Lots of people in higher education still support Affirmative Action.

Scott Jaschik reports at Inside Higher Ed.

Defending Affirmative Action

No consensus exists in American society about the practice of colleges considering race in admissions decisions. Since the 1970s, colleges have been doing so to try to enroll diverse classes of students (and of course under Jim Crow many colleges considered race to prevent diversity). But the practice has always been controversial — and voters and judges have questioned and in some cases banned the practice.

But among higher education associations, a consensus strongly backs the right of colleges to consider race in admissions. Today is the deadline for submitting briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court on a key affirmative action case, and the justices can look forward to lengthy arguments from college groups.

On Friday, the American Council on Education filed a brief on behalf of itself and 37 other college groups, a who’s who of groups that represent presidents, various parts of academe (Educause and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, for example), accreditors (such as the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools), and faculty groups (the American Anthropological Association and the American Association of University Professors).

A similar brief will be filed today on behalf of four groups that are involved in the admissions process: the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the College Board, the Law School Admission Council, and the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

Both the ACE-coordinated brief and the admissions groups’ brief focus more on the right of colleges to set their own admissions standards than on issues of race.

Briefs are also expected from Harvard University, Ivy Plus (the Ivy League universities plus a few other research universities) and many others.

The case attracting all these (and many more) briefs is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which the court will hear on Dec. 9. This is actually a return to the court for the case. Ruling 7 to 1, the court in 2013 found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had erred in not applying “strict scrutiny” to the policies of UT Austin.