The Rossier School of Education hosted a panel at the University Club Wednesday to discuss the future of college admissions in the wake of the Supreme Court ending race-conscious affirmative action programs this past June. 

Pedro Noguera, distinguished professor of education and Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops dean, moderated the event, and four USC educators and administrators spoke on the panel.

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At the start of the event, Julie Posselt, associate dean of the USC Graduate School and associate professor at the Pullias Center for Higher Education, highlighted the “silver lining” that came out of the court’s decisions in “Students for For Fair Admissions v. Harvard” and “Students for For Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.” 

“These decisions, they’re really forcing a set of self assessments that otherwise don’t happen in the name of compliance,” Posselt said. “In that self assessment, I’m starting to see much more motivation for some of the overdue systemic changes that we’ve been waiting for in American higher education.” 

Jerome Lucido, Rossier professor of clinical practice and USC Center for Enrollment, Research, Policy and Practice scholar-in-residence, called the decisions an opportunity to rebrand efforts to create equity in higher education admissions. 

“One of the things we know is that we never won in the court of public opinion on the issue of using race as a consideration in college admission[s]. It was always suspect,” Lucido said. “So there’s a new opportunity, perhaps, to recast our set of arguments.” 

Although the court’s decisions are effectively forcing universities to discard their original race-conscious admissions procedures, Art Coleman, Rossier adjunct associate professor and managing partner and co-founder of EducationCounsel, said the fight to achieve a fair and holistic admissions system is not over. 

“My first point is simply we’ve got to understand, as bad as the decision is, there’s a nuance to the decision and there’s a lot that it sets the stage for what we can do,” Coleman said. 

Given the narrow scope of the two decisions, Coleman added that education activists and university admissions offices must prepare to assume some level of legal risk. 

“We have got to get very comfortable dealing with a landscape of legal uncertainty,” Coleman said. “[The decision] didn’t talk about financial aid and scholarships, it didn’t talk about data collection, it didn’t talk about recruitment and outreach and pathways and pipeline programs, and there are implications in some of those areas that have to be navigated.”

Amber Blackwell, a Rossier alum, said the discussion was encouraging for her to hear because the recent Supreme Court rulings have also made it difficult for her to navigate her work as a local educator as the dean of culture at The Accelerated Schools. 

“We’re literally having the exact same issues that were spoken about today,” said Blackwell. “I really just wanted to hear more expertise on what’s being done at the higher ed level because I need to help that manifest on the K-12 level.” 

Nicolas Lee, an employee from USC’s Office of Admissions, attended the panel event to learn more about the recent Supreme Court decisions given that they will directly affect his work. Lee was particularly curious about learning how Native American applicants would be affected under the new admission process restrictions. 

“Asking about Indigenous students is particularly important because they’re a group that’s not always really put at the forefront because of different reasons, like critical mass or not being represented well in different positions,” Lee said. 

Given that the two recent Supreme Court rulings do not prohibit schools against admitting students based on geographic diversity, Coleman said Native American students are in a unique position because they represent a historically disadvantaged racial minority in addition to being geographically diverse because many Native American families live on reservations. 

Moving forward, several aspects of university admissions processes are likely to face legal challenges in the near future. When meeting these challenges, Posselt said it’s important to keep the core mission of diverse admissions in mind. 

“What does it mean to have a more diverse set of doctors? It means lower infant mortality rates,” Posselt said. “What does it mean to have more diverse physicists? It means much more creative problem solving. Every field needs to have its own conversation about the impact that diversity can make.”