Abandonment or Inclusion of Race in Higher Education Admissions: A Case Study of Consequences

221 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003.Admissions practices and academic records were examined for African American students admitted to the University in 1968, 1978, 1985 and 1995. Independent t-tests were conducted on the means for both African Americans and majority students (all freshmen excluding African Americans) across Campus Selection Index, ACT-C and High School Percentile Rank (HSPR) for the 1978, 1985 and 1995 cohorts. A difference in each of the means was found to be significant at the .05 level. Examination of the data revealed that the mean Campus Selection Index for African Americans for the years 1978, '85 and '95 was 3.5. Graduation rates for African Americans during 1978, 1985 and 1995 equaled or exceeded national norms, despite the fact that over 75% of these Campus Selection Index scores fell in the bottom quartile range for the entire freshmen cohort during each respective year. These findings support the argument that a numbers only admissions policy would force the University to reject a large cadre of otherwise qualified students, restrict the opportunity for African American students to enroll in a highly selective four year institution, and limit the level of student diversity at the University.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD