracy and equal treatment under the law." However, it is crucial to examine the personalized experiences and consider the nuances, such as underrepresentation and microaggressions, that surround affirmative action. This study utilizes a symbolic interactionist and phenomenological approach that pulls from the individualized/collective experiences of Black students/faculty at historically White colleges and universities (HWCUs) and examines their sociocultural experiences on campus. Findings from this study highlight the continuing discriminative practices and "peer to peer" interactions that Black students/faculty must navigate at HWCUs and the strategies utilized to circumvent mistreatment and institutional adversities. Data from this study provide more context for the ongoing conversation pertaining to affirmative action, "peer to peer," and institutional discrimination that Black students and faculty experience at HWCUs. In this article, I examine the concept of "leveraging tokenism," a strategy that Black students and faculty utilize to circumvent underrepresentation and racial microaggressions.

Through a critical discourse analysis of three Asian American organizations' rhetoric around race and education, we explore the activism of Asian Americans working against affirmative action and other race-based educational policies. We examine the way these groups engage ideological discourses regarding race, civil rights, and the freedom to compete in their fight to protect Asian Americans' access to elite educational institutions. Drawing on the scholarship on neoliberal educational policy and neoliberal racialization, we argue that the organizational activism of Asian American opponents of affirmative action embodies the intersection of neoliberal approaches to education and neoliberal conceptions of race and racialization. Thus, we consider that Asian American anti-affirmative activists are neoliberal racialized subjects who view education, particularly higher education, as a private good that should go to the most successful student/consumer. They embrace and repurpose the language of civil rights to fight for their individual rights as educational consumers.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were created to provide educational opportunities for African Americans when other educational pathways were closed or restricted. These higher education institutions with the assistance of the American Missionary Association and the Freedmen's Bureau, churches and philanthropists, continue to educate African American leaders and advance society at large. From a Critical Race Theorists (CRT) perspective, the promotion and sustainability of HBCUs is relevant and much needed in the 21st century particularly with the gradual elimination of affirmative action standards at mainstream institutions. Acknowledging the persistence of racism, which CRT implores us to do, it is clear that HBCUs are critical educational entities as they lessen equity gaps and create opportunities for marginalized and disproportionately recognized students across the globe.

Attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion threaten to undo much of the work of creating and maintaining diverse learning and working environments for students, faculty, and staff. In honor of ACPA's 100th anniversary, we reflect on the current threats to the campus racial climate, highlight research that informs our scholarship and practice, and offer strategies for resistance. We close with a consideration of critical hope as necessary to the pursuit of equity-centered work during this turbulent period in higher education.

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College" (2023) and "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina et al." (2023), hereafter collectively referred to as "SFFA v. Harvard," have garnered attention, especially among higher education administrators (Schermele, 2023). This attention is, of course, justified because the decisions represent a major shift in the way the U.S. Supreme Court has approached race-conscious admissions. The court has changed direction in its willingness to accept the educational benefits of diversity as a justification for utilizing race in admissions programs. In this article, the authors take a look at the "SFFA v. Harvard" decision, offer some context for the role of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and discuss implications for higher education practitioners.

The study of affirmative action bans suffers from focusing on the ivory tower as the site for the impacts of affirmative action bans. Prior literature on affirmative action bans has missed the bigger picture, failing to see that less glamorous schools have also been impacted by the bans. This article fully fleshes out the impacts of affirmative action on postsecondary education by their level of selectivity (Barron's Admissions Competitiveness Index) and sector (private, public, and for profit) from a merged data set (Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System and the Current Population Survey) spanning 1991 to 2016. The results of a differences-in-differences analysis find that a small group of for-profit institutions with very large enrollments became a destination for underrepresented minority students in the wake of affirmative action bans.

The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court to limit affirmative action in college admissions could make it even more challenging for academically talented students of color to gain access to competitive schools. The importance of school counselors in guiding and supporting these students is now more crucial than ever. This qualitative study aimed to determine what school counselors need to know, do, and believe to help academically talented, Black students from low-income households gain admission into highly selective colleges and universities. Three broad themes and 10 subthemes emerged from the data analysis. The themes were (a) knowledge and awareness, (b) mindsets and beliefs, and (c) habits and practices. Implications for school counselor practice, training, and research are discussed.

The study investigates a tension between affirmative action scholars who hypothesize that affirmative action bans would increase underrepresented minority students' STEM college completions and scholars who have empirically estimated declines. It also questions results that that find no existence of a STEM penalty (compared to non-STEM) caused by affirmative action bans and finds that a STEM penalty is likely, but varies from a very modest effect (using the Department of Homeland Security taxonomy) to a more substantial impact (using the National Science Foundation taxonomy). This study finds that many of the tensions between affirmative action scholars studying STEM are likely the product of model specification. It illustrates how the following have impacted the estimates: the period studied, the inclusion and exclusion of certain ban states, the measure of institutional selectivity, and most importantly, the taxonomy of STEM. Furthermore, this study builds upon prior studies by analyzing private schools and the shorter-term and longer-term impacts of the bans.

