Why Is Stanford More Successful in Opening Doors to Low-Income Students Than California’s Public Universities?

In response, the public has seen affirmative action as a superficial act of political correctness, not a core value of the education system. It's a separate program rather than a facet of a broad commitment to equal educational opportunity and cultural communication. To get serious, both private universities and public universities to the extent they are allowed need to make equity and diversity core to their operations. Here's some of what that would look like:

A comprehensive approach to diversity

Right now "diversity" is often a code word for "people of different colors". That's great, and it's a very important component of diversity, but it's not the whole story. Poor or rich, male or female, urban or rural, one or two parents, and white or blue collar family -- all of these have a critical impact on how a child will score on standard admissions measures. Furthermore, all of them are things we want represented in the background of Stanford students -- if we have color diversity within a uniformly middle-class student body we won't have the same breadth of experience.

Anywhere a university values diversity, it needs to take into account lots of different kinds of diversity. Gender, race, and class have historically been the biggest dividers in American society, but it's not just those three, and it's certainly not just one. If universities take diversity-writ-broadly seriously, the pressure on racial preferences is likely to subside because it will no longer be a white versus brown decision -- everyone has something to gain if diversity is really about understanding the different things each of us brings to the table.

Diversity in all areas of academic life

A diverse student body enriches the experience of each student. We learn more from our peers than from our professors, and a limited peer group reduces what we learn. So the story goes. But many universities' commitment to a diverse student body seems to end at the doorway.

If we wanted to increase the benefit each student gets from the diversity of the student body, we need to find ways to pull different people together -- not forcing interaction, but providing enough pull to balance the natural push for people with common backgrounds to congregate together. We need upper-middle-class white students to be saying "Gosh, I'm so glad to go to a university with a commitment to diversity because every day I interact with this amazing group of people I would never have gotten to interact with before." The value added is in the interaction -- not just in who gets to attend.

What if each funded student group had to submit a "diversity plan" explaining how they were going to involve people of different backgrounds in their activities? What if students applying for housing together got a small diversity bonus if they brought together people from different backgrounds? What if academic departments set diversity goals for their major or for big intro classes and then thought about how to meet them?

Free enrichment programs for incoming students

The point of affirmative action and financial access is that incredibly talented individuals who don't grow up in an equal environment may be just as able to succeed at a top college or university, but may not have the SAT scores or AP classes or extracurriculars to show it -- because they didn't have SAT-prep classes, their school didn't offer AP, and they had a job or had to help take care of younger siblings in order to help their family make ends meet.

The idea that once a student from a disadvantaged background gets into the institution we've done them this huge favor is sort of silly, when you think about it. If a student didn't have the preparation everyone else had, a pat on the back and a ticket to Stanford is in many ways the last thing they need. They still have less academic preparation than everyone else, and it's setting them up for failure and alienation -- and reinforcing other people's stereotypes in the process.

Robust affirmative action programs -- that take into account a large number of factors including race -- need to be coupled with efforts to make up the preparation gap. We need to both let a broad group in and prepare them to succeed. One option would be a spring, summer, and fall program available to any incoming student that allows them to cover some of the basic things that a high achieving college-prep high school would -- AP math, intensive writing workshops, US and world history, and so on. It would hardly stretch the capacity of our K12, community college, and university system to provide this sort of "collegiate magnet senior year" or summer program to any admitted student who wanted it, and this would do a lot to level the playing field among incoming students.

More diverse role models and mentors

Much has been said about the role of a diverse faculty in attracting a diverse student body. The bottom line, though, is that the PhD pipeline is almost singularly un-diverse among our country's institutions of status. This is something that public universities seem to be doing better at than private universities. At Stanford, we do not -- but could -- draw from California's politicians, business leaders, and media personalities, for example. This is a quite diverse group of people, and certainly more diverse than the Stanford faculty. We need to be working as hard as we can on faculty diversity, but if we can't get there fast enough, we can't let that be an excuse not to provide a set of culturally-cognate mentors in a university context. The idea that faculty are the primary source of mentorship is silly, using that as an excuse for providing a heavily white-male set of student advisors is ludicrous.

Why not set up a "visiting leaders program" whose major purpose is to enhance the undergraduate experience -- perhaps with both an open seminar and a personalized advising program where interested students can meet with a diverse group of people from the outside world? This would be a nice university-community partnership appropriate for both private and public institutions.

If we think of education as no different from any other consumer good, like a pair of socks or a new car or a fake tan, none of this makes sense -- universities are just "education stores." But if we think of education as a key part of our society, one that provides access to opportunities and develops critical-thinking leaders, then issues of equity in access and diversity of experience start to matter a lot.

Universities need to be part of the solution -- helping provide broad access to California's opportunities and preparing our citizens to solve tomorrow's problems. In order to do that, equity and diversity need to be a core part of their mission, not just an admissions and financial aid strategy. Stanford's step is welcome, but it is only one part of a comprehensive approach -- and there are many more steps to be taken.

Kai Stinchcombe is a founder of The Roosevelt Institution, a non-profit, non-partisan national network of campus-based student think tanks, and a PhD student at Stanford University. He is currently trying to understand the California budget process.