This month, Townhall released a video highlighting members of the Asian American community who were not admitted to certain colleges and universities over affirmative action policies. The students Townhall spoke to had near-perfect test scores but were still denied admittance to schools like Harvard. A poll taken over a series of months and released this week asked Americans how they felt about these kinds of race-conscious college admissions policies.
The survey conducted by Pew Research and released this week found that 50 percent of American adults say that they disapprove of colleges and universities taking applicants’ ethnic backgrounds into consideration when making school admissions decisions. Thirty-three percent of adults surveyed said they approve of this kind of race-conscious decision making.
Broken down by race, 29 percent of black adults, 39 percent of Hispanic adults, 52 percent of Asian adults, and 57 percent of White adults disapprove of affirmative action, including 74 percent of those who are Republican or lean Republican and 29 percent of those who are Democrats or lean Democratic.
On the other hand, 47 percent of black adults, 39 percent of Hispanic adults, 37 percent of Asian adults, and 29 percent of White adults say they approve of affirmative action policies. This includes 14 percent of those who are Republican or lean Republican and 54 percent of those who are Democrats or lean Democratic.
The first report examines views among all U.S. adults. This report is based on a survey of over 5,000 Americans conducted March 27 to April 2, 2023: https://t.co/RO6DY78YdC
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) June 8, 2023
This survey comes as the United States Supreme Court is preparing to release decisions in two cases surrounding affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (via Pew Research):
With the court nearing the end of its term and decisions in two related cases involving the private Harvard College and the public University of North Carolina expected to be issued in the next several weeks, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans are nearly three times as likely to say they strongly disapprove of colleges doing this (29%) as they are to say they strongly approve (11%).
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The survey – conducted from March 27 to April 2, 2023, among 5,079 members of the Center’s American Trends Panel – finds that Americans are more than twice as likely to say that the consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions makes the overall admissions process less fair (49%) rather than more fair (20%); 17% say this does not affect the process.
By almost two-to-one, those without college degrees are more likely to disapprove than approve of selective colleges and universities considering race and ethnicity in admissions decisions (52% disapprove vs. 28% approve). In contrast, college graduates are about evenly split (45% approve, 47% disapprove).
According to The Hill, nine states have already prohibited the consideration of race in college admissions: California, Florida, Washington, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.