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A recent study has reported that a racially diverse university may offer no more benefits to its students and faculty than a homogeneous student body.

The study, “Does Enrollment Diversity Improve University Education?” has attracted attention on the eve of the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing for the constitutionality of affirmative action.

It runs in direct opposition to the majority of academic studies done on racial diversity, including those that the University of Michigan cite to support racial preferencing in admissions policies.

“Our study found no positive relationship between increasing minority population in a university and educational experience, except in the case of Asians,” said Stanley Rothman, director for the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College and one of the study’s authors.

Rothman said the study found that when the Asian university population increased, be it faculty or students, university officials reported an improvement in educational experience. However, in the case of all other minorities, the study found no benefit. Rothman did not say why Asian students had a different effect on educational experience.

The study findings are significant because, while the study did not prove racial diversity is harmful, “the findings failed to support the argument that enrollment diversity improves the education and racial milieu at American colleges and universities,” the study reported.

“We have not established it is bad, we have just found it is not necessarily good,” Rothman said.

The study drew its information by conducting personal interviews with 1,643 students, 1,632 faculty and 808 administrators across 140 randomly selected American colleges and universities.

The study, which focused on racial diversity at predominantly and historically white colleges and universities after the admittance of black students, found negative correlations between minority enrollment and the degree to which students appreciate and benefit from their education.

“As the proportion of black students enrolled at the institution rose, student satisfaction with their university experience dropped, as did assessments of the quality of their education and the work efforts of their peers,” the study reported.

The study, published in the International Journal of Public Opinion and The Public Interest, comes at an important juncture in the field of academic admittance.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case brought forth by several white students who claim the undergraduate and law school admittance policies of the University of Michigan are racially biased.

University of Michigan Professor of psychology Patricia Gurin, whose research is part of the university’s legal argument for racially preferencing, disagrees with Rothman.

“A racially and ethnically diverse university student body has far-ranging and significant benefits for all students,” Gurin reported in a University of Michigan press release dated Mar. 17, 1999.

She added, “Students learn better in a diverse educational environment.”

Gary Orfield, Harvard professor of education and social policy and co-director of the Civil Rights Project at Harvard, said there are myriad benefits from a diverse university student body, and students know this.

“Students of all races overwhelmingly agree there are benefits of interacting with students of other races,” Orfield said.

He discredited Rothman’s study as unusual, “obsolete and superficial.”

“The thing about racial diversity is it doesn’t necessarily make you happy, but it is better for you,” he said.

Some UCLA students said racial diversity is a good thing and teaches people about other cultural perspectives, but others noted that racial diversity is often not realized because of student social behavior.

Ben Bert, a third-year physiological science student, and Yuriy Dyudyuk, a first-year international economics student, said that although UCLA is a diverse university, most students typically associate with students of their own cultural background.

“Southern California has a weird understanding of diversity; every race is represented, but every race stays to itself,” Bert said.

Dyudyuk agreed, “It ends up being segregated anyway. People don’t get out of their bubbles.”

Other students said racial diversity is good because of what they have learned from people of cultures and ethnicities different from their own.

“Having a culturally diverse community is important or else you get a homogenous, one-sided group that only sees things one way,” said first-year English student Aaron Fai.

Tarah Giz, a third-year sociology student, said it is a negative thing for Americans to attend racially homogenous schools because they will not be prepared to handle the diverse population of post-college life.

“In the real world you are faced with different ethnicities and cultures; it makes sense to go to a school that is diverse,” Giz said.