A Historical Analysis of Latina/o Access to a Selective Flagship University
From Jim Crow to the Top 10% Plan: A
Historical Analysis of Latina/o Access to a
Selective Flagship University
Julian Vasquez Heilig
The University of Texas at Austin
Laurel Dietz
The University of Texas at Austin
Michael Volonnino
The University of Texas at Austin
Abstract
The persisting underrepresentation of Latina/os in higher education has attracted increasing
attention as they lead a dramatic demographic shift. According to the U.S. Census Bureau
(2006), the number of Latina/os living in American households rose 500% between 1970
and 2010. By the 2000 census, Latina/os had become the largest racially collated ethnic
minority group in the U.S. at almost 13% of the populace (U.S. Census, 2001). By 2008,
nearly one in six U.S. residents were Latina/o (U.S. Census, 2009). Despite their growth,
Latina/os lag behind every other demographic group in attaining college degrees and are
underrepresented relative to their proportion in the U.S. population (Hurtado, Sáenz, Santos,
& Cabrera, 2008). In 2008, Latina/os made up about 12% of national higher education
enrollment, relative to their proportion of the general populace (U.S. Census, 2009), and they
are said to be historically or traditionally underrepresented (Rendón & Nora, 1988).
In Texas, the state Comptroller (2008) reports that Latina/os are the fastest
growing population group in the state due to immigration and high fertility
rates—rising by 2.3 million between 1990 and the 2000 censuses, an increase
of 46.1%. By 2008, Latina/os accounted for 36% of the Texas population
(U.S. Census, 2008). Just over 50% of all Latina/os enrolled in higher
education are located in California and Texas (National Center for Education
Statistics, 2001), and because of the rapid population growth in Texas, Latina/o
access to higher education in the Lone Star State has heightened significance.
Furthermore, a recent evaluation of Closing the Gaps by 2015, the Texas higher
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education plan adopted in 2000, noted that the proportional participation of
Latina/os has only marginally advanced in the past ten years (Texas Higher
Education Coordinating Board [THECB], 2009). Even though the total
number of Latina/os in Texas higher education has increased, they are generally
concentrated at two-year colleges and less selective universities (Vega &
Martinez, 2008). Essentially, the majority of the growth in Latina/o enrollment
in Texas has been segregated to less selective institutions of higher education
(Vasquez Heilig, Rodriguez, & Somers, 2011).
From Sweatt (1950) to Hopwood (1996), the University of Texas at Austin
(UT–Austin)—the most selective flagship in Texas, and one of the nation’s
prestigious public universities—has often found itself at the center of the national
higher education admissions debate. There is little disagreement as to whether
Latina/os are a historically underrepresented group in Texas higher education,
especially at UT–Austin, even though historical narrative and real data that
describe their underrepresentation are absent from the literature. The purpose of
this article is to understand the enrollment of Latina/o students at UT–Austin
relative to the evolution of selective admissions, legislative enactments, and judicial
decisions since Jim Crow. This article begins by introducing a visual assessment
and surname count methodology to create historical higher education enrollment
data for Latina/os. We then commence with a narrative of admissions policies
at seven time points over the past seventy years and describe how UT–Austin
admissions criteria have evolved in the midst of legislative and judicial milestones.
Each historical era concludes with a representation analysis of the proportion of
Latina/os enrolled at UT–Austin relative to statewide population estimates.
Considering the rapid demographic growth of Latina/os, the continuing
challenge of their underrepresentation at selective postsecondary institutions,
and a shift away from thinking of racial grouping for making claims on the
state, a historical analysis to contextualize key events and policies is important
to illuminate the continuing struggle for equity in admissions for Latina/os.
It is impossible for this essay to cover the entire range of diffuse social trends
such as the GI Bill, increased legislative representation, and expansion of the
liberal coalition. Instead, the main focus is to track how admissions contexts
changed, calculate underrepresentation between enrollment and state population
proportions, and consider whether social justice and equity persist as valid
critiques in the current Top 10% admissions policy environment.
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Methods
Historical analyses of minority student enrollment are rare in the literature due
to the difficulty of obtaining data. In 2009, contemporary student demographic
and higher education enrollment data is readily available. For example, the
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) manages a data system
that includes thousands of variables for hundreds of thousands of students.
However, higher education enrollment data that included race did not become
publicly available until about 30 years ago. Therefore, to provide a unique and
groundbreaking longitudinal analysis of Latina/o undergraduate enrollment at
UT–Austin for a seventy-year span, it is necessary to turn to the well-established
empirical tradition of utilizing photos and yearbooks as historical data.
Visual assessment of photos as a research method is utilized across disciplines.
Collier and Collier (1999) demonstrate that for many decades visual
anthropologists have been concerned with “visual observations and the insights
that can be gained through the use of camera records” (p. 1). Psychological
research has utilized school yearbooks as historical data sources for several
decades (Brennan-Parks, Goddard, Wilson, & Kinnear, 1991; Dodd, Russell,
& Jenkins, 1999; LaFrance, 1985; Mills, 1984; Morse, 1982). Researching the
history of education, Cuban (1984, 2009) has deftly analyzed yearbook and
classroom photos to understand how teachers taught.
This essay utilizes a visual and surname count analysis of UT–Austin Cactus yearbook
photos to understand how Latina/o enrollment has changed since the era of Jim Crow.
