Systemic disparities in degree completion are so deeply rooted that even if institutions re-engaged (and graduated) the entire population of young, Black and Latinx adults who didn’t complete college, equity gaps would narrow but still exist. With a spirit of racial realism, acknowledging that racism remains a fixture in the United States, President Joe Biden can act to combat barriers in college admissions and ensure that colleges primarily serving Black, Latinx, and other marginalized students are adequately and equitably funded.
The Department of Education Can Help Combat Barriers in College Admissions
A Supreme Court’s decision overturning affirmative action would harm our society’s progress toward racial equity. Some colleges that historically excluded students of color made progress on racial integration for two decades—but then reversed course in the 1980s and ’90s as federal enforcement of civil rights waned.
State bans on affirmative action have also contributed to declining shares of Black and Latinx students at publicly-funded flagship universities. These bans are likely to occur when shares of white students at the state flagships decrease. But affirmative action bans alone can’t explain declining representations of Black and Latinx students at the most selective colleges and universities nationwide.
Over the last 20 years, the wealthiest publicly-funded universities have moved backwards in the inclusion of Black students—and remain behind on enrolling the growing shares of Latinx students in successive graduating classes. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Black and Latinx student enrollment have continued to decline across the board.
Additionally, barriers at college campuses impede racial equity. Standardized tests, legacy admissions, merit-based aid, out-of-state recruitment, and application fees systematically advantage affluent and white students over their Black and Latinx peers. Transcript withholding represents another unjust institutional practice—one recently scrutinized by the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Ninety-five percent of colleges withhold transcripts, primarily for unpaid tuition and fee balances, some as trivial as parking or library fines. These types of institutional debt are often barriers for re-enrolling former students and lead to stranded credits, which disproportionately affect students of color and those from low-income backgrounds.
The Biden-Harris administration should convene a commission of college admissions experts to identify, scrutinize, and amplify the harmful consequences of inequitable admissions practices, particularly at publicly-funded colleges and all institutions eligible for federal financial aid programs like the Pell Grant and federal work study. The commission could focus on collecting state- and institutional-level data to close equity gaps in education and the workforce. Robust data collection is necessary to advance a higher education system that benefits people from all walks of life.
The Federal Government Must Ensure Funding Equity Across Institutions
Black and Latinx students are more likely to attend community colleges and minority-serving institutions, but these institutions remain severely underfunded. Community colleges operate on a fraction of the revenue of public four-year institutions. Hispanic-serving institutions need $1 billion more in federal funding to improve racial equity for Latinx students. Funding inequities also have a long history at colleges that primarily educate Black students.
Before the civil rights era, governments did not equitably fund Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)—an injustice that is still prevalent. The federal government created an obligation to fund the 1890 land-grant HBCUs on par with their older, predominantly white institutional peers. But states have never met that obligation for most land-grant HBCUs—and continue to fail to do so. In Tennessee, a bipartisan legislative committee found that the state owes Tennessee State University (a public HBCU) more than a half-billion dollars in unpaid land-grant matches, dating back to the 1950s. Federal courts also found patterns of inequitable funding in Maryland and Mississippi, ultimately, leading to multi-million dollar settlements.
Though these remedies are long overdue, they fail to correct decades of systemic underfunding. Funding equity is imperative for advancing both racial and economic justice in higher education beyond fixed, time-limited supports. The Biden-Harris administration could leverage its pandemic-related support by closing long-standing resource gaps at colleges serving large shares of Black and Latinx students like community colleges and increasing the maximum Pell Grant.
Martin Luther King Jr. declared, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Regardless of the direction that the current Supreme Court chooses to bend the arc of history, the Biden-Harris administration can and must support efforts to increase racial equity in higher education. By continuing to invest in students of color and the institutions that serve them best, the administration can accelerate racial equity and help shape a new, more just history.
Dr. Marshall Anthony Jr. is the research director for The Institute for College Access & Success.
Casey K. Nguyen is the senior research associate for The Institute for College Access & Success.
The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.
