Russel Sage Foundation

Submission Deadlines: See upcoming deadlines

The Russell Sage Foundation, in collaboration with the Hewlett, Spencer, and William T. Grant Foundations, seeks to support innovative research on the aftermath of the 2023 Supreme Court decision striking down race-conscious college and university admissions policies. The initiative focuses on ways to promote educational attainment and economic mobility among racially, ethnically, and economically diverse groups following the court’s ruling that the declared that use of race-conscious admissions policies violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment and was, therefore, unconstitutional.

Background

In a June 2023 decision, the Supreme Court held that admission practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel-Hill were unconstitutionally race-conscious and violated the 14^th Amendment. Proponents of race-conscious admissions policies have argued that such policies acknowledge and help compensate for systemically unequal opportunities in education and contribute to a more diverse workforce. Critics have argued that race-conscious admissions policies limit opportunities for Asian and white applicants. The Court’s decision may also have effects on employment and promotion decisions in the workplace and other settings.

Prior to this decision, ten states had banned the use of race-conscious admissions for their public colleges and universities: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. Research on alternative methods for achieving diversity suggests that they do not work as well as race-conscious policies in diversifying college and graduate and professional school enrollment. As a result, the Supreme Court’s decision is likely to generate experimentation with a range of methods to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in higher education and the educational attainment and economic mobility of underrepresented and lower-income groups.

We are especially interested in proposals that will advance social science research on the social, political, and economic effects of the Supreme Court decision and the future of race-conscious policies more generally. Examples of the kinds of topics and questions that are of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• What are the short- and long-run effects of the June 2023 Supreme Court ruling that restricts race-conscious policies in university and college admissions on who attends college and where?
• What has experience with the direct admissions or percentage plans of California, Texas, and other states revealed about what happens to racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity in enrollment and degree completion when race-conscious admission policies are no longer permissible for undergraduates or graduate students?
• Which alternatives to race-conscious policies, whether independently or in tandem, generate socioeconomic and racial and ethnic diversity in applications, admissions, enrollment, debt-free degree completion, and social mobility?
• To what extent are the beneficiaries of race-conscious admissions policies, who enroll in selective colleges and universities, more or less likely to graduate relative to those attending less-selective institutions?
• To what extent do race-neutral or alternative admissions policies contribute to the promotion of educational attainment and economic mobility among racially, ethnically, and economically diverse groups following the Supreme Court decision?
• What are the racial and socioeconomic composition effects of eliminating other admission practices such as early admissions, the use of standardized test scores, or the preferential treatment of the children of donors, alumni, faculty, and recruited athletes?
• To what extent will the race-conscious admissions ban impact the effort that high school students put into their studies, their educational aspirations, and their subsequent enrollment in higher education?
• What are the educational, social, and civic engagement benefits that derive from students’ interactions with classmates whose backgrounds, race and ethnicity, experiences, and political views differ from their own?
• What can we learn from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU’s) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSI’s) on how to support retention, recruitment, and degree completion for students from marginalized groups?
•  What program or policy changes might provide the basis for addressing historical racial harm in the context of higher education access and economic mobility?
• To what extent might improvements in college affordability lead to the promotion of educational attainment and economic mobility among racially, ethnically, and economically diverse groups?
• To what extent will the Supreme Court decision alter the college-to-career pipeline that many employers rely on to diversify their workforce?
• To what extent is the Supreme Court decision affecting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (D.E.I) initiatives in the recruitment, hiring, retention, promotion, and advancement of workers of color and or/other groups in higher education and in the private and public sectors?
• How are attitudes towards the use of race, ethnicity, or gender criteria in admissions, hiring, or contracting preferences formed? What factors are associated with opposition to and support for race-conscious policies? How might the framing of diversity, bias, opportunity, and/or mobility affect opposition or support for race-conscious policies?

Application Information

We are particularly interested in analyses that make use of newly available data or demonstrate novel uses of existing data. We also support original data collection, such as surveys, field or survey experiments, in-depth qualitative interviews, and ethnographies. This initiative encourages methodological variety and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Proposals must have well-developed conceptual frameworks and research designs. Plans for analyses must be specified, and research questions and hypotheses (where applicable) must be clearly stated.

