Texas Tech Agrees To End Affirmative Action Admissions Practices

LUBBOCK, TEXAS — Texas Tech University has agreed to end its practice of considering race in its admissions decision after hammering out an agreement with the Trump administration, according to reports on Tuesday.

The university deferred to a decree from the civil rights division of the U.S. Education Department to end such affirmative action programs at its medical school, the Wall Street Journal, which obtained a copy of the agreement, reported. The federal probe into the school's admissions practices pre-dates the Trump administration, dating back 14 years, the newspaper noted. But the university's practices have come into greater focus as the Trump administration re-hauls its view on anti-discrimination law from a conservative perspective, the report suggests.

The university’s Health Sciences Center struck the deal with the Education Department in February, the newspaper reported. The decision comes after a complaint filed by the Center for Equal Opportunity filed in 2004 against the university. As of March 1, “...an applicant’s race and/or national origin are no longer to be considered," the agreement reads in part.

Conservative pundits applauded the move. "Kudos to Texas Tech: This is even more impressive than its run to the Final Four!" wrote the National Review. The conservative outlet noted the decision is significant for two key reasons.

"First, it shows again that the Trump administration is serious about enforcing the civil-rights laws so that they forbid discrimination against all racial and ethnic groups, and will not turn a blind eye toward politically correct racial discrimination in the way the Obama administration did," the National Review wrote.

"Second, the more schools there are that do not use racial preferences, the harder it becomes for other schools to justify their use," the National Review added. "The law permits the use of racial preferences in admissions only as a last resort to achieve the “educational benefits” of a “diverse” student body. But if a lot of other schools don’t need to use them, then what excuse do the remaining schools have?"

Supporters of the concept of affirmative action disagree with such conservative assertions, resting their perspective on the idea's original intent to compensate for past discrimination when minorities were disenfranchised from the education toward evening out the playing field.

The first federal policy of race-conscious affirmative action was the Revised Philadelphia Plan, implemented in 1969, that required certain government contractors to set "goals and timetables" for integrating and diversifying their workforce. The practice was partially upheld by the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), while the use of racial or gender quotas for acollege admissions was concurrently ruled unconstitutional by the Court in Gratz v. Bollinger(2003).

But an increasingly polarizing political landscape has thrust affirmative action in the culture wars battlefields. Despite its original intent to correct past injustices, affirmative action is now viewed by some as something of a reverse-discrimination that excludes otherwise qualified candidates in favor of greater cultural diversity.

The Trump administration has led the charge on ending such practices as it began chipping away at affirmative action soon after taking control, as The Hill reported. The Education Department in July rescinded Obama-era guidance on how schools can legally weigh race to ensure a diverse student population, The Hill reminded in its report.

The National Review posted relevant documents connected to the Texas Tech development on their website, accessible by clicking here.

Texas Tech is located in the northwestern part of the state in a region known as the Llano Estacado that is part of the southern end of the High Plains. More than 35,000 students are enrolled at Texas Tech, which is the seventh-largest university in Texas and the largest institution of higher education in the western two-thirds of the state.