On the first day of seventh grade, Elijah Brown clambered onto a bus and watched the tall buildings of the city slowly recede. He was part of a desegregation effort that took him from his predominantly Black neighborhood in St. Louis to a school in the predominantly white suburb of Wildwood, Missouri.   

The education was excellent, but students made denigrating comments about where he was from and his race. His mom worked hard – often two jobs – but sometimes there wasn’t enough money for rent. Some nights, he and his mom and sister slept in their car. Some days he could only eat when he was at school. 

Brown began to think of the University of Missouri as a way out of hard times. It was the only college he applied to, and he got in – but even with full federal financial aid, he would have needed to come up with thousands of dollars every year to cover the rest of tuition and room and board. 

To his overwhelming relief, he was awarded a prestigious George C. Brooks scholarship, which was designed to help students from groups underrepresented at the university and covered about 70 percent of tuition annually. 

“It changed my life, it really did,” Brown said.

The scholarship money meant that he didn’t have to work two or three jobs at Subway or the local gym like his friends. Brown graduated in three and a half years, in 2020, with a 3.98 GPA.

“I worked so hard. I was relentless with it, because I felt like I had something to prove,” he said. “I felt so grateful to be getting a Brooks scholarship.” 

That scholarship no longer exists. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban affirmative action, Missouri, like many other universities, dropped scholarships that until this year had been reserved for students from underrepresented racial groups, even though the Court’s ruling didn’t mention financial aid.

Students say the money allowed them to attend top colleges that otherwise would have been financially out of reach, putting them on a path to the middle class. The scholarships often included mentorship programs, which helped them succeed. The financial support freed them to focus on their studies without working too many hours. And – crucially – it helped them graduate without loads of debt.

Missouri’s interpretation – that the Supreme Court’s ruling applied to financial aid as well as admissions – swept through a swath of states last year. Colleges have canceled race-conscious scholarships worth at least $60 million, according to data from public universities; the total is likely significantly higher.

In some states, elected officials ordered institutions to change the scholarships in favor of ones that didn’t consider race. In others, universities preemptively made the change, fearing lawsuits from groups eager to test the Supreme Court’s willingness to prohibit the consideration of race not only in admissions but in financial aid as well.

Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

But a survey of the country’s 50 flagship public universities – whose stated missions are to provide high-quality, affordable education to the residents of their home states – shows that not all have responded the same way. While at least 13 have changed or eliminated scholarships that took race into account, another 22 have kept them intact, according to spokespeople and scholarships listed on university websites. ​​The University of Wisconsin-Madison would only say that its scholarships were “under review.”

The remaining 14 flagships either never had race-conscious scholarships or use what’s known as a “pool and match” system that honors donors’ requests for race-specific awards without creating barriers to any student who applies. 

The University of Iowa changed the Advantage Iowa Award, which last year provided $9.4 million to more than 1,500 high-performing students from underrepresented racial groups, to a purely need-based scholarship. Administrators said they made the changes, “based on the principles articulated by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The 22 schools that kept the scholarships interpreted the ruling differently.

Pennsylvania State University, for example, decided that because the Court’s ruling “focused solely on admissions, it did not impact Penn State’s scholarship awarding,” the university’s assistant vice president for strategic affairs, Lisa M. Powers, said in an email. 

Some experts worry that slashing the scholarships could increase educational disparity, discouraging more Black and Hispanic students from going to college. About 28 percent of Black adults and 21 percent of Hispanic adults have college degrees compared with 42 percent of white adults, the U.S. Census reports.

The changes could also deepen financial inequalities. In 2020, Black college graduates on average owed $58,400 in loan debt four years after graduating – 30 percent more than white graduates, according to the Education Department. Meanwhile, Black college graduates aged 25 to 34 on average earned about 25 percent less than their white counterparts in 2022, making loan repayment more difficult.

