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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35217 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Will colleges drop federal funding to be able to continue affirmative action?

They can, and I expect some will.

To quote Roberts' footnote 2,

Title VI provides that “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 42 U. S. C. §2000d. “We have explained that discrimination that violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment committed by an institution that accepts federal funds also constitutes a violation of Title VI.” Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 276, n. 23 (2003). Although JUSTICE GORSUCH questions that proposition, no party asks us to reconsider it. We accordingly evaluate Harvard’s admissions program under the standards of the Equal Protection Clause itself.

So while the constitution is brought into play, the relevant statute is still Title VI. This only applies to "any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

Any college, then should be able to circumvent this by refusing federal funding. Indeed, some colleges already do this (though this is more for Title IX than Title VI). This includes scholarships and loans.

Harvard in particular has a perfect score, per Forbes, on financial health. With a 50 billion dollar endowment, if we assume a yearly return of even only 2%, they can continue perpetually into the future spending a billion a year. They don't need money, and could easily drop federal funding. University of North Carolina is a public university, but a state one, so I'm not as acquainted with how that could work, but I expect they too could drop federal funding if they really wished to do so.

So the elite schools, at least, could easily openly maintain affirmative action in this way. This becomes much less true of colleges which are in harsher financial constraints, or rely more heavily on tuition—dropping federal funding could cause them to be outcompeted by other schools which can use the funding to offer more aid, resulting in a downward spiral of increasingly dire financial distress.

Whether many colleges will drop federal funding, then, will depend on several factors. Ideological factors, of course—how strongly are they committed to this. Image—how prominent do they want affirmative action to be associated with them. Finances, obviously. How easily they can achieve their objectives otherwise, through more nebulous and less explicit means—Roberts spoke against doing so, but colleges will undoubtedly try, and we have yet to see how such attempts will go.

So I think ultimately this case will fail at one of the main goals, stopping affirmative action at elite colleges. But at the same time, it might reduce the amount of subsidies going to students (maybe—I haven't actually acquainted myself with how federal student loans and scholarships are funded and allocated), which is a good thing (except that it will disproportionately harm those who need the aid more). And it does establish that affirmative action is no longer just the thing schools do, which may make it less acceptable in public opinion, even if it continues on at the highest levels.

Edit: I realized I forgot about federal research grants. That's a big deal as well.

I can't see it. It's one thing to turn down various sorts of squishy bits of federal funding, but Harvard isn't going to pick up the tab for the research scientists that are presently on R01 grants. Even if they were willing to, the restructuring would be absolutely enormous and potentially undermine the credibility of research science there. These aren't just about the funding, they're about the prestige and credibility of being part of the nationally funded network of scientists.

For better or worse universities are all government institutions, with the possible rare exceptions of places like Hillsdale.

My understanding of the ruling is that Title VI applies only to institutions who receive federal funds, but that the Equal Protections argument is separate and affects any government institution under the Constitution, including Universities for the several States.

Ah, you're probably right.

From my understanding these schools get massive amounts of federal funding from research grants. Did some quick googling and looks like Harvard gets over $500mm a year. Certainly not chump change.

Yeah, that'll make them a lot more hesitant to go no-federal-money.

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