Another big Supreme Court case affecting college students is just months away from being heard and decided.
Affirmative Action is Next SCOTUS Target
Another big Supreme Court case affecting college students is just months away from being heard and decided. Affirmative Action was initiated in a 1961 executive order by President John F. Kennedy to assure “equal opportunity”-- that no student applicant would be discriminated against based on race. Over the years, that order evolved into executive regulations requiring every college accepting federal funds to have a written affirmative action plan to increase racial diversity on their campuses. Affirmative Action has been challenged five times in the Supreme Court by groups mainly representing White and Asian students with credible evidence of discrimination -- resulting in a mish mash of results.
By 2004 it became accepted that race could be considered in college admissions in order to achieve “diversity.” But the case for “diversity for diversity’s sake” was never made clear. Nor was the supposition that “there is a compelling interest to ensure that every campus reaches a ‘critical mass’ of students from minority groups.” Even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn’t define critical mass. “We’ll know it when we see it,” became the attitude. “I doubt affirmative action will last beyond another 20 years,” Bader and other SCOTUS judges said in 2004.
“Race is so interwoven in every aspect of the lived experience of minority students,” U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs ruled in a preliminary case for the University of North Carolina. “To ignore race is to reduce its importance.” That case has now been joined with one from Harvard University to form the basis of this fall’s SCOTUS oral argument -- where reducing the impact of racial identity is the point of affirmative action opponents. Documents obtained from Harvard University’s admission office show that an applicant is awarded “pluses” if they write in their admissions essay how belonging to an ethnic identity group was significant to them and shared a moment of trauma or triumph regarding their ethnicity. New York Times columnist Jay Caspian Kang wrote on January 31, 2022: “Minority students are being asked to ‘perform their ethnicity’ in order to be admitted to Harvard.”
BREAKING NEWS: DACA is Now a Regulatory Law! It Changes Nothing
In a surprise move on Wednesday, August 24, the Biden administration rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) executive memo that President Obama created in 2012 and replaced it with a registered federal regulation or “law.” The administrative move better protects the DACA program from being eliminated by a new administration. The new regulatory law also went through a required public comment process that the original memo ignored. But nothing really changes. DACA eligibility requirements and restrictions remain the same and several court cases that could end the program remain in play.
The decade long DACA program was hastily put in place on June 15, 2012 by President Obama as an executive memo, wherein individuals who qualified could be given temporary two-year protection from deportation and a job permit. DACA never conferred legal status on the recipients, however. DACAs are still temporarily protected “undocumented” people. DACA was supposed to last only until Obama was re-elected for a second term and then, it was assumed, comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) would pass, legalizing all unauthorized immigrants. CIR did pass in the Democratic-controlled Senate in June 2013, but the Republican House insisted the bill be presented piecemeal. So DACA kept getting renewed. President Trump tried to rescind it. A number of court cases kept it alive, but with no new applicants allowed. The number of current recipients has shrunk to some 600,000 from over 800,000.
Requirements for the new DACA regulatory law remain the same. While a DACA applicant can have entered the country legally on any kind of temporary permit (visitor, student, H1B dependent, etc.), the recipient has to be illegally in the United States at the time of application. To remain eligible for the DACA renewals, a recipient must apply individually and prove that they entered the U.S. (legally or illegally) before turning 16, have lived in the U.S. continuously since June 15, 2007, were not yet 31 years old on June 15, 2012, have either completed high school or received a GED and have no serious felony or misdemeanors on their record. The DACA work authorization ends only when the DACA status is terminated.
The DACA administrative law will take effect on October 31, 2022, presuming no legal challenges are launched against it. But a pending federal lawsuit in Texas - that ruled DACA to be illegal - ordered a freeze on all new applicants while the policy’s merits are decided in court. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Louisiana, heard oral arguments in early July and could render a final decision at any time. It is predicted that the court will rule against DACA, sending the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Chinese Foreign Student Enrollment Drops 50%, Advisors Call for More Diversity
Foreign/international student recruitment has changed significantly this year. For about two decades, students from China – undergraduates and graduate engineering and business majors mainly - made up between 35 to 40 percent of all foreign students in the U.S. But in 2022, the number of F1 visas given to students from China decreased by 50 percent, according to the U.S. State Department: 31,055 today, down from 64,261 in 2019. At that time, Chinese students contributed to $159 billion in economic value, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. used to be Chinese students’ indisputable dream destination for higher education. Often the full out-of-state tuition they paid (two to three times more than Americans and legal residents pay for in-state fees) was covered by the Chinese government. Smaller colleges that came to depend on international students, especially from China, for revenue will be especially affected by the drop in enrollment this year. International student advisors blame two years of pandemic closures and restrictions for the decrease in international students. Many students were forced to return home and even though the U.S. lifted its restriction about foreign students studying virtually (while paying almost full price), few did. Chinese students who stayed on were isolated. Labs and vital training/job contacts were closed. But safety concerns are also cited as deterrents for Chinese students, especially increasing incidents of anti-Asian racism in U.S. cities and deteriorating relations between China and the U.S.
“We need more diversity of students!” was the theme of a panel on foreign student recruitment sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education in June. “Even with limited budgets, we need to reach out to more diverse continents and countries than we have been doing!” •