Last fall, just 4 percent of incoming freshmen at the University of Missouri, where Elijah Brown went, were Black, down from 8 percent five years earlier. Despite ending two scholarships previously designated for underrepresented students, which were awarded to more than 350 students each year, the university expects an increase in the number of underrepresented students enrolling in the fall, according to Christian Basi who was a spokesperson there until earlier this month. Students already enrolled and receiving the scholarships will not lose them, he said.

Brown says relying on merit for scholarships without considering race will hurt Black students. SAT scores – widely considered a measure of academic merit – for Black, Hispanic and Native American students lag significantly behind white and Asian scores. 

“People who say, ‘Oh, our scholarships are all available for everyone now.’ No, they’re not,” Brown said. “They’re still going to go to mostly white people who have already been set up, generations back, for college, whose parents are college grads, and who didn’t only apply to one school because they didn’t know any better.”

Related: How could Project 2025 change education?

After he graduated, Brown worked for the University of Missouri as an admissions representative assigned to recruit students from racial and ethnic groups underrepresented there. He drove to high schools in Kansas City and St. Louis to convince Black and Hispanic students to choose his alma mater over other options, such as colleges closer to home or historically Black colleges or universities.

At meetings with students, Brown told them what he had gained by going to the University of Missouri — from the organizations he joined to the guest speakers he got to hear to the classes he took. He told them about the Brooks scholarship, saying that if they worked hard, they could have the same opportunities he had. 

“I was telling them about my experience,” he recalled, “and their eyes would light up, and they’d get so excited, like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s possible.’”

When he heard about the university’s decision to cancel the Brooks scholarship, he was angry.

“I talked to these freshman and sophomore students, and it’s like I lied to them,” Brown said. “They will never be able to get that opportunity at Mizzou. It makes me sick to my stomach that so many of these kids will not get that experience.”

Eyram Gbeddy doesn’t remember any college representatives visiting his Pennsylvania high school during the Covid-laden winter of his senior year, in 2020-2021, but he did get a recruitment email with an offer he thought couldn’t be real.

The University of Alabama wanted to give him a full ride. He visited the campus and fell in love with it. His mom didn’t pressure him, but she was grateful for his decision.

“She told me she was praying that I would go to Alabama because it would be so helpful to the whole family,” he said, freeing up financial resources for his two brothers’ educations.

Alabama’s National Recognition scholarship, which was earmarked for high-performing Black, Latino, Indigenous and rural students, was discontinued starting with students entering this fall. Gbeddy, who is Black, said it had allowed him to concentrate solely on his studies, and he graduated this past spring – in just three years. He will enter Georgetown University law school in the fall, which he said would have been unthinkable if he had been carrying thousands of dollars in undergraduate loan debt (median federal student debt for all graduates of Alabama is close to $23,000).

“When I sit here and I think that there are students who are just like me – who are qualified, who are smart, who would make absolutely wonderful additions to the Alabama community – who aren’t even going to be able to consider Alabama,” said Gbeddy, who is 21 years old. “It’s just heartbreaking to me.”

Just a few years ago, the University of Alabama was touting the Recognition Scholarship and its positive impact on the campus’s racial diversity. 

Related: How did students pitch themselves to colleges after last year’s affirmative action ruling?

Black students made up 10 percent of freshmen at Alabama in 2022, while 32 percent of public high school graduates in the state were Black, but that gap has decreased over the past five years.

Gbeddy predicts ending the National Recognition scholarship will reverse that trend.

“When you lose these scholarships that are targeted at Black Americans,” he said, “at people from rural areas, people of Latino ancestry, you lose such a strong recruiting tool for a university that desperately needs it.”

The University of Alabama did not respond to questions about why they canceled the scholarship.

“[T]he University will continue to offer competitive scholarship opportunities to its students in a manner that complies with federal and state law,” the university’s associate director of communications, Alex House, said in an email. 

Kimberly West-Faulcon, a professor of law and the James P. Bradley chair in constitutional law at Loyola Law School in California,said decisions to end the race-conscious scholarships can boil down to weighing the possibility of lawsuits against an institution’s commitment to racial inclusion.

