UT to Modify Admissions Procedures
By Byron LaMasters
The effects of today's Supreme Court rulings on Affirmative Action will be felt at the University of Texas. The University announced today that it will reintroduce some affirmative action programs in time for the fall 2004 semester:
Dr. Larry R. Faulkner, president of The University of Texas at Austin, said the rulings in the Michigan case sweep away the restrictions of the 1996 Hopwood decision, a decade-long case that eliminated the consideration of race in admitting students at the university’s School of Law and other higher education institutions in Texas.
“We are very pleased here at The University of Texas at Austin that the Supreme Court’s rulings today place the state of Texas and higher education institutions in the state on the same competitive basis as education institutions throughout the United States,” Faulkner said in a news conference.
The University of Texas at Austin will modify its admissions procedures to comply with the court’s rulings in time for the fall 2004 semester, Faulkner said. This will include implementing procedures at the undergraduate level that combine the benefits of the Top 10 Percent Law with affirmative action programs that can produce even greater diversity, he said.
Establishing these procedures for graduate and professional programs will be a priority, Faulkner said, because “we don’t have a good substitute for affirmative action” in those programs.
The Michigan rulings establish a new precedent under which individualized, “wholistic” admissions procedures, such as those in place at The University of Texas at Austin that consider multiple factors in a high school student’s background, are affirmed as legal, he said.
More on the story in the Austin American Statesman.
Posted by Byron LaMasters at June 23, 2003 09:01 PM
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