The analysis was conducted in 15-year increments tracking backwards from Hopwood
(yearbooks from 1997, 1982, 1967, 1952, 1937).1 For the five yearbook snapshots,
the researchers studied each volume and considered surnames and photographs to
create Latina/o enrollment counts.2 Each page of the Cactus student section was
ordered by class and contained the student name, hometown, and photograph. To
structure the data collection, we first determined the number of international students
The researchers conducted a yearbook analysis beyond Hopwood to understand the impact of the Top 10% Plan on
Latina/o enrollment in 2001— five years after Hopwood. The essay also gauges Latina/o enrollment and population
trends post-Grutter by utilizing 2008 data from University of Texas public enrollment data and the Current
Population Survey.
2
Notably, there is an empirical precedent for Latina/o surname analysis from the United States’ Censuses of 1950,
1960, 1970 and 1980 (Carter, Gartner, Haines, Olmstead, Sutch, & Wright, 2006; Winnie, 1960). A list of
several thousand Spanish surnames was compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau to be used as the means of demographic
identification for Latina/os. The Census Bureau’s method serves as the basis for our surname analysis. The primary
focus of the analysis was the Latina/o surname; photos were only ancillary confirmation of gender.
1
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on each page. International students were demarcated by reviewing the hometown
listed beside each student’s name. Next, by considering surnames and photos, counts
by race/ethnicity and gender were determined page by page.3
To confirm the race and ethnicity proportions calculated in the yearbook counts,
we sought to triangulate records of Latina/o enrollees with additional data
sources. The UT–Austin catalog publicly disclosed the name of every student
attending the university until the early 1940s. As a result, the researchers went
page by page through the 1936–37 UT–Austin catalog to conduct a count of all
students with Latina/o surnames to compare with the 1937 yearbook count of
Latina/os (University of Texas, 1936). The yearbook analysis was also compared
with counts conducted by Manuel (1965) that span from the 1920s to the
1950s. Manuel (1965) conducted his surname analysis by utilizing registration
reports from UT–Austin.4 However, he did not distinguish between foreign and
domestic students with Spanish surnames and his research ends in 1958. Thus,
our analysis improves upon Manuel (1965) by separating international Latina/os
from domestic Latina/os by utilizing the hometown listed in the yearbook and
expanding beyond the 1950s. The results of the data triangulation are reported in
the representation analyses throughout the essay.
There are a few other important limitations to consider regarding the
historical data and the representation analyses. One possible argument is that
undereducated immigrants have driven the Latina/o population growth in
Texas, and therefore there are not enough qualified Latina/os for selective
higher education in the state. This proposition is false. A recent THECB report
(2009) shows that over the past eight years the state has graduated almost
40,000 more Latina/o high schools students per year. In fact, during the same
time frame, the number of college-enrolled Latina/os across the state grew
by 54.5% (THECB, 2009). Another possible critique is whether the census
population estimates in the representation analyses should include only collegeage individuals in Texas. Since 1930, the U.S. Census has utilized more than
five different methods of counting Latina/os and has not reliably gathered
college-age data. To be consistent across time periods, we utilized census
Sáenz & Ponjuan (2009) have recently argued a silent educational and societal crisis exists for Latino college-aged
male students. Compared to Latina female students, Latinos are not enrolling in higher education at the same rates
(Hurtado, Sáenz, Santos, & Cabrera, 2008). Though contemporary enrollment disparities by gender are noted in
the empirical literature, there is also very little known about the historical access along gender lines. As a result, we
include a breakout Latina/o enrollment by gender in the underrepresentation analyses.
4
Citing FERPA, the Registrar’s Office at UT–Austin refused access to the registration cards.
3
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estimates that represent all Latina/os statewide. We argue that a representation
analysis between enrollment and total proportion of Latina/os is actually a
more conservative estimate of the underrepresentation of Latina/os in Texas as
the population has trended younger.5 It is possible to levy other critiques of the
sample; however, since the research spans more than 70 years, the representation
of Latina/os is as consistent and representative as possible considering the
limitations of historical data.
Birth of Texas’ Flagship University
UT–Austin opened its doors on September 15, 1883, under the premise that
admission be equally accessible regardless of gender or religion (University of Texas,
1975). Yet, the incipient notion of equality was limited, as race could preclude entry.
In addition to demographic criteria, the university also stipulated the following
admissions requirements: graduating from an affiliated school or passing entrance
examinations in selected subject areas, or special approval from the Registrar.
In 1885, UT–Austin, believing that high schools were not adequately preparing
students to attend its institution, created the affiliation process (Eby, 1925). This
procedure allowed graduates from university-affiliated high schools an advantage
over other secondary institutions: entrance without examination (University
of Texas, 1895, 1901, 1911). A Visitor of Schools, a UT–Austin faculty
representative, interviewed the faculty of a prospective high school. After the
evaluation process, the Visitor of Schools distributed a report to the university’s
faculty. Upon faculty approval, the names of these schools were recognized in
the annual catalog (University of Texas, 1895, 1901, 1911).
UT–Austin did not officially limit admissions to graduates from affiliated schools.
Since acceptance to the university was also contingent on having the requisite
number of credits in specific subject areas, potential matriculates could also enter
by passing optional college entrance examinations (University of Texas, 1911).
