University of Florida Provost David Colburn heard all about the new strategies being tried from Texas and California admissions officers who were invited to visit the Gainesville campus this winter. We're going to have to work pretty hard to make this work . . . . You can't ignore the realities of what has happened at our sister institutions, the University of Texas and the University of California. It is too early to make a final judgment on the new approaches, suggests Terry W. Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education. It will take a while to see if they're good and effective.
Some alternatives have yet to be tried.
The Center for Individual Rights, which has led the legal attack on affirmative action in the courts, sounds more open to alternatives. Unlike Clegg, Pell does consider diversity a legitimate goal. It's a public university. But so far not one elite private college has been sued. Instead the attack on affirmative action has been squarely centered on the best state universities.