The ruling also has implications for private universities because the courts have treated the constitutional requirement of equal protection and statutory requirements of equal treatment in parallel fashion. The elimination of race as a factor in university admissions greatly reduced minority enrollment at public universities in Texas. The result has been to boost minority enrollment without any formal reliance on racial criteria. It uses a formally race-neutral mechanism to achieve racial diversity. Florida Governor Jeb Bush has recently created a parallel program in Florida for students placing in the top twenty percent of their high school classes, and similar proposals are on the table in other states as well.
Affirmative access has considerable appeal.
It appears to produce the same results as traditional affirmative action, without the discomfiting need to classify persons based on race or ethnicity. However, programs like the Texas ten percent plan have serious flaws. Priorities First, the ten percent plan severely limits colleges' and universities' ability to select the students they deem most qualified or deserving. In contrast, programs like the Texas ten percent plan allocate most spaces simply on the basis of high school grades, thus eliminating these and other intangible factors from undergraduate admissions. It precludes a holistic appraisal of a student's abilities in favor of a single statistic.