The Supreme Court upheld affirmative action, ruling race-conscious admission program at the University of Texas constitutional on Thursday. The 4-3 ruling greenlights the affirmative action policies by schools.
Jamie Hansard, the Interim Executive Director of Undergraduate Admissions, said this will have no effect on admissions at Texas Tech University.
“We don’t use race or ethnicity as criteria for admission. We follow the law so any student that graduates in the top ten percent of their graduating class has automatic admission at Texas Tech,” Hansard said.
Texas Tech professor Matt Johnson said the only universities that really take into account admissions systems are the ones who are the most selective, public and private, universities around the country.
“The Fisher ruling becomes much more prominent at those institutions where there’s a capacity limit and fortunately for us, at this time, we don’t have a that issue,” said Johnson.
The decision does not mean the University of Texas can rely on the same policy indefinitely, but Johnson said we could see this again just under different circumstances.
“Another thing that makes this really significant is that this is probably the last time we’ll see a white plaintiff for a while in affirmative action cases. In fact that the affirmative action cases that are coming up through the pipeline right now are Asian-American applicants,” Fisher said.