Page:Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 579 U.S. (2016) (slip opinion).pdf/15

12 9) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also Grutter, 539 U. S., at 328. As this Court has said, enrolling a diverse student body “promotes cross-racial understand­ing, helps to break down racial stereotypes, and enables students to better understand persons of different races.” Id., at 330 (internal quotation marks and alteration omit­ted). Equally important, “student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society.” Ibid. (inter­nal quotation marks omitted).

Increasing minority enrollment may be instrumental to these educational benefits, but it is not, as petitioner seems to suggest, a goal that can or should be reduced to pure numbers. Indeed, since the University is prohibited from seeking a particular number or quota of minority students, it cannot be faulted for failing to specify the particular level of minority enrollment at which it believes the educational benefits of diversity will be obtained.

On the other hand, asserting an interest in the educa­tional benefits of diversity writ large is insufficient. A university’s goals cannot be elusory or amorphous—they must be sufficiently measurable to permit judicial scrutiny of the policies adopted to reach them.

The record reveals that in first setting forth its current admissions policy, the University articulated concrete and precise goals. On the first page of its 2004 “Proposal to Consider Race and Ethnicity in Admissions,” the University identifies the educational values it seeks to realize through its admissions process: the destruction of stereo­types, the “ ‘promot[ion of] cross-racial understanding,’ ” the preparation of a student body “ ‘for an increasingly diverse workforce and society,’ ” and the “ ‘cultivat[ion of] a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry.’ ” Supp. App. 1a; see also id., at 69a; App. 314a–315a (depo­sition of N. Bruce Walker (Walker Dep.)), 478a–479a (Walker Aff. ¶4) (setting forth the same goals). Later in