Students could either take these tests in May at their high schools or at the
university in the fall (University of Texas, 1911; State Department of Education,
1923). Sitting for the entrance exam to avoid the admissions preference for
students from affiliated schools was rare. For example, in 1918, only 191 students
took these examinations under the university’s control (University of Texas, 1918).
Solmon, Solmon, and Schiff (2002) also conduct underrepresentation analyses that examine the ratio between
enrollment and census population estimates.
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Very few students actually passed the entrance examinations in English, algebra,
and American history, as passage rates were 27%, 29%, and 43%, respectively
(Department of Education, 1923). Not surprisingly, in 1936–37, no students were
accepted to UT–Austin solely from passing the entrance examinations (University
of Texas, 1937a).
A prospective student could also matriculate without examination under
“individual approval.” Applicants over 21 years old with special approval from
the Registrar could be admitted to the university by showing evidence that they
had sufficiently covered the content of curricular units required of other potential
applicants and by demonstrating his/her command of English by writing a
composition. These students could remove this status by satisfactorily completing
coursework in English and mathematics as well as receiving a “C” average from at
least thirty credits during the first fall long session (University of Texas, 1936).
This system worked squarely against the admission of minority students, but
in different ways for Latina/os (largely Mexican Americans) than for African
Americans. Latina/os were not racially excluded from admission to UT–Austin.
In 1897, the federal district court in San Antonio in In Re: Rodriguez declared
that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and subsequent federal policies conferred
upon Mexican Americans the racial status of White for naturalization and
classification purposes (Wilson, 2003). Latina/os theoretically had equal access
to the same public schools as Anglos, yet most attended inferior, segregated,
“Spanish-speaking” schools in which it was very difficult to earn a high school
diploma (San Miguel Jr., 1987). Mexican “greasers” faced cultural prejudices
analogous to the racial animus suffered by African Americans, with several
high profile lynchings and city governments like Houston actively encouraging
repatriation during the Great Depression (De León, 1983; Garcia, 2000).
To combat such bias, Mexican American advocates, most notably the League of
United Latin American Citizens, attempted to publicly Americanize and assert
their “Whiteness” to gain access to Anglo schools (Garcia, 2000; Wilson, 2003).
The courts, while agreeing that English-speaking Mexican students ought to
have equal access, allowed schools to use language deficiency as justification for
separate treatment, provided schools did not deny access to the White schools
arbitrarily (Wilson, 2003; Independent v. Salvatierra, 1930; Delgado v. Bastrop
ISD, 1948). In practice, that is exactly what happened (Wilson, 2003).
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Representation analysis. Since the vast majority of Latina/o students only had the
opportunity to attend segregated primary education, it follows that there would
be a narrow, slow-moving pipeline into the university. Manuel (1965) found that
1.5% of the student body was Latina/o in 1938–39—which aligns with counts
from the 1937 UT–Austin catalog that show Latina/os at approximately 1.4%
of the student population (Table 1 below). As a result of data triangulation, the
researchers are confident in the count of Spanish surnames from the 1936–37
Cactus that found that 1.2% of the student body had Latina/o surnames. Though
there were three ways to gain admission to UT–Austin, very few Latina/o students
were granted the opportunity to attend the university by the 1930s.
TABLE 1 | Latina/o student enrollment percentage at the University of Texas at Austin
Year
Latino male
enrollment
Latina female
enrollment
Total Latina/o
enrollment
Census Latina/o
Enrollment and
census disparity
1937i
1.0%
0.4%
1.4%
11.5%
10.1%
1952
1.3%
0.9%
2.1%
13.3%
10.9%
1967
1.8%
1.1%
2.9%
17.7%
14.8%
1982
4.2%
4.9%
9.2%
21.0%
11.8%
1997
5.7%
5.8%
11.5%
25.5%
14.0%
2001
6.2%
7.0%
13.2%
25.5%
12.3%
2008
7.4%
8.5%
15.9%
36.0%
20.1%
ii
iii
iv
v
4
5
Census 1940 Latina/o estimates based on persons of Spanish Mother Tongue.
Census 1950 Latina/o estimates based on persons of Spanish Surname.
iii
Census 1970 Latina/o estimates based on Spanish origin.
iv
Census 1980 and 2000 Latina/o estimates based on Spanish/Hispanic origin.
v
2008 Latina/o origin estimates from Current Population Survey.
i
ii
Considering that Latina/os made up about 12% of the Texas population in the
1940 Census, their underrepresentation of slightly more than 10 percentage
points between the state population levels and enrollment in selective higher
education at UT–Austin during the era of Jim Crow was substantial (see Table
1). In fact, bearing in mind the segregationist attitudes toward Latina/o students,
it is apparent that the denial of representative matriculation with Whites at UT–
Austin in the 1930s was rooted in the lack of access and success in elementary and
secondary education.
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Access, Opportunity, and Adjudication
The discussion will now center on the 1950s and 1960s and detail the role of legal
enactments in the context of the desegregation era and their impact on Texas’
K–12 public schools and UT–Austin. Specifically, we will consider how pervasive
and hostile attitudes toward desegregation influenced the speed with which
students of color had access to all levels of education in Texas, and then transition
to the impact of the Civil Rights movement on Latina/o access and opportunity.
