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6. The Late 1990s to the Present: The End of an Era?
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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151 6 The Late 1990s to the Present THE END OF AN ERA? From the late 1990s through the present day, mainstream four-year colleges and universities in the United States have been forced to respond to a powerful pressure to pursue institutional “excellence.” Greene and McAlexander characterize this pressure as prompting four-year institutions to begin “raising admissions standards, downsizing or eliminating remedial programs, and placing more emphasis upon research—all while paying close attention to . . . rankings in the media” (15).1 They further assert that this pressure has created a contemporary context in which institutions are restratifying in ways that more clearly differentiate responsibilities between four-year and two-year institutions: “Postsecondary institutions are being differentiated into hierarchical categories according to, theoretically, the academic merit of the students. . . . The lower-ranking students are increasingly channeled to the less selective two-year institutions, which are also often attended by students for financial or family reasons” (14–15). In turn, contemporary pressures toward excellence and institutional strati- fication have been exacerbated by growing contemporary anti–affirmative action sentiment during the last fifteen years or so. At the state level, the 152 The Late 1990s to the Present 1996 Hopwood v. Texas decision involving white law school applicants struck down the use of race-based affirmative action within the state of Texas; meanwhile , California’s 1996 passage of Proposition 209 (an initiative initially spearheaded by University of California regent Ward Connerly and later replicated in other states) banned considerations of race, ethnicity, and sex in hiring by all public institutions, including state colleges and universities.2 At the federal level, the Supreme Court decided Grutter v. Bollinger, a case concerning law school admissions at the University of Michigan, in 2003: while the court did uphold a limited notion of race-conscious admissions in Grutter, it did so by clearly privileging traditional “standards” in ways echoing Bakke.3 In 2007, the court decided Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, a case involving race-conscious K–12 school-districting policies in Washington State. The court’s decision in the case was decidedly color-blind, with the majority decision penned by Chief Justice Roberts declaring that the only real way to “stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” (40–41). Still further, the present situation is being compounded by skyrocketing higher-education costs. The price of public four-year tuition has increased an average of 5.6 percent beyond the general rate of inflation for each of the last ten years, with tuition at four-year public institutions having risen on average 7.9 percent for in-state students and 6.0 percent for out-of-state students from 2009–10 to 2010–11 alone (College Board, “Trends in College Pricing” 1).4 Institutional appropriations per full-time equivalent (FTE) from state and federal sources have simultaneously decreased, with figures from 2009–10 19 percent lower than 1999–2000 levels after being adjusted for inflation (3). In light of these trends, higher-education scholar Michael Polliakoff argues that “at many colleges and universities, these are times of crisis. Endowments have shrunk, and fundraising is significantly more difficult . Reductions in state funding for higher education have been massive. And a Chronicle of Higher Education survey of chief financial officers reveals that 62% believe the worst is yet to come” (1). In the face of these pressures toward excellence, stratification, anti– affirmative action, and cost-cutting, the future of high-risk programs in four-year institutions seems to be in serious jeopardy. These programs are increasingly viewed as antithetical to contemporary definitions of excellence and therefore outside the purview of the four-year institution. They are in- [52.54.111.228] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:25 GMT) 153 The Late 1990s to the Present creasingly perceived to reflect 1960s-style affirmative action mandates now assumed to be both outdated and unnecessary. And they are typically regarded as far too expensive to be supported during a time when institutions are looking to cut costs whenever and wherever possible. It is unsurprising, then, that higher-education scholars Lara Couturier and Alisa Cunningham worry that “college outreach/early intervention and preparatory programs that serve low-income [and underrepresented minority] students are frequently [being] targeted for elimination” (viii). Greene and McAlexander express a similar sentiment, noting that the high-risk...