Q & A: How will the University of Michigan address falling minority enrollment?
Though the university has been prohibited from using affirmative action in admissions decisions since Dec. 29, 2006, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman has vowed that the university would maintain its commitment to diversity. After the latest numbers were announced, Coleman said that U-M would need to "redouble" its recruitment efforts for underrepresented minorities.
AnnArbor.com caught up with Erica Sanders, U-M's director of recruitment and operations, to get an idea of how the university will go about that mission, in its third admissions cycle without affirmative action.
AnnArbor.com: The numbers are out. Despite the biggest freshman class in years, and admitting more minority students than in years past, minority enrollment still dropped by 11 percent. Why?Sanders: Well, there were more applications, there were more admits - but the yield is where we really saw the impact. There's a lot of competition out there, and the competition is fierce. Students who apply to Michigan are looking at a variety of top-tier schools around the nation.
This year, with the challenges presented by the economy, there were a number of schools that went to their wait lists and made decisions late in the year - all of this has an impact on our enrollment. These are talented students who really have a wide variety of choices.
AnnArbor.com: Where do the students who reject Michigan's offer of admission end up enrolling?
Sanders: As we call out to students in the spring, we talk to them about their choices and where else they're looking. Our competitors are top 10, top 20 schools around the nation. In-state, it's also the schools where students might receive a full scholarship and we only gave them a partial one.
For instance, at Michigan our "middle-50" (the 25th to 75th percentile of admitted students) is a 3.8 to a 4.0 grade point average. When it comes to granting merit scholarships the bar is very high. At a school where the middle-50 is, say, a 3.1 and a 21 on the ACT, a student with a 3.5 and a 25 is like 'Wow.' That student might receive money at another institution but not be a competitive scholarship student for us. There's a lot of factors.
The economy has impacted universities around the country. As students are choosing where to enroll, a lot of those choices are being determined by cost considerations.
AnnArbor.com: President Mary Sue Coleman has said U-M needs to "redouble" its recruitment efforts - she's even taken to the phones herself to sing Michigan's praises to admitted students. U-M also deploys current students and alumni in calling prospective students. How does the personal touch help bring more minority students to campus?
Sanders: After Proposal 2 was passed in Michigan 2006, we called our counterparts in states where they've banned affirmative action - California, Washington, even Texas - and asked (administrators) what they would do differently, what they learned from the experience. ...
What we've learned that the personal touch has to be a part of it. As we connect to prospective students individually, we learn what's important to them. We put them in touch with faculty members in their areas of interest, and sometimes we're able to put them in touch with students and alums from their hometown to address their concerns and talk about their own experiences at Michigan.
We're also retooling our efforts related to the financial aid and scholarship process. We're always working to determine if there are factors we could evaluate more closely.
That said, it's very important that we're reaching out and telling these students our story and how important diversity is to this university, and how much we want these students on campus. Their enrollment is crucial to keeping Michigan diverse.
AnnArbor.com: Have you found that the minorities Michigan has admitted in the post-affirmative action era compare favorably to minority admits in years past?
Sanders: The data doesn't bear out that the students (admitted under affirmative action) were any less qualified than the ones we admit now. They were outstanding students before the Supreme Court decision (overturning Michigan's point-based admission system, which granted minorities 20 out of 100 needed points) and after it, before Prop 2 and after Prop 2.
Affirmative action was one of many tools we used to identify students who bring the wide range of experiences that we want to our campus. It's a tool that we can't use anymore, but it's important to remember that it was always just one of many tools in the toolbox.
AnnArbor.com: What are some other tools Michigan uses in its place?
Sanders: Descriptor Plus, for instance, uses U.S. Census information to tell us more about the neighborhoods where applicants live. Is it working class, first generation college, and low income? Is it a neighborhood where many people have master's degrees and beyond?
All of those students bring something to the campus, but we want a wide variety of those experiences in the Michigan community. ...
What the Descriptor Plus does is it gives us insight into students' backgrounds that we didn't have before. Descriptor Plus is a geo-demographic tool we purchase from the College Board ... . We started using it in 2006, the same year the Prop 2 vote came up. For high schools, we learn things like average income, number of advanced placement or honors classes offered, the type of community the high school resides in, so we get a better idea of the resources the student has been exposed to.
We also learn these things about each student's neighborhood. Marrying that data together gives us a rich picture of the resources and support the student comes from.
This provides us more context to assess applicants. If, for instance, a student comes from a school where the test scores aren't very strong, but the student managed to do significantly better than the norm, we may have a case where the high school is lacking resources and the kid did the most he could.