“Institutions are making decisions to not defend these kinds of policies,” but to change them, said West-Faulcon. “Why are they changing their policies, instead of going to court and defending them?”

Last year’s Supreme Court admissions decision has indeed prompted a flurry of lawsuits against race-conscious scholarships and a wave of complaints to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights by groups like the Equal Protection Project. That group, which sees the scholarships as discriminatory, says it has already succeeded in getting more than a dozen scholarship programs canceled or altered.

Indiana’s flagship was EPP’s most recent target, with a complaint filed in July against 19 private bequests that consider race. For example, one scholarship indicates a preference for an underrepresented minority student with financial need majoring in business and another for an African American law student who has at least one dependent.

“The source of funding does not matter,” William Jacobson, a Cornell Law School professor who leads the Equal Protection Project, said in an email. “The scholarships are promoted by Indiana University to its students, and IU handles the application process through its scholarship portal. As such, it needs to adhere to relevant law governing educational practices.”

A group of white students even filed a class action lawsuit against the University of Oklahoma for its institutional aid program — which doesn’t take race into account. The suit claims that Black students have been receiving financial aid disproportionately.

Related: OPINION: Following the Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action, we must find new remedies to promote educational equity

Still, even with the legal uncertainties, some universities are holding the line. 

After consulting with legal counsel, the University of New Mexico decided to keep its National Recognition scholarship, since the Supreme Court didn’t mention financial aid and because the criteria for the National Recognition scholarship in particular are set by the College Board.

Last year, 149 Indigenous, Black and Hispanic high-performing students received these selective scholarships at the University of New Mexico, each worth about $15,000 per year. The graduation rate for students who receive those scholarships and the university’s other top merit-based scholarships ranges between 80 percent and 95 percent, the university said, compared with 52 percent for all students.

For Diego Ruiz, the scholarship, which is enough to cover tuition, fees, dorm costs and books, has been life-changing. 

“I can go to school and graduate and not have any debt,” said Ruiz, who was salutatorian of his Albuquerque high school and is entering his second year at the University of New Mexico. “This is all I wanted. This is all my parents wanted.”

Ruiz had considered going out of state for college, but the scholarship kept him in New Mexico. His mom’s family has lived in the state for many generations, mostly in rural areas, and his dad’s parents emigrated from a small town in Mexico. He is studying public health and wants to find ways to improve access to health care, especially in the rural areas of New Mexico.

He plans to go to graduate school in a medical field, which he says will be easier since he won’t have debt after college (this semester he’ll be working 20 hours a week on campus).

“I’m just really interested in trying to give back to the community that raised me,” said Ruiz, who is 19. “I’m super interested in battling the disparities that we have in New Mexico.”

Brown, the Missouri grad, just finished his first year at the University of Virginia School of Law. This summer, he worked at a top law firm and earned more than his mom does in an entire year.

In May, he took his entire family to a soccer game in St. Louis. He bought them jerseys. He gave them his credit card so they could buy whatever they wanted from the concession stand. “It was the first time in my life I’ve ever seen my mom and my stepdad so stress-free,” Brown said. 

“My mom loves me so much… I’m just so happy I can give back to her,” he said, fighting back tears. 

“I feel so blessed, because this is a life I could never have dreamed of growing up,” he said. “I’m just so grateful for my education.”

This story about scholarships based on race was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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CHICAGO — At this week’s Democratic National Convention, I spoke to left-leaning students about their biggest concerns with higher education: high tuition costs and access. The conversations were a departure from what young conservatives told me was their top issue at last month’s Republican National Convention: free speech. 

That said, amid nationwide crackdowns on campus protest, some of the young Democrats I spoke with shared sentiments similar to their Republican counterparts. They said they were worried about preserving academic freedom and a space for mutual understanding and respect on campuses nationwide.