The official end of de jure segregation in Texas’ public schools came through the
thunderous Supreme Court decisions of Sweatt v. Painter (1950) and Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954). In 1950, the Supreme Court exposed
the fraudulent activity of Texas creating a separate law school for African Americans
rather than admitting Heman Marion Sweatt to UT–Austin’s Law School, declaring
that “such education is not available to him in a separate law school as offered by
the State (Sweatt v. Painter, 1950).” This ruling opened the door for the Court’s full
consideration of segregated public schools in Brown and Chief Justice Earl Warren’s
famous majority opinion that declared, “Separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal” (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954). Of course, integration was not that
simple. Texas Governor Alan Shriver believed that state’s districts did not need to
change and Attorney General Jon Ben Sheppard left it up to individual districts to
determine integration timelines (Wilson & Segall, 2001). The later order in Brown II
(1957) that districts needed to integrate “with all deliberate speed” turned into
“all deliberate slowness” (Goldstone, 2006; Ogletree, 2004; Shabazz, 2004).
The strategy of slowness also permeated postsecondary institutions in Texas. In May
of 1954, four months after Brown (1954), it was the University of Texas’ policy,
according to President Logan Wilson, to accept African American graduate students
only when these programs were not offered in the state’s black colleges (Duren,
1979). African American undergraduates were then excluded from undergraduate
admissions at UT–Austin since they could find their majors in other segregated
postsecondary institutions (Duren, 1979). This changed in July 1955, when the
University of Texas’ Board of Regents decided that the institution would integrate
by September 1956. Again, UT–Austin became a progenitor of access as the first
higher education institution in the South to decide to allow African Americans as
undergraduate students.6 Desegregation had become inevitable.
The Regent’s decision came only a few months before Autherine Juanita Lucy enrolled at the University of Alabama
and the U.S. Supreme Court voided portions of Texas’ Constitution concerning segregation (Clark, 1993).
6
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While perhaps shocking to a modern audience, even after Brown, Mexican
Americans continued to cling to their “Caucasian cloak” and pursued their
complicated strategy of asserting legal Whiteness (Gross, 2007). Advocates
like the tireless James DeAnda believed that their best path to access laid in
advancing due process violations, deliberately eschewing the equal protection
argument of Brown, judging the case of little precedent for them (Wilson,
2003). Blanton (2006) goes into depth on how other figures, especially
influential UT professor George I. Sanchez, worked with African American
leaders like Thurgood Marshall, but persisted in approaching integration from
“opposite directions” (p. 602). The continuation of this viewpoint was reflected
in Hernandez v. Driscoll CISD (1957), in which a district court struck down
the linguistic separation of Mexican children, in which the school kept them
in first grade for up to three years. The ruling again came largely on due process
grounds, not defining Mexican Americans as a mistreated minority. Winning
these cases changed little for Latina/o children, and frustration over such
entrenchment prevented another desegregation case from being filed for
a decade (Wilson, 2003).
Admissions and Latina/o Enrollment circa 1952
Early on, UT–Austin created a process for high schools to gain an affiliation
status to provide preferences in admissions for their students. By the 1950s, only
the Texas Education Agency (TEA) was accrediting high schools. Applicants
to UT–Austin were required to graduate in the upper quarter of the class from
an accredited high school with fifteen “acceptable units” as stipulated by the
Division of Professional Standards of the TEA (University of Texas, 1952b).
Students could also bypass credit requirements by obtaining “individual
approval” from the Registrar if they were a Texan over 21 years of age and could
demonstrate that they had covered with sufficient depth the required units for
matriculation. Few students, about 30 per year, entered via TEA examinations
and individual approval in the 1950s (University of Texas, 1952b).
In addition to graduating from an accredited school or gaining special registrar
approval, prospective students encountered aptitude tests as a new mandatory
gateway for admission to UT–Austin. As noted above, a student could gain
admission without an aptitude test by graduating from an affiliated school or
through special Registrar approval during the 1930s. Henceforth, incoming
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freshmen were required to take an aptitude test; failure to comply with this
regulation meant automatic denial (University of Texas, 1951). By 1956, an
applicant could either take a free university aptitude test or the Scholastic Aptitude
Test (SAT) (University of Texas, 1957a). In addition to taking either achievement
test, the applicant could satisfy course requirements by passing admissions
examinations that were administered by TEA’s Division of Professional Standards.
Representation analysis. During this era, minority students were theoretically
granted expanded opportunity for admission to UT–Austin by the changing
legal landscape. Yet, it is possible that the opportunity pathway into UT–Austin
for Latina/os was muted by the introduction of aptitude tests, “all deliberate
slowness,” and other factors. The yearbook count from 1952 (See Table 1)
shows that 2.2% of the university’s student body was Latina/o (.9% females
and 1.3% males)—an increase of about a half of a percentage point since
1937. The enrollment level of Latina/os in the 1952 yearbook count parallels
Manuel (1965), as his analysis found that about 2.4% of the total enrollment
was Latina/o students in 1958–59. Based on the Texas population proportions
of Latina/os in the 1950 Census and the yearbook analysis, the disparity
with enrollment was about UT–Austin was reticent as evidenced by Latina/o
enrollment that remained depressed throughout the 1950s.