AnnArbor.com: Can you talk about the U-M Center for Educational Outreach and its role in these recruitment efforts?
Sanders: Sandra Day O'Connor, in the 'sunset' clause of her Supreme Court decision (which stated that the need for affirmative action programs should be eliminated within 25 years of the 2003 decision) said that she hoped there would be a time when colleges and universities would ... work hand-in-hand with K-12 schools to solve this problem of underserved students.
The university took this very much to heart and started thinking about partnerships. The center came about because we needed an office to coordinate these relationships and to keep us informed about how those efforts are going.
We want to help underserved schools across the state to help them identify curriculum issues and how we might be of help - partnering with the School of Education, partnering with our faculty to develop best practices and teaching learning instruction techniques that will help in the classroom.
Doing a presentation here or there is wonderful, but it doesn't really impact classroom instruction.
James David Dickson reports on human interest stories for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at JamesDickson@AnnArbor.com, or at Twitter.com/JamesDDickson.
Comments
Dr. I. Emsayin
Sun, Oct 18, 2009 : 12:03 p.m.
What I appreciate about Ms. Sanders' comments is the desire to give UM students an experience on campus with a wide variety of other students. It is not only about the grades and scores, it is about educating students about other people whom they may not have known before coming to college. There are plenty of private schools that cater to a homogenous student body; similarly, there are educational systems in other countries that do the same. The University of Michigan has stepped up to make sure that its students learn from each other about the nature of society at large. Is it unfair that a student from the UP with fewer AP courses be admitted over a student from the local suburbs with more AP courses? Is it unfair that a student with all A's but no community service be denied in place of a student with a few B's and compelling community service? How about if a student grows up in a household taking care of younger siblings because a single parent works two shifts to make ends meet, and that student, with good grades is admitted, but a student with every opportunity, and the same grades, is not admitted? President Coleman is invested in bright underserved youth and her outreach is to be commended.
Technojunkie
Sun, Oct 18, 2009 : 10:47 a.m.
It would be nice if we treated students as individuals instead of crudely stuffing them into superficial groups. Pretending that "minority" students have achieved more than they have is strictly for making a bunch of pampered Great White Fathers feel good about themselves. It leaves everyone else feeling bitter and certainly doesn't accomplish anything productive. We could try something radical like spending more time on writing and math instruction in grade school instead of self esteem training, etc. Maybe even stop making excuses for students because of their race? Oh, but it's racist not to account for race! Er...
David Briegel
Sun, Oct 18, 2009 : 7:45 a.m.
Silly Sally, And the children in this pathetic environment should be made to suffer by the most affluent society in history because......? Your solution is the Republican solution to everything. Nothing! Keep them in their poverty and ignorance and do Nothing! Build more prisons. Fund more war. The Christian thing to do!
John Galt
Sat, Oct 17, 2009 : 3:46 p.m.
I think that the problem here lies further down the education system chain. Rather than trying to admit students that do not have the academic qualifications, we should spend more time in the elementary and high schools to provide better educations to all. Then the pool of qualified applicants will follow (without the need to reverse-discriminate to achieve a "diversity" goal). I think the failure is not in discimination in admission to colleges, rather a systemic problem in the local schools which do not provide a good education for many minorities in urban school systems across the nation.
David Briegel
Sat, Oct 17, 2009 : 11:13 a.m.
Can you get a breakdown of all students admitted outside of the normal admissions process? Athletes, legacies and any other categories where exceptions are made or special treatment is given? I believe there are several categories and I would be curious to see those numbers.
djm12652
Sat, Oct 17, 2009 : 9:46 a.m.
Well said Silly Sally...colleges should admit the best and brightest with no advantage due to race or nationality... based solely on intellectual talents.
Silly Sally
Sat, Oct 17, 2009 : 9:03 a.m.
"They were outstanding students before the Supreme Court decision (overturning Michigan's point-based admission system, which granted minorities 20 out of 100 needed points)" UM and other institutions are fighting over the same small pool of qualified minority students. If those students who were admitted under a racist affirmative action policy were so "outstanding", why did UM feel the need to add 20 points to their total? As many points as a straight "A" average. When a segment of society has such a low high school graduation rate, it stands to reason that they should not have the same admission rates as other groups that have a much, much higher graduation rate, better test scores, better high schools and better grades. What Aff. Action has done is make those minorities who are good students suspect, only there due to their race and not their ability. How unfair to those students. Aff Action is also unfair to better qualified students who were not admitted so UM can instead admit someone who is less qualified. What Mary Sue Coleman fails to see is that education begins with the parents, and some students have poor parents.