Is ‘gender balance’ in college admissions illegal discrimination?
I recently wrote about gender in college admissions, and today my colleague Daniel DeVise tells us in a Post story that civil rights investigators will soon begin reviewing admissions data from some Washington region colleges to see if women are targets of discrimination. The issue is this: Because there are so many more female applicants, some schools admit a smaller percentage of females applicants than male applicants in order to keep a relatively balanced student population. Some see this as discrimination. One of the schools that openly discusses the differences in gender admissions is The College of William and Mary, which admitted 43 percent of male applicants and 29 percent of female applicants in fall 2008. Admissions Dean Henry Broaddus explained the school’s reasoning in a post here. He argued–effectively, I thought–that schools have a legitimate interest in enrolling a class that is not disproportionately male or female. Here is a post by controversial public interest law