Civil Rights and Targeted Admissions Initiatives
Despite the changing legal environment, structural barriers such as low levels
of schooling, aptitude testing, and de facto segregation continued to work in
concert to limit the enrollment of Latina/os at UT–Austin. Latina/o students
were segregated in their own dormitory called “the barracks” (Barrera, 1998). Yet
there were progressive voices on campus, notably its preeminent Latina/o faculty
members, including historian Carlos Castañeda, English professor Américo
Paredes, and George I. Sanchez (Limón, 2006). In the 1960s, spurred by the
Supreme Court, federal civil rights legislation, and pressure associated with the
1960s social protest movement, UT–Austin began to attempt piecemeal efforts
to achieve diversity by race and ethnicity (Duren, 1979; Goldstone, 2006).
In the 1960s, the university began two targeted admissions programs to increase
the enrollment of historically underrepresented minority students: Program for
Education Opportunity (PEO) and Provisional Admissions Program (PAP)
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(Duren, 1979; Goldstone, 2006). In 1962, the Regents created PAP to admit
students who had not met admissions requirements, including underrepresented
minorities. The program allowed participants to enroll during the summer session
to demonstrate their ability to perform well in a university setting. If the student
could show that he or she could do satisfactory work in specific courses, they could
then qualify for admission to the university in the fall (Duren, 1979). Critics of
PAP pointed out that the program benefitted middle class students rather than
disadvantaged minorities; students accepted into the program usually did not
receive additional financial aid assistance from the university. Due to the intensity
of taking 12 credit hours in the summer, the university administrators did not
encourage provisional students to work. Therefore, low-income African American
and Latina/o students did not have the financial resources to pay for summer
classes after graduating from high school—which limited the reach of the program
for minority students (Goldstone, 2006).
Seeking to create more access for African American and Latina/o students, the
university created the Program for Educational Opportunity (PEO) during the
1968–69 academic year. PEO’s goals were to help “educationally, culturally
and financially disadvantaged students” who, based on recommendations and
interviews, could be successful at the postsecondary level, but were not able to
demonstrate this aptitude on entrance examinations (Goldstone, 2006, p. 147).
Moreover, this program sought to compensate for inadequately funded and poor
quality K–12 schooling that many Latina/o students had received that did not
adequately prepare them for success on standardized tests such as the American
College Test (ACT) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) (Goldstone, 2006).
During its first year (1968–69), 12 African American and 13 Latina/o students
attended the university under this program. Twelve of the students successfully
returned to the university the following academic year. However, despite this
limited success and the Faculty Council’s recommendation to expand this
program in May of 1969, PEO was terminated by the Board of Regents. The
Board declared that funds appropriated by the state legislature and other local
institutional monies should not be used for direct recruitment of students who
would not have gotten into the university otherwise (Goldstone, 2006).
In spite of the small scale of the minority admissions programs, the program
faced overt hostility from within the university. Frank C. Erwin, Board of
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Regents Chair, speaking in front of the Texas State Legislature said, “We are
turning down thousands of applicants from Irish, Scotch, Yugoslav … and other
descents because they did not meet the university’s admissions standards but …
at the same time deliberately admit Afro-Americans and Mexican Americans
who fail to meet these same standards” (Morrison, 1969, August 22, as cited in
Goldstone, 2006, p. 148).
Admissions and Latina/o Enrollment circa 1967
The integration of public education institutions after the Sweatt decision and
later the Brown decision was a slow process. U.S. Supreme Court decisions
did not carry much weight in Texas in terms of the speed of implementation.
However, federal legislative enactments to undergird the U.S. Supreme Court
decisions were soon to follow, particularly Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of
1964, which placed in jeopardy federal funding for segregated educational
institutions (Bickel, 1998).
The younger generation of Mexican Americans grew frustrated with the pace of
integration and the “other White” fiction and began to assert their own racial
identity, embodied in the Chicano and La Raza movements of the 1960s (Blanton,
2006). Faculty like Paredes encouraged students to explore their heritage; he
would become the first director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at
UT–Austin in 1970 (Limon, 2006). In 1967, the pathbreaking Mexican American
Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) was formed, intended to be the
Latina/o equivalent of the NAACP (Wilson, 2003). In the first suit it brought,
Cisneros v. Corpus Christi Independent School District (1970), the district court
recognized segregation of Mexican students as illegal discrimination against a
distinct minority group, making them eligible for protection under Brown—a
view the Supreme Court would codify in 1975 in Keyes v. School District No. One,
Denver (San Miguel, Jr., 1987).
At trial, two UT–Austin professors offered competing testimony that perhaps
crystallized the tensions in educational opportunities. Dr. Thomas Carter,
from UT–El Paso, argued passionately that segregation had deleterious effects
on Mexican American students’ ability to finish school and gain access to
higher education. He advocated integration as the first step in remediating
the discrimination that led Mexican Americans to not “fill their proportional
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number of doctors, lawyer, merchant, and chief kind of slot in the society”
(Cisneros v. Corpus Christi, 1970). By contrast, UT–Austin professor Lawrence
Haskew testified for Corpus Christi, defending the continuation of segregated
neighborhood schools because, “education conducted for people in ghettos is the
best route” (Cisneros v. Corpus Christi, 1970). Such viewpoints made it all the
more clear to MALDEF that they had to forcefully argue for integration, and
they would go on to file 71 desegregation lawsuits from 1970 to 1980—76% of
its total caseload (San Miguel Jr., 1987).