Funds can support research assistance, data acquisition, data analysis, and investigator time. Trustee grants are capped at $200,000, including 15 percent indirect costs, over a two-year period. Presidential awards, over a two-year period, are capped at $50,000 (no indirect costs), but at $75,000 (no indirect costs) when the proposed project involves original data collection or gaining access to restricted-use data.

Click here to read more about how to apply.

All applications and reports must be submitted through RSF’s application portal: https://rsf.fluxx.io/.

Submission Deadline:  April 1, 2025, at 2:00 PM (ET)

Previous studies related to the goals of this initiative include, but are not limited to:

Alon, Sigal. (2015). Race, Class, and Affirmative Action. Russell Sage Foundation.

Alon, Sigal, and Marta Tienda. 2007. “Diversity, Opportunity, and the Shifting Meritocracy in Higher Education.” American Sociological Review, 72, 487–511.

Black, Sandra E., Denning, Jeffrey T., & Rothstein, Jesse. (2020). Winners and Losers? The Effects of Gaining and Losing Access to Selective Colleges on Education and Labor Market Outcomes. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 15(1), 26–67.

Bleemer, Zachary. (2022). Affirmative Action, Mismatch, and Economic Mobility After California’s Proposition 209. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 115–160.

Bleemer, Zachary. (2023). Affirmative Action and Its Race Neutral Alternatives. Journal of Public Economics, 220, 104839.

Cascio, Elizabeth U., Paul Cornell, and Ethan G. Lewis. (2024). The Intergenerational Effects of Permanent Legal Status. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 32635.

Chetty, Raj, Deming, David J., & Friedman, John N. (2023). Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges. NBER Working Paper No. 31492.

Cortés, Kalena E. (2010). Do Bans on Affirmative Action Hurt Minority Students? Evidence from the Texas Top 10% Plan. Economic Education Review, 29(6), 1110–1124.

Doherty, Carroll, Kiley, Jocelyn, Asheer, Nida, & Price, Talia (2023). “More Americans Disapprove than Approve of Colleges Considering Race, Ethnicity in Admissions Decisions.” Pew Research Center, June.

Garcés, Liliana M. (2020). The False Notion of “Race-Neutrality”: How Legal Battles in Higher Education Undermine Racial Equity. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 52(2), 51–55.

Hoxby, Caroline M. (2009). The changing selectivity of American Colleges.”  Journal of Economic Perspectives, 23 (4), 95-118.

Katznelson, Ira. (2005). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Inequality in Twentieth Century America. New York: W.W. Norton. W.W. Norton.

Kennedy, Randall L. (2013). For Discrimination: Race, Affirmative Action, and the Law. Pantheon Books.

Klasik, Daniel, & Cortés, Kalena E. (2022). Uniform Admissions, Unequal Access: Did the Top Ten Percent Plan Increase Access to Selective Flagship Institutions?” Economics of Education Review, 87(April), 102199.

Lee, Jennifer. (2021). Asian Americans, Affirmative Action, and the Rise in Anti-Asian Hate. Daedalus, 150(2), 180–198.

Lee, Jennifer, & Tran, Van C. (2019). The Mere Mention of Asians in Affirmative Action. Sociological Science, 6: 551-579.

Liu, Goodwin Liu (2022). “The Causation Fallacy: Bakke and the Basic Arithmetic of Selective Admissions.” Michigan Law Review, 100(1), 1045–1107.

Long, Mark C., Saenz, Victor, & Tienda, Marta. (2010). Policy Transparency and College Enrollment: Did Texas’ Top 10 Percent Law Broaden Access to the Public Flagships? Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 627, 82–105.

Perea, Juan F. (2014). Doctrines of Delusion: How the History of the G.I. Bill and Other Inconvenient Truths Undermine the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Jurisprudence. 75 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 583. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 75(583).

Stephens-Dougan, LaFleur. (2020). Race to the Bottom: How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics. University of Chicago Press.

The Ruling Explained: The Future of Affirmative Action in Higher Education. (2023). Lumina Foundation.

Tienda, Marta, Niu, Sunny, & Cortés, Kalena E. (2006). College Selectivity and the Texas Top 10% Law: How Constrained Are the Options?”. Economics of Education Review, 25(3).

Warikoo, Natasha. (2022). Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equality in College Admissions. Polity Books.