US DOJ to Probe Race-based Discrimination in Admissions

According to media reports, the Trump administration is likely to take action on the conservatives’ long pending issue of intentional race-based discrimination in admissions. Quoting NYT, the Chronicle said recently that the US Department of Justice (DoP) has contemplated on probing intentional race-based discrimination in admissions.

Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow at the Century Foundation who argues for affirmative action based on class rather than race, told The Chronicle, "The system is rigged against disadvantaged students, and legacy preferences are the most blatant example. One positive dividend of the news may be an increased focus on legacies. People are quite rightly coming out and saying there’s lots of unfairness in the system. That’s healthy."

Questions about Legacies

Many selective public universities and private colleges have long considered an applicant’s legacy status as one of many factors in admission, says the report and adds, “Yet legacy conscious practices have received less scrutiny than race-conscious ones.”

Marybeth Gasman, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania tells The Chronicle, "We don’t see challenges to legacies because the vast majority of legacies are wealthy whites. They benefit and won’t challenge the system."

Click here for more education detail's please visit: study in usa, mba abroad, study in usa colleges, lsat test, Study Abroad Scholarships, study abroad consultants in  Delhi-NCR

Challenging a System

Challenging a system in the courts is both costly and time-consuming. Some legal experts can envision a plaintiff arguing convincingly that a college’s consideration of legacy status has a disparate impact on minority applicants. Yet some of the organizations most inclined to take up that argument, Kahlenberg speculates, might well lack the resources to support such litigation. Or they might think their resources are better spent supporting race-based policies, which for decades have been under constant attack.

Strict Scrutiny Review

In any case, legacy preferences probably would prove difficult to challenge successfully in the courts. All race-conscious practices are subject to "strict scrutiny review." That means colleges must clear a high bar when defending them. A slightly lower standard applies to gender-specific practices. Yet for other aspects of a student’s application, the likely standard would require an even lower bar (a "rational basis") for the challenged policy, Arthur L. Coleman, managing partner of EducationCounsel LLC, which advises colleges on student-diversity strategies, is quoted as saying by the report

Racial Preferences

Factors such as legacy status, family income, and geographic origin aren’t nearly as likely to trigger the same legal alarms as race does. Other legal experts have challenged that notion, arguing that legacy preferences violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by extending benefits "based on lineage." But so far apparently no one has made that argument in federal court. When a plaintiff unsuccessfully challenged legacy policies back in the 1970s, she claimed her rights were violated by several other kinds of preferences, too (including those for athletes and in-state applicants). Though a recent lawsuit filed against Harvard University on behalf of Asian-American applicants says legacy preferences "operate to the disadvantage of minority applicants," the lawsuit's challenge concerns alleged racial preferences, added the report