Where students attend college has serious implications for both the education attainment and racial wealth gap, yet more selective, and arguably better resourced, colleges in the US are serving disproportionately high shares of white and Asian students, while Black and Hispanic students are disproportionately enrolled in open access, less selective, and for-profit colleges. This has been the case for years, and the current public health and economic crisis will exacerbate this institutional stratification if mitigating disparate impact is not central to proposed solutions.

As colleges across the country grapple with their role in systemic racism and adjust their admissions processes in response to COVID-19, there is an opportunity for college administrators to implement policies to make their college more racially representative of their communities and to reflect on the policies that exacerbate racial inequities.

For many colleges, standardized test scores are still a major component of a college application, but tests, such as the ACT and SAT, can sometimes say more about class and race than about academic preparedness (PDF). Test-optional policies aren’t the holy grail to dismantling racial inequities in college access, but they are a start.

Cost is also a barrier for many Black and brown students, and this barrier has become even more pronounced amid COVID-19. Removing upfront costs, such as application fees and cost to send transcripts, is a small change that could lift the financial burden many students experience when applying to colleges.

COVID-19 has forced colleges to adjust in ways that may feel uncomfortable and unconventional, but some institutional policy changes, such as deprioritizing standardized test scores, are working to improve racial equity and provide more college options to students who didn’t choose the family they were born into or the high school they attended.

Read the full article about college admissions offices and racial equity by Kelia Washington at Urban Institute.