The paper examines a 'circulatory' system of gender inequity in Australian universities where gender bias prevents women from accessing senior decision-making roles and stultifies their capacity to act as gender change agents. It has been mooted that equity quotas for senior roles can derail this circuit of male privilege in academia. Yet a plastic reading of the shape of gender equity policy and practice in Australian universities over the last 40 years reveals an increasing acceptance of individualism, which positions women's liberation as being achievable through self-responsibilisation. If these discourses remain unchallenged, gender quotas for senior roles alone will likely only benefit those entrepreneurial women admitted to senior positions, rendering the causes of gender inequity hidden and exonerated. Using a novel methodology that combines a 'plastic' with a complex systems lens of policy manoeuvres, we suggest gender quotas, accompanied by strategy designed to develop leaders' gender competency and change agency, are required to support more sustainably equitable work structure within the academy.

We study university admissions under a centralized system that uses grades and standardized test scores to match applicants to university programs. In the context of this system, we explore affirmative action policies that seek to narrow the gap between the admission rates of different socio-demographic groups while still accepting students with high scores. Since there is uncertainty about the score distribution of the students who will apply to each program, it is unclear what policy would have the desired effect on the admission rates of different groups. We address this challenge by using a predictive model trained on historical data to help optimize the parameters of such policies. We find that a learned predictive model does significantly better than relying on the ideal parameters for the last year. At the same time, we also find that a large pool of historical data yields similar results as our predictive approach for our data. Due to the more complex nature of the predictive approach, we conclude that a simpler approach should be preferred if enough data is available (e.g., long-standing, traditional university programs), but not for newer programs and other cases in which our predictive strategy can prove helpful.

This conceptual paper analyzes persistent challenges to racially diversify higher education in Texas, paying special attention to trends at this Southern state's most selective flagship--University of Texas at Austin. We apply critical race theorist Kimberlè Crenshaw's frame of race liberalism and her view of equality as either expansive or restrictive to analyze race-neutral approaches intended to remedy longstanding issues of racial diversity. Specifically, we focus on the Texas Top Ten Percent Policy, tracing its trajectory from affirmative action through the recent Abigail Fisher case. This examination clarifies the race-evasive basis of policies designed to improve enduring issues of racial exclusion in higher education.

In this article, the author argues that given the Supreme Court's recent decision to ban affirmative action, there is much to be done to maintain and increase diversity in a race-neutral admissions environment. Those who oversee admissions/enrollment planning and strategic enrollment management must find innovative ways to accomplish this. The author offers at least one viable approach. However, prior to discussing this approach, the author first assesses how well administrators have done in producing a diverse class of students using the previously legal tools of affirmative action.

Strategy is planning about survival in a tough and competitive environment, and strategic enrollment management (SEM) is about higher education institutions exerting influence on student enrollment to generate tuition revenue. Although the global environment of the 21st century provides opportunities for improving enrollment from various parts of the world, it also presents challenges and tough competition. Therefore, overviews and analyses of enrollment strategies and admissions practices pursued by higher education in various parts of the world cannot only be helpful for SEM practitioners to improve their enrollment strategies, but they can also provide background on international students and academia and support SEM practitioners in gaining competitive advantage. Admissions quotas are one example of admissions practices implemented in many countries, the most notable among them being India and China, which have two of the largest higher education systems in the world. India uses admissions quotas as part of affirmative action policies, whereas China uses quotas to control and manage enrollment. An overview of these admissions quota systems being used for different strategic purposes can provide valuable insight to SEM leaders.

The United Nations sustainable development goals in education aim at inclusive and quality education for all. To achieve this, Ghana has a Draft Inclusive Education Policy which seeks to address the diverse learning needs of all citizens. Furthermore, the 1992 constitution provides the legal basis for the provision of higher education to be equally accessible to all. Equity in education means making sure that equitable and quality education is accessible to all students irrespective of their background. This paper based on review of literature, sought to identify interventions implemented in enhancing equity in tertiary education institutions, identify gaps which remain and suggest strategies to close these equity gaps. The gaps include enrolment by gender, disability issues and spatial disparity.

