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- The Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions at the end of June.
- The Education and Justice Departments released new guidance for colleges in the ruling's aftermath.
- They said colleges can reconsider how they use legacy preference in admissions.
The White House just told colleges they can take a closer look at how they favor legacy students in their admissions processes.
On Monday, President Joe Biden's Education and Justice Departments released new guidance to schools in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision at the end of July that struck down affirmative action in college admissions. While the high court's ruling made clear that race cannot be considered when deciding whether a student will be admitted to an institution, the administration's new resources are intended to "help colleges and universities as they work to lawfully pursue efforts to achieve a student body that is diverse across a range of factors, including race and ethnicity," the press release said.
"Ensuring access to higher education for students from different backgrounds is one of the most powerful tools we have to prepare graduates to lead an increasingly diverse nation and make real our country's promise of opportunity for all," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. "These resources provide universities with the information they need to determine what lawful tools remain available to them to promote diversity in higher education."
A Dear Colleague letter to colleges penned by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke and Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon said that following the Supreme Court decision, "sustained action" is required to ensure students of color and low-income students have equal access to higher education — and that means, in part, examining how the school currently admits its students.
"With respect to admissions practices themselves, especially for the upcoming cycle, the Departments encourage colleges and universities to review their policies to ensure they identify and reward those attributes that they most value, such as hard work, achievement, intellectual curiosity, potential, and determination," the letter said.
"Conversely," the letter continued, "colleges and universities can examine admission preferences, such as those based on legacy status or donor affiliation, that are unrelated to a prospective applicant's individual merit or potential, that further benefit privileged students, and that reduce opportunities for others who have been foreclosed from such advantages."
Following the affirmative action decision, legacy preference in college admissions entered a harsh spotlight. The Education Department opened a civil rights inquiry into Harvard University over its usage of legacy preference following allegations from three groups — the Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England, and the Greater Boston Latino Network — that claimed Harvard was favoring white and wealthy applications who were less qualified over applicants of color.
Since the decision, a growing number of colleges including Wesleyan and Occidental announced they were dropping legacy consideration from their admissions processes, and there's increased pressure for prestigious schools like Harvard to follow suit. Harvard has yet to comment on how it is evaluating legacy preference.
In addition to the Dear Colleague letter to schools, the departments also released an FAQ that schools can use to better understand the implications of the Supreme Court decision. It included information on how a school can consider race in admissions, saying that while the decision limited a school's ability to consider "race in and of itself," it can still be used as a part of a discussion on how race has impacted the applicants life.
"For example," the FAQ said, "a university could consider an applicant's explanation about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city's youth orchestra or an applicant's account of overcoming prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent."
Cardona told reporters in a Monday press call that a "comprehensive report on the most effective and promising strategies for colleges to lawfully cultivate diverse applicant pools and achieve diverse student bodies" will be released in a few weeks.