David Wand: Race-based admissions undermine Canada’s medical and law schools

Universities are choosing to engage in racial segregation and discrimination, rather than in fairness, academic integrity, and public trust.

(Osgoode Hall Law School at York University.)

David Wand is the author of the new paper ‘Discrimination by Design?’, published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

When Canada’s medical and law schools decide who gets in, what should matter most: ability or identity? Increasingly, they are privileging race over merit, selecting students based on who they are rather than on academic competition.

Canada’s debate over race-based admissions to medical and law schools has reached a critical juncture. Public discussion has focused largely on whether these policies will reduce inequality between racial groups. Far less attention has been paid to a more fundamental question: how are these admission policies influencing admission outcomes? Until now, that question has largely gone unanswered.

My recent national study sought to change that. Requests for race-based application and admission data were sent to 18 law schools and 14 medical schools across Canada. Only six law schools and eight medical schools provided the requested information. Publicly funded institutions should not be able to shield their admissions practices from scrutiny.

Where data was available, the results were deeply troubling. First, racial segregation and discrimination are evident in medical and law school admissions. These institutions encourage, or require, applicants to identify their race. That information clearly affects outcomes, with academically stronger applicants being rejected, while weaker applicants from preferred racial minority categories are admitted. Between 5 and 10 per cent of medical and law school classes surveyed included university-designated racial-minority applicants who had lower grades and test scores than those of applicants with the top-ranked grades and LSAT or MCAT scores.

Second, applicants who fell outside designated racial-minority categories, such as those who were not visible minorities or were “non-Black, non-Indigenous,” which would include Asians, experienced the highest levels of discrimination, with few exceptions. This conclusion is based on gaps between applicants’ academic rankings and their admission results. Third, this discrimination even affected applicants within the university-designated racial-minority categories. Finally, most medical and law schools refused to release race-based application and admissions data, raising questions about university data transparency and accountability.

The implications extend far beyond campus politics. Institutional racial discrimination in medical and law school admissions that favours Indigenous, Black and/or other racial minority applicants over non-visible minority or non-Black, non-Indigenous applicants threatens fairness and meritocracy. It also weakens public trust in professions that exercise enormous public authority. Canadians expect medical and law schools to select applicants through transparent, rigorous and uniformly applied processes, not racial sorting mechanisms that prioritise race over demonstrated academic strength.

Canada’s approach contrasts sharply with other multi-racial democracies, such as Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, where race is simply not considered in medical or law school admissions. These countries show that a commitment to fairness and equity does not require sacrificing academic competition during the admissions process. Canada’s practice of formal racial categorisation as part of its admissions policy is an outlier, not a model.

So, what should be done? My report recommends clear action. First, provincial governments should prohibit the use of race as an admissions criterion for medical and law schools. Second, admissions decisions should be based on competitive academic ranking, grades, LSAT and MCAT scores applied equally to all applicants. Academic rigour must also be restored, including mandatory MCAT and prerequisite science requirements where they have been weakened or eliminated. The current admission system separates applicants by race and gives preferences to some groups but not others. Even if this is legal, it is not fair.

University medical and law schools that refuse to eliminate race from their application process should face consequences, including the immediate suspension of provincial funding to their schools. In addition, those schools that refuse to comply should be required to publish annually, on their public websites, anonymised admissions data for each of the applicant racial groups that the university continues to use for medical and law school admissions, according to the three measures of racial discrimination used in this study.

Defenders of race-based admissions often argue that such policies compensate racial minority applicants for past historical injustices. But substituting one form of racial discrimination for another simply shifts that discrimination onto others. A more serious approach would focus on early academic support, needs-based assistance and outreach that helps all students compete on merit, rather than sorting applicants by race and thereby leading to the admission of academically weaker applicants.

The choice now rests with provincial governments. They can continue to defer to universities that engage in racial segregation and discrimination, or they can act to restore fairness, academic integrity and public trust. The data already collected, and the data universities have refused to release, suggest that race-based admission policies are not only racially divisive but discriminatory in practice. It should not take court challenges to force action. Elected officials must ensure that university admissions are fair, transparent and academically sound.

David Wand is a statistics tutor and evaluation consultant with extensive experience assessing international development and foreign aid programs. He is the author of the new paper ‘Discrimination by Design?’, published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.