Diverse Supply & Demand

Raleigh, N. C.—A full-court press by college and university administrators cannot keep the ethnic complexion of American college campuses from fading rapidly. In other words, there is an affirmative action problem but it is not the one that either side of the controversy thinks is prevalent.

“Deans of law schools are concerned about the low numbers of minorities applying to the law schools,” says Raymond Pierce, who can count himself among that fraternity of executives. Dr. Pierce is the dean of North Carolina Central University’s School of Law.

He spoke here at the annual conference of the John William Pope Center on Higher Education Policy. “Law school applications are down nationwide but they are particularly down for African-Americans,” Dr. Peirce told me. “They are not down at NCCU.”

“They are up 13 percent but nationally, totally, they are down double digits by 16 percent.” Dr. Pierce faces an unusual racial breakdown on his own campus.

Although NCCU is a historically black college and/or university, the student body in the law school is about half white. “I am blessed,” Dr. Pierce says.

Fundraising pressures and concerns over the exploding cost of a legal education drive many of Dr. Pierce’s peers into new positions. “I am the most senior dean of a law school in the state of North Carolina and I have only been on the job for a year,” Dr. Pierce told the crowd at the Pope Center conference at the Brownstone-Holiday Inn.

As to what is driving the law school applications down across the country, Dr. Pierce is hard-pressed to give a definitive answer but he does offer some inside observations on education, higher and lower, today. A former Clinton Administration official, he will talk about the funding crisis public school officials say plagues them.

“It’s a pipeline problem,” he told me. “Sixty percent of blacks and Hispanics go to the 10 largest school systems and they are the ones that are in financial problems.”
But he has also seen an educational system where the woes go far beyond the financial. “Law school is hard,” he says. “Medical school is hard.”

“I signed 35 letters of dismissal last year to students who could not make 2.0.” Dr. Pierce worked in the Department of Education in the 1990s.

“There is a problem with education,” he said. “You look at these applications to law school and you say, ‘How did they get out of college?’”
“The colleges look at applications and say, ‘How did they get out of high school?’” Nevertheless, Dr. Pierce remains a supporter of affirmative action.

It was in that connection that Dr. Pierce, who helped administer civil rights programs at the Clinton Department of Education, came to the Pope Center conference. Dr. Pierce wryly noted that he was the third choice to do so.

“I was supposed to moderate, okay?” Dr. Pierce said, “but your first two speakers backed out.” Still, he picked up the mantle.

“Black people have problems,” the black law school dean said before enumerating them: “Crime, drugs, unemployment and misbehavior.”

“That’s right, I said misbehavior.” Dr. Pierce himself can boast of a distinguished career in corporate law and public service.

“Affirmative action opens up a small window,” he argued. “Why do you want to close that window?” The American Bar Association has set a standard for “Diversity in law school admittance.”

“I do not know any law school deans worried about the ABA standard,” Dr. Pierce said. “I think that the standard could have been written better.”

“It is not a quota,” he insists.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.