Representation analysis. Table 1 shows that in 1967, several years after the passage of
the first Civil Rights Acts and near the height of the social protest movement, 2.9%
of the student body was Latina/o (1.8% and 1.1% male and female, respectively).7
Informal conversations with officials in the admissions and registrar’s offices revealed
that institutional data on race and ethnicity were not gathered at UT–Austin until
the 1970s. The first publicly available data on race/ethnicity are for the fall of 1972,
when there were 1,542 Latina/o students out of a student population of 39,900,
about 3.9% (University of Texas at Austin, 1976).8 Considering the yearbook counts
and publicly released data—despite Civil Rights legislation, targeted admissions
programs, and an amenable legal and legislative environment—large Latina/o
enrollment disparities persisted at UT–Austin. Relative to the 1970 Census, Latina/os
were underrepresented by about 15 percentage points—a sizeable increase of about
five percentage points since the Jim Crow era (see Table 1).
Affirmative Action and the Backlash
By the 1980s and 1990s, UT–Austin and selective universities nationwide
sought to remedy the small pool of eligible African American and Latina/o
applicants with affirmative action programs that admitted minorities with
lower test scores to graduate and undergraduate programs. Whites began to
question whether their rights were being violated by these practices and sought
to limit these mechanisms in the courts. Several U.S. Supreme Court cases
changed how universities were able to admit and allocated resources based upon
race. Several major U.S. Supreme Court cases have had a significant impact
on race in the admissions process at the undergraduate and graduate levels at
UT–Austin: Bakke (1978), Hopwood (1996), and Grutter (2003). These cases
7
8
The yearbook proportion can’t be compared with Manuel (1965) as his last analysis came from the fall of 1958–59.
We are fairly confident that the yearbook counts during this time period are representative, as they are within
1% of publicly reported institutional data.
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synthesized “strict scrutiny.” In other words, states needed to show that the
racial classifications in law “served a compelling and legitimate state interest”
(Howard, 1997, p. 33).
In 1973, Allan Bakke, a White male applicant, was refused admission to the
University of California–Davis Medical School. In Regents of California v. Bakke
(1979), he claimed that the medical school had denied him equal protection under
the Fourteenth Amendment because sixteen seats were reserved for economically
disadvantaged minority students. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that Bakke
should be allowed into the medical school but that “although race or ethnicity
should not demand inclusion or exclusion, minority racial or ethnic status could
constitute a ‘plus’ in an applicant’s file” (Bickel, 1998, p. 10).
While the Bakke case was under review at the U.S. Supreme Court, the
U.S. Office of Civil Rights (OCR) began a review of Texas higher education
in February of 1978. The OCR eventually found that Texas had not
eliminated vestiges of de jure segregation (Moses, n.d.). After thirty months
of negotiations, several court orders, and discussions with two gubernatorial
administrations, the state of Texas agreed to develop a higher education
desegregation plan on a voluntary basis (Hopwood, 1996; Moses, n.d.).
A period of foot dragging ensued, and by 1983, facing a forty-five day
ultimatum from the Adams desegregation court to develop an enrollment
plan, Texas Attorney General Mark White encouraged state leaders to adopt a
voluntary plan of action to diversify Texas higher education to forestall a direct
federal order to desegregate the state’s colleges and universities (Hopwood,
1996). The state responded by creating the Texas Opportunity Plan for
Education, also known as the Texas Plan (THECB, 1988).
In all, there were three Texas Plans: the first in 1983, the second in 1989, and a
final iteration in 1995 (Scott & Kibler, 1998). Each was designed to strategically
address the lack of diversity at Texas’ postsecondary institutions (THECB,
1983). Over the course of five years, the goal of the first Texas Plan was to enroll
an additional 2,432 African American and 3,190 Latina/o undergraduates, in
addition to 240 African Americans and 463 Latina/os in graduate programs. It
also stipulated 100 more Latina/os and African Americans in professional studies
at predominantly White Texas public universities. However, by 1986, UT–
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Austin and its peer universities realized that they were not meeting their goals.
For instance, in the 1984–85 academic year at UT–Austin, there were only
13 more Latina/o undergraduates than in 1977–78 (THECB, 1986).
Admissions and Latina/o Enrollment circa 1982
Considering the general admissions requirements for UT–Austin for the 1981–82
academic year, there was a new bright line that prospective students had to hurdle
for admissions that was not officially published in the 1960s: specific scores on
either SAT or ACT on a sliding scale with class rank. Admissions requirements
now listed “admissions tests” (i.e. SAT or ACT) as the first priority entrance
requirement (University of Texas, 1981). An informal conversation with an
individual employed in the UT–Austin admissions office from the 1960s to
the 1980s revealed that more emphasis was being placed by the university on
achieving a particular score in 1982 (for SAT: 1100 or more for students) than
in 1967, when the student needed only a “satisfactory” score in combination
with the student’s high school ranking (University of Texas, 1966, 1981).
Although students were still admitted under “individual approval” and through
the provisional program (PAP), this emphasis on testing played a large role in
continuing to limit students of color from being accepted to the university, due
to long-standing underperformance on the SAT and ACT (Thomas, 2004).
As priority criteria, the admissions tests had the potential to limit the pool of
eligible Latina/o students.