I asked both groups of students whether they believe education institutions nationwide are fulfilling their purpose in society, and about the role of diversity in college curriculum. While conservative students told me DEI initiatives blocked equal opportunity in the classroom and the workforce, liberal ones emphasized opportunity gaps in marginalized communities. 

What follows are some of my questions and their replies. Interviews have been edited for clarity.

Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

How did you first get into politics?

“My family owns a small farm in Iowa, that’s where my grandparents are from. My family have been Democrats since the New Deal and since Roosevelt brought electricity and plumbing to my great grandparents’ home … As part of that, it’s our job to make sure those same policies and politics of caring for other people is brought to the 21st century.” — Michael Clausen, a rising senior at Loyola University Chicago

“I have voted for the Democratic Party in general. I voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and I voted for Democrats in the midterms. But I vote for them because I dislike the Republicans more, is really how I feel about it. Especially being in Ohio, the policies the Republicans are pushing. My access to HRTs [hormone replacement therapies] has been under threat multiple times last year, so I mostly vote for the Democrats to kick out the Republicans.” — Sean Bridge, a rising senior at the University of Cincinnati

When deciding which college to attend, what were your criteria? Did your political beliefs play a role?

“The main reason I chose Florida is because of Bright Futures, a program where if you make over a certain SAT score and have a certain GPA, you get a completely free, full ride to any [in-state] public university. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford the private schools I got into out of state. I wanted to get out of Florida, but the tuition out of state is astronomical and the financial aid is nonexistent.” — Morgan Vanderlaan, a sophomore at the University of Florida in Gainesville

“The reason I didn’t end up applying to Notre Dame or Vanderbilt was because I saw the majority of their students were conservative. I grew up in a high school that was mostly conservative, and I’d have enough of that. I didn’t want to go into a place where I wouldn’t find people like myself.” — Alyssa Manthi, a rising junior at the University of Chicago

What is the purpose of an American higher education? Are institutions achieving that purpose right now?

“Our purpose as people in higher education is to teach people what we learn and pass that down to the general public … because not everyone can afford to go to higher education … But the education field is not really geared for you to say ‘Hey, I learned a lot, now it’s time to teach my community.’ That’s not really what they’re pushing for. They’re pushing for ‘Hey, you learned all this information, now it’s time to get a job. Now it’s time to get some money.’” — Arnold Brown, a third-year student at DePaul University’s College of Law in Chicago

“The pursuit of knowledge is always the purpose of higher education, but there’s also trying to diversify the elite of a society and make leaders that are more responsive to everybody. We have to look beyond institutions in the Ivies or in the top elites because that’s only really about 6 percent or less of the student population. There are people from state schools, from schools in the South and places you’re not really looking that have people with skills. If you’re trying to diversify the elite and trying to make the leading spaces of America look like America, you can’t go to the same 20 schools.” — Sandra Ukah, a sophomore at the University of Florida in Gainesville

“College is so important to learn how to be civically engaged, and I think a lot of colleges need to have a greater focus on this. What you don’t want happening is for people in the elite to go to these colleges and use those resources just to contribute to their own personal wealth and gain.” — Meghana Halbe, a rising junior at the University of Chicago

Where is your college failing?

“For many students, college has become unaffordable. More and more students are working two, three jobs in order to put themselves through college and taking on tons of debt. I know so many people at my own university who had to drop out because of the financial burden that university was putting on them, and I go to a public school in Ohio.” — Sean Bridge

“The cost is such a huge factor, but it goes beyond cost. It’s more of an issue of access … [College admissions] are so competitive, you can’t just have good grades, you can’t just have good test scores. You need a fantastic essay and a fantastic list of extracurriculars. It makes it so hard for people who grow up in disadvantaged communities where they don’t have access to the same sorts of extracurriculars, after-school programs, the same sorts of pre-college support that are found in richer communities.” — Michael Clausen

