The role of race in undergraduate admissions sparked a debate Monday between certain UW-Madison Faculty Senate members and a former UW-Madison economics professor.
Coinciding with a report to the faculty senate, Emeritus Professor W. Lee Hansen said he questions the weight race is given in admissions.
Hansen said the number of minority students admitted to UW-Madison who do not meet all three faculty-established requirements for admission is considerably greater than non-minority students.
Hansen said he thinks the university does not explicitly detail the admission requirements, which, according to the senate-approved Faculty Document 843, include \graduation in the upper half of their high school class from a recognized high school or equivalent."" This is ""part of an effort to encourage more minority students to apply though they might be in the bottom half of their class,"" Hansen said.
Gary Price, Faculty Senate chair on the committee of undergraduate admissions, said Hansen's citation of the report containing the admission requirements does not examine the document's full intention.
""Faculty Document 843 expressly seeks to examine how background could have affected one's rank in class, that it's given the inequities in U.S. society by race,"" he said.
Price added that minority enrollment is valuable to the university for the animation of campus atmosphere, through the interaction of students with varied backgrounds.
""When admissions officers anywhere consider applicants, they are often faced with a need to balance between the overall merits of any individual applicant, on the one hand, and the desirability of creating a community of students that will educationally stimulate one another,"" Price said. ""That creation of an educationally stimulating mix of students includes a myriad of strengths and interests, talents of students, extracurricular interests, personal past.""
Hansen cited an admission policy by the senate, which provides an exception to students who do not meet the requirements but ""appear to have a reasonable probability of success."" He said that if one considers graduation rate as measure of success, though, fewer than half of minority students admitted below the 70th percentile of their high school class will succeed.
""There is a clear bias here that, in my view, is not due to chance. ... Admissions people will not tell how they figured this out. They say they look at a multitude of factors, but won't say what they are or what weight they give these factors,"" Hansen said.
Price said there needs to be flexibility when using the likelihood of graduation as a standard.
""Non-completion by students of color is more a reflection on campus climate and our own lack of success of creating a hospitable environment as it is about their abilities academically,"" Price said.