Representation analysis. By 1982, Civil Rights directives, in particular Title VI
and affirmative action enforced by the Adams desegregation courts, sought to
provide wider access for students of color. Despite the noble intentions of the
belated Texas Plans and other outreach programs, UT–Austin had not met its
promised goals for diversity. As shown in Table 1, a review of the 1982 Cactus
found that 9.1% (4.2% male and 4.9% female) of the student population at the
university was Latina/o. This is the first year in the analysis in which the estimated
proportion of Latinas enrolled exceeded Latinos. Nearly 15 years after the Civil
Rights movement, Latina/os remained underrepresented compared to their
statewide population in the 1980 Census by about 12 percentage points (see Table
1). In this era of Bakke-sanctioned affirmative action, the gap between enrollment
at UT–Austin and the state’s Latina/o population narrowed from 15 percentage
points in 1967, to 12 percentage points in the early 1980s.
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Hopwood and the Top 10% Plan
Nearly fifty years after the landmark Sweatt case against the UT–Austin
School of Law, Cheryl J. Hopwood and Stephanie C. Haynes, two White
females, applied to the UT–Austin School of Law. When they were rejected,
they filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court stating that they were denied
their constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law when “less
qualified” minorities were admitted. Both claimed that although they had met
the school requirements for admittance, the Law School had “preferential”
admissions policies for African American and Latina/o applicants (Goldstone,
2006). Stephanie C. Haynes was dismissed from the suit on February 11,
1993. Ultimately, Douglas Carvell, Kenneth Elliott, and David Rogers, three
White males, joined the existing lawsuit as plaintiffs alleging claims similar to
Hopwood’s (Hopwood v. Texas, 2010).
The 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in Hopwood that any consideration
of race or ethnic background by the UT–Austin Law School to achieve a diverse
student body did not apply under the Fourteenth Amendment. In addition “the
use of race … simply cannot be a state interest compelling enough to meet the
steep standard of strict scrutiny” (Cheryl J. Hopwood, et al. v. State of Texas et. al vs.
Thurgood Marshal Legal Society and Black Pre-law Association, 1996). This ruling had
major implications for all affirmative action policies at postsecondary institutions
in the 5th Circuit. Texas Attorney General Dan Morales instructed all of the
state’s colleges and universities to function on a “race-neutral” basis in regard to all
procedures and policies such as recruitment, retention, financial aid, and tutoring.
In reaction to the Hopwood court decision and to encourage minority
representation at UT–Austin and Texas A&M, House Bill 588 (The Top 10%
Plan) was passed by the state legislature and signed into law in 1996. Under this
statute, a Texas student who graduated in the top ten percent of his or her class
would receive automatic admission to any state college or university. As with any
new policy, there were contrasting arguments—proponents of this plan argued
that this law would increase the number of minority students at the two public
flagship campuses; opponents contended that the program would only work if
secondary schools remained segregated and the state avoided dealing with this
issue (Tienda & Niu, 2006). Others argued that accepting all top ten percent
students would lower the quality of education at these schools, since the plan
needed to accept students from “weaker” schools (Goldstone, 2006).
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Admissions and Latina/o Enrollment 1997–Present
By 1997, the backlash against affirmative action had increased to a crescendo, as
opponents of minority admissions preferences were emboldened by Bakke in the
late 1970s and then Hopwood in 1996. The year after Hopwood, the yearbook
analysis suggests Latina/os were about 12% (5.7% male and 5.8% female) of
the total student population at UT–Austin (see Table 1). The yearbook counts
are similar to public data released by UT–Austin showing Latina/o enrollment
at 14% (The University of Texas at Austin Office, 1998).9 As shown in Table 1,
considering the 2000 Census, Latina/os were underrepresented at UT–Austin
by at least 14 percentage points relative to their statewide population.
It is interesting to note that during the first year of the implementation of the Top
10% law (1998–99), the university enrollment data show Latina/os at 12.7%
(The University of Texas at Austin, 2001a). Several years after the implementation
of the Top 10% admissions plan, the yearbook count suggests that 13.2% of the
student body was comprised of Latina/o students. Thus, Latina/os appear to have
made dramatic strides since 1937.10 However, it must also be considered that
Latina/os’ demographic proportions in the state were also trending upward. By the
2000 census, Latina/os were 25.5% of the state’s population (see Table 1).
In 2003, the use of race as a criterion among many in the admissions process
was reaffirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Barbara Grutter v. Lee Bollinger
et al. (2003), a case challenging the admissions policy of the University of
Michigan Law School. The Grutter decision elevated Justice Lewis Powell’s
concurring opinion of using race as a plus factor, stating that “student body
diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in
university admissions” (Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003). With Hopwood overturned,
the Board of Regents reinstated an overt affirmative action program, narrowly
tailoring it to fit the guidelines of Grutter. In 2009, the District Court for the
Western Division of Texas upheld UT–Austin’s policy, stating that it adhered to
the Michigan program so closely that “if the Plaintiffs are right, then Grutter is
wrong (Fisher v. University of Texas, 2009). Now, not only did Latina/os appear
to benefit from the Top 10% law, but they could also be admitted with
a preference in secondary reviews.
The 2 percentage point difference between the yearbook and institutional data could be accounted for by
international Latina/os.
10
Latina/os are overrepresented by about 1% in the yearbook count as compared to the official UT enrollment data.
9
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Another outgrowth of Grutter was that UT–Austin could resume financial aid
and outreach programs that specifically targeted Latina/os. For example, the
University of Texas’ Ex-Students’ Association created the Longhorn Opportunity
scholarship to provide $5,000 to incoming economically disadvantaged students
from historically underrepresented Texas communities (Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003).