“In Georgia, our biggest issue is that we don’t get enough funding to our public HBCUs. They have been historically underfunded. I’ve been to these campuses and they need every bit of that funding. You can’t teach kids in a run down classroom … If students can’t get better education facilities, how can we expect them to get a higher education?” — Blake Robinson, Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Class of 2024

“At my school I feel like we often only care about outward appearances. Fordham overaccepts students, but there are so many students that are pushed out of housing, or forced to live in quads or we don’t have space for. We just re-did a cafeteria … while my campus at the Lincoln Center has problems with air conditioning, we’ve had mold and the answer is ‘We’re so sorry, we can’t fix that for you.’” — Sigalit Shure, a rising junior at Fordham University

“The protest for the ceasefire in Gaza. UChicago believes in the freedom of speech so they definitely gave some room to protest, but they shut it down because of institutional neutrality, which I definitely want to question in some ways. UChicago continues to face issues with what they mean by freedom of speech and how that can look on college campuses.” — Meghana Halbe

What is the value of being exposed to a diverse set of curriculum?

“[After college] people are going to encounter so many different communities, different perspectives and different experiences, and they need to be prepared for that. The people trying to ban diversity, ban women’s and gender studies, they’re trying to say that those things don’t matter and our movements don’t matter but they do. They are a representation of our history. We’re not going to let them be taken away.” — Victoria Hinckley, a University of South Florida Tampa student who said she doesn’t identify with either party and was expelled this spring for her involvement in the encampment protests

“A lot of the times the classes I’m taking are being taught through rose-colored glasses because they’re just not teaching anything beyond the sphere of America … and they’re only teaching the good things in America and not the bad things. And if history is not taught in its complete state, then it will be repeated. If we do not fix the issue right now, it’s going to get out of control and a degree from Florida or the South will not be on par with institutions that value DEI and DEI practices.” — Morgan Vanderlaan

“In a peak higher education environment, you want the free exchange of ideas, that’s what a college is supposed to be about. With diversity in a college, you have that. I have been in spaces where the higher education atmosphere is not diverse, and in ones where it is so diverse it’s insane to me. In those diverse areas, I feel more educated.” — Blake Robinson

Can you have productive conversations with people who have different beliefs on your campus? Have your experiences in college challenged your own beliefs?

“The greatest challenges to my beliefs have been as a result of the club I started, it’s a bipartisan club where we meet with conservatives on campus who are a minority. … Ultimately it’s all about trying to understand what other people think, why they think what they think. Most people are rational. If you try to understand them and leverage their views you can always have a bit more productive conversation.” — Angel Mosqueda, a rising senior at Elmhurst University in Chicago

“There are a couple of outspoken conservatives on campus, I haven’t had the best conversations with them. I think a lot of the time there’s a breakdown in what we believe to be fact because we use very different sources and sometimes they misconstrue data.” — Emilie Tueting, a rising junior at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois

“I’ve actually been able to have a lot of productive conversations … I was able to interact with [conservatives] on a person to person level, that did a good job of taking me out of the very reactionary and polarized identity I’d come to have. With social media, it’s very easy to get siloed into one group.” — Alyssa Manthi

“[I was challenged] on the issue of the genocide happening in Gaza. At first I was very wary to label it as anything. Just from my background, growing up in Jewish youth group, there’s an agenda that’s being pushed on you. … When I finally started talking to people outside of my bubble, who had different perspectives, I realized so much of what I grew up with is propaganda. It opened up my eyes to this new world.” — Sigalit Shure

“Personally, I have been challenged, but I’m very firm in what I believe. As a minority, as a Black man, I know what I want for the future of the country and I know the policies I personally would like to push. I’ve had conversations with Republicans pretty much opposite of me. With what they’re saying, it’s really important to listen and understand where other people are coming from, but my personal standpoint is not really going to change because of my background, who I represent and who I want to represent.” — Arnold Brown

This story about the Democratic National Convention was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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MILWAUKEE — As Republican lawmakers target college diversity efforts and Democrats bemoan high tuition costs and advocate for student loan forgiveness, higher education has become increasingly politicized. These issues matter to young voters, which makes their opinions about them important to both parties. 