Since the post-George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots of last summer, the left has become increasingly insistent about the need to "do more" to eliminate what it sees as "systemic racism"--a demand that implicitly, and often explicitly, rejects as woefully inadequate the results of what is by now almost fifty years of affirmative action. The often-dormant resolve of conservatives and others to resist racial preference policies has been aroused by the decisive rejection of Proposition 16 by California voters, the attempt of Democrats to repeal Proposition 209 and revive affirmative action in that state. The gap between elites and popular opinion, between left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, is perhaps wider on this issue than any other. There are virtually no elected or appointed Democrats in federal or state government remaining who believe it is necessary for the state to treat citizens "without regard" to race or ethnicity. Thus even if affirmative action remains as a label, its substance is sure to change. This change will not be the first it has undergone. John S. Rosenburg argues that society should start to think of its next phase as Affirmative Action: Release 3.0.

"Systemic racism" implies that racist policies are embedded in laws and institutions. That claim is patently false as evidenced by Americans having elected a biracial president for two terms and, more recently, a biracial vice president--not to mention blacks serving in the cabinet, in the highest ranks of the armed services, and in various other prominent positions, both public and private. The truth is that the only systemic racism that exists today is in the form of affirmative action measures "favoring" blacks, among other presumably disadvantaged groups. In this article, the author examines how "systemic racism" has effected Art Education.

The present work analyzes the academic performance of students from at-risk groups from the perspective of Social Network Analysis (SNA), studying the academic and interaction information of 45 students belonging to at-risk groups who attended a pilot socio-academic course during one academic term. This information was used to create a sociogram, which served as the basis for determining the centrality metrics of the SNA. The relationships between these metrics and the academic variables were then studied by means of correlation analysis and linear regression with LASSO standardization. As a preview of the results, it was determined that the academic performance of the students in the pilot course was influenced, on the one hand, by their academic knowledge prior to being admitted to the university, represented by the score on the Mathematics and Geometry section of the diagnostic test, and on the other hand, by the dynamics of the social network in which they interacted in the classroom, represented by the eigenvector centrality. These results have significant potential for explaining the academic performance according to SNA metrics, and they provide evidence to support the implementation of practices that promote a healthy social environment in an academic context.

Ongoing sociolegal conflicts over affirmative action in race-conscious admissions in U.S. higher education have significant modern-day relevance. This article, informed mainly by Asian American women's scholarship, explores discourse in U.S. Supreme Court rulings and oral arguments and how litigation actors continue to recycle this discourse in more recent legal strategies that maintain and normalize inequitable access to selective, historically White institutions. The author revisited and extended critical race feminist Kimberlé Crenshaw's metaphor, the "Colorblind Hustle," which describes the anti-affirmative action strategy of deploying Black spokespersons as advocates for eradicating policies that promote racial equity. The author proposes a new metaphor, the "Color-Evasive Hustle 2.0," to describe current anti-affirmative action strategies with Asian Americans as plaintiffs in a 2018 lawsuit against Harvard University. Finally, this article elevates interdisciplinary scholarship and legal strategies with potential to expose the Color-Evasive Hustle 2.0 and affirm and sustain educational equity.

The under-representation of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines has been well documented. We discuss an affirmative action recruitment strategy from the University of Melbourne's STEM disciplines where only female applicants were eligible to apply for academic positions. This strategy has been very successful in attracting high-calibre female applicants, with more than the original target of women being recruited. This affirmative action recruitment strategy was not intended to be undertaken on an ongoing basis. We show that by undertaking one round of affirmative action recruitment, it signalled to prospective female applicants that the university is committed to gender equity. This resulted in more female STEM applicants applying in subsequent open recruitment rounds. We discuss the rationale behind this strategy, its allowance under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010, Victoria, Australia, and the results achieved. We also address challenges faced and lessons learned.

Most education and legal scholarship overlook gendered-race themes in pre-Brown v. Board of Education desegregation higher education cases that remain relevant to examining post-"Brown" race-conscious admissions cases. The author engaged critical race feminism to create a counterstory with Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, a U.S. Supreme Court plaintiff in conversation with two fictitious Black women, Geneva Crenshaw, a civil rights attorney, and Nia Lytle, a tenure-track assistant professor of higher education. During a fictionalized one-day oral argument presented with dialogue composed from texts of actual race-conscious admission cases, the Black women react to and critique the societal and legal logic used by organizations and individuals who recruited the white women plaintiffs in those cases. The counterstory illustrates how civil rights discourse was coopted to advance white supremacist grievances. The conclusion calls on those invested in racial equity to reframe the discourse of institutional legal strategies to advance race-conscious admissions.

The purpose of this paper is to document the indirect effects of the Texas Top Ten Percent Plan on professional school degrees awarded and to propose the far reach of the law as an alternative argument in support of race-conscious admissions policies challenged under the strict scrutiny standard. Designed around the two tests of strict scrutiny, this study first highlights the essential need for a diverse constituency of professionals to enable societal advancement as a compelling state interest established by the courts and then provides empirical evidence to support additional narrowly tailored race-conscious admissions policies. Complementary interrupted time series analysis and logistic regression find that current admissions policies fail to improve diversity in professional school degrees awarded.