In addition, UT–Austin representatives, such as President Bill Powers, traveled
the state to visit predominantly minority high schools to encourage students to
apply. However, the question remains: Did the 10% law and outreach programs
decrease the underrepresentation of Latina/o students at UT–Austin?
Representation analysis. If the representation analyses ended in 2001, a key
finding would be that Latina/os had made gains at UT–Austin since the era
of Jim Crow. However, to consider the long-term impact of the Top 10%
law in the midst of a burgeoning Latina/o population growth and the postGrutter admissions environment, the researchers conducted an additional
comparison of 2008 Latina/o enrollment relative to statewide demographics.
By 2008, demographic growth had far outpaced enrollment growth, resulting
in underrepresentation that had doubled since the Jim Crow era— from ten
percentage points in 1937 to 20 percentage points in 2008 (see Table 1). This
finding raises important social justice concerns about the success of the Top
10% law for decreasing the underrepresentation of Latina/os at UT–Austin
relative to the speed of demographic growth.
Discussion
When the Texas State Legislature began its 81st session in the winter of 2009,
the Top 10% plan, the most recent policy expected to remedy minority
underrepresentation in the state’s college and universities, emerged as a topic on the
forefront of the legislative agenda. Research on the statewide admissions policy that
automatically accepted students in the top 10% of their class into any of Texas’ 35
state public higher education institutions found that it had not yet created greater
diversity at the state’s selective universities (Horn & Flores, 2006; Long & Tieda,
2006). The UT–Austin administration argued in the Texas legislature that the
university was adamantly opposed to the Top 10% policy because the threshold
admissions plan took away from the admissions discretion of the institution and
actually limited minority enrollment (Erasing race, 2009, February 28).
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The Texas Senate modified the Top 10% plan when it passed SB 175 in the
spring of 2009. The bill allowed Texas universities to admit students in the Top
10% of their graduating high school class up to 50% of the incoming freshman
class. As 81% of the 2008 freshman class at UT–Austin was determined by the
Top 10% plan, it is the only university in the state that is currently affected
by the cap (Root, 2009). In practice, UT–Austin announced it would admit
students in the Top 8% of their graduating class (Haurwitz, 2009).
Are there social justice ramifications for Latina/o enrollment associated with
modifications to the Top 10% plan? The preceding historical analysis makes it
difficult to ignore that the total number and proportion of Latina/o students
enrolled at UT–Austin is at an all-time high. However, this accomplishment
is muted by the fact that Latina/o underrepresentation has doubled. Despite
all of the legal and legislative
The state of Texas has not been able to
machinations, the state of Texas
deliver equal education at the primary and
has not been able to deliver
secondary level, which has compounded the
equal education at the primary
historic suppression of Latina/o enrollment
and secondary level, which
at the state’s flagship institution.
has compounded the historic
suppression of Latina/o enrollment at the state’s flagship institution. Part of the
problem lies within the nature of the discrimination faced by Mexican Americans.
The emerging scholarship on the “other White” phenomenon has argued that the
cultural discrimination intertwined with the racial discrimination, embodied in
transgressions like separate English and Spanish schools, continues to infiltrate the
present desegregation discourse (Gross, 2007).
{
{
The structural barriers blocking the pathways to UT–Austin for Latina/os
have always been formidable. The poor quality of the separate Spanish schools
practically guaranteed that the overwhelming majority of students would not
have the requisite skills, aspirations, or financial resources to enter UT–Austin.
As the courts and legislatures began to open up more pathways, the animosity
that Latina/o students faced on campus intensified. Not until the 1980s did
the university deliberately embark on a policy of constructive outreach to help
prepare and encourage minority enrollment—and then such programs were
at the mercy of the judiciary (Laylock, 2006; Niu, Sullivan, & Tienda, 2008).
The yearbook representation analysis presented here shows at least part of the
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Julian Vasquez Heilig, Laurel Dietz, Michael Volonnino
effect of such barriers on Latina/o enrollment. It also begs the question—how,
in light of the changes to the Top 10% law, renewed affirmative action, and a
purported commitment by the university to diversity, will the conundrum of
underrepresentation improve?
Conclusion
This historical analysis is not exhaustive and did not consider every general
historical trend, but instead examined admissions policies, key litigation,
and enrollment. We are sympathetic to arguments that focus on the public
school finance system in Texas or the momentum to add more selective top
tier institutions. There are many fundamental issues on the table in Texas that
interact with selective higher education admissions. The fact that this article
does not focus on them does not suggest that they are less important, but that
the latter could continue to limit and rationalize the exclusion of Latina/os
from selective higher education. As Texas and the nation grapple with issues of
social justice and selective higher education admissions in conjunction with the
human capital requirements of a 21st century global economy, policymakers
must consider how to eviscerate the structural barriers noted in this article
that have escalated the underrepresentation of Latina/os, rather than narrow
opportunity and access to selective higher education.
About the Authors: Julian Vasquez Heilig is an assistant professor of educational policy and
planning in the Department of Education Administration and a faculty affiliate in the Center for
Mexian American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin.
Laurel Dietz is a doctoral student in educational policy and planning at the University of Texas at Austin.
Michael Volonnino is a doctoral student in educational administration at the University of Texas
at Austin.
Address correspondence to: Julian Vasquez Heilig, Department of Education Administration,
The University of Texas at Austin, George I. Sanchez Building (SZB) 374D, 1 University Station
D5400, Austin, TX 78712-0374, [email protected]
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