I went to the Republican National Convention last week on a mission to talk to students and young voters about how their experiences in higher education have shaped their political beliefs, and vice versa. 

I asked student attendees about the political climate on their campuses, the role of diversity in their curriculum and where higher education is falling short. At the heart of it all, I especially wanted to know what they saw as the purpose of an American higher education. 

Conservative students told me free speech was a top campus issue for them. Some said they struggled to have productive conversations with peers who held different viewpoints, and that they became bolder in their political views because of that. Yet several offered ideas for increasing unity on campus and said they believe it’s still possible.

What follows are some of my questions and their replies. (Interviews have been edited for clarity.) 

How did you first get into politics? 

“My mom is a single mother. She raised me and my sister and taught us a lot of the conservative ideals, like working for yourself, making money, not taking government handouts, and she’s been my inspiration to join the conservative Republican movement.” — Alexandra Leung, a rising junior at Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri

“I came from a pretty conservative family but didn’t develop an interest until 2020. I feel like there was a very big social agenda push that I could not oppose — I didn’t disagree with all of that, but it felt really hard to know that I was living in a system that was really vilifying you if you were against widespread social change.” — Benjamin Heinz, a rising sophomore at Illinois Wesleyan University in Bloomington, Illinois

When deciding what college to attend, what were your criteria? Did your political beliefs play a role? 

“I toured a lot of schools where they weren’t open to new ideas about culture. There are a lot of places where the ideas the students have are so dang strong, if you don’t have them, they won’t take you. I didn’t want to go to a place that would reject me for who I am.” — Benjamin Heinz

“I thought about how tolerable the college would be to all students. I wanted my school to match my religious beliefs, and picked a Jesuit Catholic Institution.” — Alexandra Leung 

“I like putting myself in uncomfortable positions. I would rather go into places where people disagree with me than agree with me — not because I want to rile them up, but because I want to win them over, not in terms of convince them that my ideas are right but win them over in terms of becoming friends, working with each other, becoming unlikely allies and unlikely collaborators.” — Benjamin Backer, University of Washington, Class of 2020 

Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

What is the purpose of an American higher education? 

“One of the primary roles of higher education is to prepare students for their careers. It should prepare students to do well in society and to perform well as citizens – both things that higher education has almost become misguided in, with the current course offerings and directions institutions are currently going.” — Aaron Carlson, Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, Class of 2024

“[College is] the one place that you should feel free to have open debate and discussion. If not, what is the point of college? What is the point of going to higher education, if you can’t just try to decipher the truth for yourself? Universities have to do a good job of instilling that value in students from the second they set foot on the campus.” — Christopher Phillips, a rising senior at the University of Chicago 

“A university should care about ideas, not shelter people from ideas. I think that the quickest way to educate people is to expose them to ideas that are different to them.” — Benjamin Heinz

Where is your college education failing?

“We should not know what political party your professor identifies with. It’s really poisoning the American higher education system.” — Alexandra Leung 

“A lot of higher education institutions are left-leaning in terms of their faculty and staff. That impacts what students are thinking in terms of their beliefs and [what they] go on to believe later in life, as well, and contributes to narrow-mindedness.” — Aaron Carlson 

“My peers don’t have a lot of impact on my career. But my professors do. I plan on going to grad school. Well, how am I going to get in to grad school? My professors better like me. If there are people that are my physics professors that are significantly further to the left than I am, I do feel concerned about what happens if I do start to get more vocal with my advocacy.” — Benjamin Heinz 

“Especially in the humanities, you have professors who are not necessarily the arbiters of truth but trying to facilitate discussion and teach people how to think, not necessarily what to think. That’s a challenging line to walk for professors. It’s OK for them to share their political beliefs, but they better make darn well sure they’re giving students from all points of the spectrum equal opportunity to pursue intellectual curiosities.” — Christopher Phillips

Can you have productive conversations with people who have different beliefs on your campus? 

