Minority Enrollment Drop at U-M Law 'Not a Tragedy'
Since it began using a race-blind admissions process after voters passed Prop. 2 in 2006, the University of Michigan has seen an 8 percent drop in minority enrollment. But statewide, the numbers are actually on the rise.
This according to a Detroit News analysis of statewide admission numbers.
The paper concluded that, “The numbers suggest the ballot initiative that barred race from admissions didn’t significantly impact the number of underrepresented minorities at public universities overall. But it likely contributed to smaller percentages of minority students admitted at the state’s most prestigious university and the top professional schools.”
Hit hardest in terms of minority enrollment were U-M’s law and medical schools.
The two schools, “have seen significant drops in underrepresented minority students,” the News reports. “Combined black, Hispanic and Native American representation fell from 14.1 percent of the entering U-M law school class in 2006 to 9.1 percent in 2008.”
“This isn’t great, but it’s not a tragedy,” Sarah Zearfoss, assistant dean at U-M’s law school, told the paper. The News noted that the drop could have been more dramatic. After California passed a similar anti-affirmative action measure, the University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, black first-year enrollment fell from 20 in 1996 to one student in 1997.
