After last month’s defeat of a California ballot measure to revive affirmative action in higher education admissions and hiring, other ways to increase diversity among faculty and students at the state’s colleges and universities are moving front and center.
Disappointed supporters of Proposition 16 are adjusting to the reality that they failed to overturn the state’s 24-year-old ban on affirmative action. But they, along with some opponents of Prop 16, also advocate for alternatives that could bolster the enrollment and graduation rates of Black, Latino and Native American students at the state’s higher education campuses without violating the law that forbids any racial preferences. Proposition 16’s loss should propel expansion of efforts long underway and the start of new ones, focusing especially on low-income students and those who are in the first generation of their families to attend college, they say.