“I never have productive conversations with anybody. It’s hard to even have a Republican organization on our campus because we’re so silenced.” — Alexandra Leung

“College was an eye-opener for me, having students who have different ideas but aren’t willing to be challenged on those ideas.” — Aaron Carlson

“I have talked to people who I know are definitely liberal and I have come away learning that with young people, we have a lot of shared principles, a lot of shared perspectives on things that have been happening in the 2020s. Things like corporate power, mainstream media censorship and the consolidation of media narratives. Those are things young people on the left agree with me on. We need more open discourse. People who are actually engaged in the political process on the left are more likely to subscribe to open discourse.” — Christopher Phillips 

Related: Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college 

“I moved to a very liberal place in Seattle [for college]. Most liberals I went to school with were so excited that a conservative was trying to lead on the environment, because outside of the confines of partisan politics, most people realize that you can’t, even if you’re a liberal, you can’t do this without conservatives. It really opened my mind to the idea that Americans do want the environment to be nonpartisan.” — Benjamin Backer, now an activist pushing for environmental progress 

Have your experiences in college challenged your own beliefs?

“The topic of racial justice was something I had kind of dismissed. I thought America was fine; I thought our race system was fine because I had never experienced seeing racism firsthand. But I hadn’t realized the generational issue. I still think America, nine times out of 10 or more, gives people the best chance to succeed here, of all races and backgrounds, but because of generational issues and making entire groups of people start at a harder place in society, it makes it more difficult for people to succeed.” — Benjamin Backer 

“I’ve gotten more used to what the other side thinks, I’ve talked to a lot of people who think different things. I’ve gained a lot more respect for people who disagree with me.” — Benjamin Heinz

“I was more emboldened in what I believe. I didn’t go into college planning to be an activist, as far as advancing American values. It turned out that I was able to use my role as a student to be a voice for that on campus, something I didn’t see myself doing coming into college, but then through college I had the opportunity to.”  — Aaron Carlson

“I became more Republican in college even though I go to a more liberal institution. I think it’s because when I tried to have mature conversations with people who may not agree with me, it just never went well. There was no respect for me even though I gave full respect to them. I think that showed me that I need to fight harder for what I believe in.” — Alexandra Leung  

Has DEI been a part of your curriculum or experience in college? Has it been beneficial to your education, or hindered your learning? 

“DEI courses are required in my college curriculum and they are adding critical race theory into our education as a mandatory required class. I can see the idea behind them but the way that they’re implemented is more dividing than what they imagined.” — Alexandra Leung 

“DEI prevents the most competent, best people being picked for positions. As much as I want to see people as part of a team brought in from every different perspective, I don’t want it to take positions from people who work hard to earn those positions. I saw a little bit of that at my institution. We should judge people on their character, not by how they look.” — Aaron Carlson 

Do you see a path forward? 

“Young people do crave a degree of intellectual discourse and open debate. I think they do more so than previous generations. You have this caricature of Gen Z people as being intolerant, as not wanting to hear from the other side. While it’s true that the country as a whole is more polarized … you will find people are a lot more willing to speak than this caricature might portray.” — Christopher Phillips 

“A big thing colleges could do, they could hire a lot more conservative professors. And admit a lot more conservative students. We need to start broadening our horizons of what speech we allow on campuses.” — Benjamin Heinz 

“[On] an issue like the environment, and race and gender issues, conservatives need to show people that they also care about the issues [that those who oppose them] care about. When I told liberals on campus — who hated conservatives — that I was working on environmental issues, almost all their walls came down. They realized, ‘Oh, this person isn’t evil. They have different beliefs than me but the same end goal; they care.” — Benjamin Backer

In August, I plan to talk to young attendees in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention — which will be especially interesting now that President Biden has withdrawn from the 2024 race. 

This story about the Republican National Convention was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

The post What young Republicans have to say about higher education appeared first on The Hechinger Report.