About Those Scholarships . . .

Let’s be clear: The federal government is not in the business of handing out race-exclusive scholarships. There are not thousands of scholarship winners like the Huxtable kids on “The Cosby Show”--affluent and without any need of help, but getting it anyway just because they are black. That’s fantasy.

Knowing that, one has to wonder why the Department of Education’s brouhaha over minority scholarships had to occur. Michael L. Williams, the department official who created the furor by announcing a broad solution to a problem that didn’t exist, had to retrench and announce Tuesday that scholarships for minority students are still OK. In reviewing a plan by Fiesta Bowl officials to offer minority scholarships, Williams had said last week that race-exclusive scholarships are illegal. That opinion reversed years of rulings that said that scholarships reserved for minorities caused no problems as long as the minority scholarships were part of an overall program that allowed students of all races to apply for assistance. Further, the opinion wrongly implied that race-exclusive scholarships, public or private, were common; in fact, most scholarships are awarded based on a variety of factors, financial need being foremost.

Williams abandoned his original ruling after President Bush, long a personal supporter of minority scholarships, stepped in. A noisy clique of the Republican right wanted to make the scholarship issue another test of Bush’s conservative credentials; the President properly refused to succumb to the pressure. It would’ve been easy to; there are those who stand ready to turn affirmative action into race-baiting.

Some higher education officials complain that Williams’ about-face was still fuzzy. But the most important message to come from the Administration is that it will not disrupt a nationally accepted financial aid process--one that has opened the doors of higher education to a segment of society that would otherwise be shut out.

Or as Lamar Alexander, the new secretary of education put it: “. . . when you’re wandering through constitutional thickets . . . a warm heart and a little common sense sometimes are helpful.”