SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision: Race and Ethnicity Implementation Guide

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Overview

This article addresses Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) surrounding the recent Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) affirmative action decision and its implications for considerations of race and ethnicity in admissions processes.

In light of the evolving legal landscape, you may have questions about how to make adjustments to your admissions processes workflows and how that translates to WebAdMIT. This article aims to provide clarity by addressing how to hide race and ethnicity in your review process and insights into the ruling's impact.

Additionally, watch the recording of the "Navigating the SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling with WebAdMIT" webinar held on August 2, 2023.

Work Groups

1. What are Work Groups and what information do they limit?

Work Groups allow you to manage permissions for a group of users instead of separately managing permissions for each individual user. Using WebAdMIT’s Work Groups feature, you can decide:

What actions a user can perform. These functions are granted via permission sets. Each Permission Set determines the options that appear in the user’s Menu Bar, such as List Manager, Export Manager, Report Manager, etc.
What applicant data a user can view. You can decide which sections of the application users can view. These sections can include information like race and ethnicity data, demographic data, applicant name, Custom Fields, etc. The data available for viewing is controlled by panels and subpanels that you enable or disable for users, as needed.

You may have members of your team that will be reviewing applications as well as using data management functions like List Manager and Export Manager, in which they’ll have access to race and ethnicity data. If you don’t want your users to have any access to race and ethnicity information, you’ll have to remove the permission for:

Manage Lists, Reports, and Exports

Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for a breakdown of permission sets.

For Work Group template examples, visit the Work Groups Guide in the Help Center.

2. Can users only have one Work Group assignment?

As you create Work Groups, you add users to them. You can create as many Work Groups as necessary (each with their own unique permission sets), move users among groups as desired, and change the permissions or viewing ability for all users in any given Work Group once it’s created.

Note: an individual can only belong to one Work Group at a time per CAS and cycle. So, for example, if Bob is both a screener and an interviewer and those roles have different permission sets, you can:

Move Bob from the Screener Work Group to the Interviewer Work Group (and vice versa) as needed, or
Create a hybrid Screener-Interviewer Work Group with a specific set of permissions for people who perform both of those tasks.

Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for more information.

3. Does the Work Group setting change the criteria that is shown in the application PDF?

Yes, the panels and subpanels access you create in the Work Group applies to the application PDF. For example, if you suppress race and ethnicity information from the Personal Information panel on the Applicant Details Page, that information will not appear in the Personal Information panel in the application PDF in WebAdMIT.

If you are downloading the application PDF from a system other than WebAdMIT, please see the API section of the FAQ.

Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for more information.

4. What if an administrator needs to also review applications?

Work Groups can remove race and ethnicity during the application review process. So when someone from your team is looking at a student’s application, it is eliminated as a factor in their admissions decision process.

However, you may have members of your team that will be reviewing applications as well as using data management functions like List Manager and Export Manager, in which they’ll have access to race and ethnicity data. If you don’t want your users to have any access to race and ethnicity information, you’ll have to remove the permission for:

Manage Lists, Reports, and Exports

If race and ethnicity are hidden from a user’s Work Group during the application review process, but they have access to lists and exports, they still will not be able to review based on race unless they build a list or export using this information, examine the results, and then return to one of the applicants to review them with that knowledge.

Additionally, if you have access to Lists, Exports, Reports, etc., you can run and duplicate lists and exports. So, if you’re an administrator and you’re concerned about a particular list, export, etc. that another admissions member or faculty has created, you can double-check it by running it to see the data and/or duplicating it to see how it was built, and handle the situation accordingly.

Having a campus policy that prohibits admissions officers from using race in admissions decisions is encouraged.

Visit the Managing Work Groups page in the Help Center for more information.

Full Application PDF

1. Do the limits that you set in the Work Group carry over to the downloaded application PDF?

If you are downloading the application PDF from a system other than WebAdMIT, please see the API section of this FAQ.

2. Is there a way for someone in the WebAdMIT Administrators Work Group (i.e., full access) to download a full application PDF that excludes race/ethnicity information?

No, if the user is in the WebAdMIT Administrators Work Group and downloads the application PDF, it will include all of the information collected on the application, including race and ethnicity.

However, if the user had built a Work Group that suppresses race and ethnicity data, and puts themselves into that Work Group, they could then download an application PDF without race and ethnicity information. Additionally, they could use the PDF Manager to bulk download the application PDF and create a custom template of the sections and panels they want to include.

Visit the Working with the PDF Manager page in the Help Center.

3. How do you create a custom PDF in WebAdMIT?

The PDF Manager tool allows you to create a PDF custom template to download full applications, scanned transcripts, foreign evaluations, letters of reference, and applicant uploaded documents in bulk, making it simpler for you to work with them outside of WebAdMIT.

Visit the Working with the PDF Manager page in the Help Center.

CAS API

1. What is the CAS API?

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build or use such a connection or interface is called an API specification.

The CAS API allows clients to create automated integrations leveraging modern, event-driven API subscriptions. CAS applications (data and documents) are delivered to an SFTP, HTTPS, or AWS S3 destinations as applicants take specific actions. The data is then imported into a school’s Student Information System (SIS), Customer Relationship Manager (CRM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), where admissions staff can access the CAS data.

Visit the Integration Help Center for more information.

2. Is there a way to hide race/ethnicity in the data file?

No, the CAS API is intended to provide all of the CAS data to the institution so it can be manipulated once it is on the school’s server.

3. Is there a way to hide race/ethnicity in the Full Application PDF?

Yes. To do so:

If downloading on demand: use reviewer for the pdfType query parameter in the GET Application PDF API endpoint.
If using a subscription: Use reviewer for pdfType in the responseOptions parameter in the POST Subscription APIs.

If you have an existing subscription, delete the subscription before creating a new subscription for the Full Application PDF omitting race/ethnicity. To do so:

Determine which subscription has the Full Application PDF business event. The subscription may include additional business events.
Delete the subscription with the full application PDF business event.
Recreate the subscription with the new responseOptions parameter for the Full Application PDF business event.

"responseOptions": "contentType=application/pdf,pdfType=reviewer"

Campus Policies

1. Is it required or recommended to hide race and ethnicity from reviewers?

The decision to hide race and ethnicity from reviewers should be determined by each college and university according to institutional policies and procedures.

2. If we used a scoring rubric and assigned points for race and ethnicity, can we still acknowledge if the applicant identifies as an underrepresented race/ethnicity in our scoring model?

The decision to include information about an applicant's race/ethnicity and/or underrepresented status within a scoring rubric should be determined by each college and university according to institutional policies and procedures.

3. Can people NOT involved in the admissions review or decision-making process have access to race/ethnicity data?

The decision to provide access to applicant information to any member of your campus community should be determined by each college and university according to institutional policies and procedures.

Race and Ethnicity Data Collection Practices

1. Were applicants required to indicate their race and ethnicity before the recent SCOTUS decision?

Historically, race and ethnicity questions have been optional on most CAS applications.

2. If the race and ethnicity question is ever taken off of the CAS application, how will race and ethnicity data be collected moving forward?

If the race and ethnicity question is removed from the CAS application, each college and university would determine the method by which they would collect this information locally based on institutional policies and procedures.

3. Who is the decision maker when it comes to the collection of race data?

For CASs that are associated with a professional association (e.g., Physician Assistant Education Association), those associations consult with their advisory boards and determine the data fields that appear on the CAS application.

For CASs that operate independently of an association (e.g., California State University), the school or school system determines the data fields that appear on the CAS application.