Colleges receive hints on race

Colleges have been issued a list of suggestions by the U.S. Education Department to increase the number of minority students accepted each year without taking race into account in admissions. \nAccording to The Chronicle of Higher Education, the 81-page guide will add to a similar report the department issued before the Supreme Court upheld race-based admission policies at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.\nIU does not accept students based on requirements or limitations for race and ethnicity, said Eduardo Rhodes, IU vice chancellor. \n"Race is not a judging factor for accepting students," Rhodes said. "We do not have any type numerical system or anything that we use to accept students."\nAccording to The Chronicle, schools in California, Florida and Texas use class-rank plans, which guarantee admission to a public university in the start to a certain percentage of each high school's graduation class, to comply with the suggestions from the education department.\nAlthough changes have already been made in those states, Rhodes said he doesn't anticipate any such changes in IU's near future. \n"Since race isn't an issue," Rhodes said, "IU will not change policies since we don't look at accepting people based on their race."\nThe list was issued in the wake of minority enrollment dropping in several Big Ten schools.\nOhio State University and the University of Michigan have suffered smaller amounts of minority applicants after both schools revamped their admission systems for the 2003-2004 school year in response to the Supreme Court ruling. \n-- Contact staff writer Nellie Summerfield at nsummerf@indiana.edu.