Recognized International Leader and Speaker on Race, Gender and Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion and Implicit Bias
Professor Bennett Fleming Asserts This Article highlights admissions practices used in the United Kingdom and argues that such practices can be instructive in developing a race-neutral approach to achieving diversity that does not involve asking applicants about their racial backgrounds. In the U.K., higher education regulators share the goal of ensuring that students from underrepresented groups and the most disadvantaged backgrounds can access higher education, yet applicants are not asked to disclose their racial background on applications. There, higher education institutions have access to national databases that allow for consideration of individual and place-based measures of disadvantage. Admissions decisionmakers are empowered to use these measures to contextualize academic indicators. The U.K. approach, termed contextual admissions, has successfully allowed a nuanced evaluation of not only test scores and grades but also disparities in advantage and opportunity. Applications from students of low-opportunity neighborhoods and schools are often flagged so that admissions decisionmakers can more closely consider these students' academic indicators in context of the structural disadvantages that these students have faced. At universities like Oxford and Cambridge, students whose indicators of educational attainment might not adequately reflect their potential--due to structural disparities in opportunity--may receive a “contextual” offer of admission at a lower level of educational attainment than “standard” offers.
Retired Judge, Author, "Tales From The Bench: Essays on Life and Justice
7moMakes sense.