Diversity and Opportunity: A New Paradigm for Elite Public Universities

260 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002.As of this writing, the Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke has been the only Supreme Court case to rule upon affirmative action in university admissions. Bakke established the legal standard that under Equal Protection analysis, the facilitation of student body diversity for educational reasons was of compelling legal interest. This study concludes that the use of race as allowed by Bakke renders the facilitation of student body diversity much easier and more effective than other current practices, such as programs that target income rather than race. However, during the past several years the courts have not looked favorably upon the use of race-based affirmative action. To that end, the last chapter in the study examines other purposes for facilitating diversity within elite public institutions, namely land grant universities. In keeping with the land grant tradition of expanding access and promoting the public good, a land grant standard for achieving diversity is proposed.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD