The Illinois House Higher Education Committee recently passed House Bill 230, despite opposition from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

The bill, which would require state public universities to admit first-time freshman applicants finishing in the top 10 percent of their class, was proposed by Chicago Democratic Representative Andre Thapedi in an effort to increase diversity in Illinois public colleges.

According to The News-Gazette, Thapedi said, “our universities are not diverse,” and that universities should seek to elevate the “best and brightest students” regardless of race.

UIUC officials opposed automatic admission and argued against these new standards, citing that each school district has their own ranking system and that the university should have more of a say on who they do and do not admit.

In the same New-Gazette article, UIUC Director of State Relations Jennifer Creasey said, “We believe that we shouldn’t put admission criteria into statute … [because] every school district does their class ranking differently.”

While schools like Eastern Illinois and UIS have black student enrollment numbers in the mid to high teens, the Urbana-Champaign campus comes in at 5.4 percent.

The last 20 years have shown a marked increase in minority student enrollment in most colleges.

Since the mid-1990s, black enrollment has more than doubled at two-year universities and community colleges. As of 2013, black students made up 16 percent of the student body at those institutions, and 14 percent at four-year universities.

A recent study from the Center for American Progress found that only 9 percent of black students enrolled in higher education attended high-ranking, state-operated research universities.

For white students, this number was 19 percent, and even higher for Asian-American students, at 31 percent. Black students were also found to be overrepresented at lower-tier state schools.

The UIUC currently ranks as the number 10 public university in the country by U.S. News and World Report and is classified as a university with very high research activity by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The school also claims to be the most diverse public university in the Big Ten.

Many top-tier universities rely on standardized testing scores to determine freshman admission, measures that researchers say disadvantage minority students. Due to highly selective admission requirements, high school counselors tend to steer minority students toward schools with less rigorous standards.

Creasey noted that UIUC currently uses multiple avenues to review admissions, including GPAs and ACT scores.

Representative Mary Flower, D-Chicago, said that UIUC’s approach allows them to “choose and pick the winners and losers” and that “there’s a group of people over here who you have been overlooking.”These highly selective admissions and rigorous academic programs likely contribute to higher rates of graduation, sometimes nearly double the rates of standard state schools.

This discrepancy in graduation rates may help explain the racial disparity in young people with bachelor’s degrees. According to the Pew Research Center in 2012, white students accounted for 69 percent of students 18-24 years old with bachelor’s degrees, while black students only comprised 9 percent.