Washington — U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona spoke the truth this month about priorities in higher education, even going so far as to call them a "joke":
[M]any institutions spend enormous time and money chasing rankings they feel carry prestige.... There's a whole science behind climbing the rankings. [Emphasis added]
Black enrollment grew from 282,000 in 1966 to more than 2.5 million in 2010.... But from 2010 to 2020, as overall college enrollments fell, the number of Black students on campuses fell even more sharply, to 1.9 million.
Would the "science" behind climbing the rankings have anything to do with Black enrollment declines? Yes. The science of so-called Enrollment Management, as widely practiced in higher education, does not target race per se as a factor in chasing prestige, but it might as well. A look at who gets loaded down with student debt and who doesn't reveals the unavoidable connection. This has been clear for more than a decade. The Black population is increasingly wary of the debt load it is being expected to assume, and it shows across a wide spectrum of debt and enrollment indicators.
Meanwhile, the higher education establishment is once again weighing in with the U.S. Supreme Court to protect race-based affirmative action, arguing that without this tool it cannot achieve desired racial diversity. The Court will hear oral arguments in two affirmative action cases in coming months.
Which raises a question: Why not use Enrollment Management science, which is not race-based but causally linked to enrollment distributions, to increase rather than suppress Black enrollment? Instead of using resources to chase rankings, use them to reduce Black debt load. A commitment to do so would make the higher education community appear less hypocritical.*
The Secretary could aid this himself, by sending his program review teams to institutions that use the science of Enrollment Management in ways that counter the purposes of federal student aid programs. He could make participation in HEA Title IV programs dependent on use of the science to complement, rather than countervail, federal programs.
I am not optimistic about how the Court will approach these questions, based on previous decisions. The Court has not looked seriously at Enrollment Management science and its effects. In oral argument for a 2015 decision, Justice Scalia was more interested in asking whether Black students might be better off attending institutions that are not academically competitive. Such is the level of the debate at the Court.
A sensible decision in the current cases, in my opinion, would be one that reaffirms strict scrutiny for any use of race, not just nominally but in effect as well. Especially in effect. That would lower the hypocrisy and would be more likely to achieve racial diversity goals.
_______________________________________
* See also Matthew Johnson, Undermining Racial Justice: How One University Embraced Inclusion and Inequality.
