The number of black students on Penn's campus would significantly decline if the University were to end affirmative action in the next 25 years, a new study predicts.
Economists from the University of Virginia and Princeton University projected that without the program in place, significantly fewer black students would attend college.
According to the study, this decline in black enrollment would be most pronounced at selective colleges like Penn because of the difficulty in being accepted.
Penn officials agreed, saying that they don't see any imminent end to the University's affirmative action policies.
The current Penn freshman class is about 9 percent black, compared to almost 13 percent of the general American population.
The study sought to investigate what colleges would look like if affirmative action in college admissions ends in 25 years, as Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor suggested in a landmark 2003 ruling.
"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," O'Connor wrote at the time.
This comment came after she famously cast the swing vote which upheld the use of race as a determining factor in college admissions.
Alan Krueger and Jesse Rothstein of Princeton and Sarah Turner of the University of Virginia conducted the study, which appears in a new book put out by the College Board. It had appeared in an earlier form in the American Law and Economics Review.
Rothstein said the scholars used trends in income and standardized test scores to come up with plausible estimates for future enrollment.
"We're trying to predict the future, basically," Rothstein said.
Minority enrollment is not increasing fast enough to justify discontinuing affirmative action, according to Rothstein.
For this reason, Rothstein and his colleagues found that O'Connor's prediction was overly optimistic.
Penn has used affirmative action in its admissions policies since the 1960s, according to Dean of Admissions Lee Stetson.
And he doesn't see it going anywhere. He said he expects affirmative action at Penn to continue well into the 21st century.
"We agree that in an idealistic world we may not need it, but in the realistic world it is necessary," Stetson said. "We need students from all walks of life."
Penn's Executive Director for Affirmative Action Jeanne Arnold agreed that O'Connor's statement "was more of a hope or a wish than a mandate."
Arnold said that she too hopes that affirmative action won't be necessary in the near future, but so far she has seen no indications that this will be so.
Some, like Ward Connerly, don't want to see affirmative action phased out - they want it eliminated immediately.
"For those who support race preferences, the year 3050 will be too soon," said Connerly, chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, an advocacy group vocally opposed to affirmative action.
Connerly instead suggested basing admissions preferences on income levels.
However, Rachelle Winkle Wagner, a professor in the Graduate School of Education who studies the sociology of higher education, said that income levels can be deceiving.
Affirmative action, she added, is currently the best means society has for leveling the playing field for those who have been historically disadvantaged.
