A conversation about access and diversity

Academe, Jul/Aug 1998 by Mortenson, Thomas G, Carter, Deborah J, Olivas, Michael A

Academe asked three authorities to reflect on why diversity and access to higher education matter and how they can be protected if race-based affirmative action comes to an end.

Concerned that the current campaign against affirmative action may make it harder for students from traditionally underrepresented minority groups to go to college, Academe invited Thomas Mortenson, Deborah Carter, and Michael Olivas to reflect on the importance of ensuring the widest possible access to higher education. We asked them to suggest alternative ways to retain that access if race and ethnicity can no longer be factors in admissions, hiring, or financial aid. And we asked them to explore the notion of "merit" and whether it can be expanded beyond the traditional criteria of grades and test scores. Finally, we solicited their opinions about the educational value of diversity and the ways in which multiethnic and multiracial faculties and student bodies enhance the educational mission of the nation's colleges and universities. Their responses follow on pages 42-44.

THOMAS G. MORTENSON

Higher Education Policy Analyst, Postsecondary Education Opportunity and

Senior Scholar,

Center for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education

MY VIEWS ON AFFIRMATIVE act action, diversity, and access to higher education are influenced by my family's history in northern Europe and the United States, and by economic changes I see occurring in the labor force. Although they are personal, I believe these experiences are generally relevant.

My great-grandfather, Nels Martensson, left Sweden in 1880. He signed his name with an X. His parents were sharecroppers on the estate of a wealthy family that still owns several castles in southern Sweden. As the sixth of seven children, my great-grandfather had no prospects for a decent life if he remained in Sweden, so he left with his girlfriend for America, to join older siblings in Minnesota who had left Sweden a few years earlier. For Nels and his wife, life was a struggle. But their children prospered in Minnesota, and all received graduate-school educations. Surviving records attest to their pride in their literacy. In the next generation, my father's, all three boys graduated from the University of Minnesota. I modestly extended the educational accomplishments of my father, and my daughter, who loves learning and is far brighter than I am, may become the first in my family to earn a doctorate. I do not believe my family's story is in any way unique; it probably reflects the experiences of many, if not most, American families. Notably, it did not occur in Sweden, where it should have. It took the wrenching experience of leaving a homeland for the promise of America to get me to where I am today. That promise has become a reality for me and for many, many other Americans.

There is now a compelling need to move the pace of educational attainment forward faster than has occurred in the past. Since the early 1970s, income has been redistributed. The rich have gotten richer while the poor have become poorer, and, increasingly, what divides the two groups is educational attainment. The real incomes of families headed by persons with a high school education or less have declined sharply since 1973. The real incomes of those with bachelor's degrees have increased somewhat, but the incomes for families headed by persons with an education beyond the bachelor's degree have increased sharply.

If educational attainment is not greatly accelerated through outside intervention, the gap between the rich and the poor will widen even further and faster. In our brutal capitalistic economy, income (and the life choices and higher standards of living greater income allows) goes to those who earn it. And honesty and toil no longer suffice for earning income. Now one must add productivity, and productivity is increasingly determined by the education and training provided by postsecondary education.

Postsecondary educational opportunity is not a luxury, nor even a choice any longer: It has become, since 1973, an ever-more-pressing private and social imperative. The labor market is vastly oversupplied with unskilled and undereducated workers. That is why incomes for this group have gone down since 1973. At the highest levels of educational attainment, beyond the bachelor's degree, the labor market is undersupplied. That is why the real incomes of highly educated workers have increased much faster than inflation. The inadequacies of private, individual choices about postsecondary education and training have created this mismatch between demand and supply. Outside intervention, through targeted, crafted public policy is clearly and loudly called for.

The public policy approaches I favor are imbedded in Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965. They have been in place since the law's enactment. They focus on financial need and support services. Period. They make no mention of race, ethnicity, gender, state of residence, or left-handedness. They say that if you have financial need, there is an important public role in helping you finance your postsecondary education. They say that if you come from a family in which neither parent graduated from college, there is an important public role in helping you prepare for college and in counseling you while you are enrolled. Period. The genius of this approach is that it is focused on the most obvious, defensible, widely agreed upon sense of what defines disadvantage.