I am not up to speed on the Affirmative Action cases before the Supreme Court but it seems like there is a near-consensus that the Court is poised to gut Affirmative Action in college admissions with implications for the policy in general. What the Court does is beyond the control of the Republican Party, but upending Affirmative Action will do real and lasting damage to the GOP’s rebranding efforts and cost them even more support with women and racial minorities.
One of the frustrating things about college admissions is that admission boards consider all kinds of things beside the raw data involved in grades and test scores. People receive preferential treatment if their parents are alumni or if they come from geographical areas with few applicants. They may be rewarded because they play a certain musical instrument or have extracurricular activities that fill a need with some school program. I think it’s a legitimate argument that students learn a lot from having contact from people from different regions of the country or different religious backgrounds, or from foreign countries. This is learning that occurs mainly outside of the classroom, but it’s an important part of the learning process. One could even make an argument that Yale classmates of George W. Bush benefitted by having contact with the grandson of a U.S. Senator and son of a congressman, despite the fact that Bush never would have been accepted based on objective metrics. It’s a weak argument, perhaps, but making powerful connections is one of the advantages of going to an elite university.
Affirmative Action is intended, in part, to compensate for the fact that rich and powerful people already get preferential treatment in college admissions. But people like George W. Bush are supposed to benefit, too, because meeting people from other walks of life broadens perspectives and deepens knowledge. There are many competing considerations that the admissions officers rightly take into account when they go about building a class of students, and gender and racial diversity is as legitimate as any of the others.
the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action are White Women – period.
unless your conversation on Affirmative Action begins with this….you’re blowing smoke.
true, and I think they’ll notice when the Republican-appointed justices rule against them.
True and indirectly White men benefit as well. It’s not uncommon for a White couple to start a business and make the wife the president so that they can claim to be MDBE minority disadvantaged business enterprise owned and thus eligible for federal set aside contracts.
Colleges are moving away from affirmative action, and moving toward need-based support and admission. You cannot quite replace affirmative action, but you can go some of that way. Plus there are poor white, poor black, poor hispanic, poor asian persons and they can all increase diversity of class and ethnic origin.
If you look at the student body at the University of Washington, it looks to me like the best way to get to college is by being smarter than everyone else applying. UW certainly doesn’t need affirmative action to help it be diverse or have gender equality.
If it happens as you say, the appropriate response will be to attack legacy admissions.
What admission officers increasing have to take into account is revenue generation from students. Legacy admissions pay their freight, a profit, and continuing alumni support in hopes of legacy admissions for the next generation.
It is class diversity that is going to suffer. Minorities and women who have substantial resources to pay for college will likely not be denied admission. But there are fewer institutions that offer the opportunities for kids of those not in well-paid professions.
Race-based affirmative action alone isn’t a defensible approach. Liberals could achieve the diversity we want in college admissions and remove the political liability that affirmative action gives us among a large part of the American population if we adopt another approach: Admit a minimum proportion of applicants who are of the first generation in their families (from either parent) to attend up to that kind of college. E.g. the first to go to at least junior college, or a 4-year program, or an elite institution. It’s common sense that Bill Clinton deserved affirmative action more than Obamas’ daughters, who can get in with other qualifications, do now. Liberals should get behind a policy that accommodates that. It’s a better policy and would remove a major criticism of liberalism.
It’s kind of hard to prove a negative. How do I prove that my parents never went to any junior college?
That’s a good point. A lot of answers to a college application are based on the honor system. But I stick to the crux of my argument.
Why not strict merit? Aren’t you also assuming tacitly that on strict merit the colleges would be white male? Doesn’t that mean that that you believe in the inferiority of women and minorities?
Strict merit would be Asian male, actually.
And in what universe is anything determined strictly by merit?
the world of Merit where George W. Bush couldn’t get into UT-Austin, but could get into Yale.
That world of ‘Merit’
Oh you mean like the world of Lil’ Luke, Abby Huntsman, and Chelsea Clinton? I think I got it.
No, not that one. That’s what we have now with affirmative action, isn’t it? Real merit like you have to pass tests.
OK. Whoever makes the cut. I was admitted to college and graduate school strictly on merit. No rich daddy. No money. No political pull or old boy network. I passed my PhD qualifying exam the same way and I never heard of anyone at my grad school who didn’t. And schools are hotbeds of rumor.
Actually, I’m assuming that based on strict merit, applicants like Obamas’ children will be accepted and many applicants, including white males wouldn’t. I’m suggesting that many of those rejected applicants should get extra consideration, namely that being among the first generation to attend college is a more accurate and fair proxy for obstacles to college than race alone.
I don’t care about the skin color or sex of the person that beats me as long as he/she scored higher without “bonus points”. If we want diversity, and I agree it’s a good goal then set the test scores at a reasonable minimum and select the seats by lot from those that met the minimum requirements. Better yet, make sure there are enough seats for all qualified applicants. I read years ago about ghetto kids that were admitted to M.I.T. on a special program based on
racediversity and felt they were suckered when they couldn’t graduate because their High School just didn’t prepare them for M.I.T. pressure and competition even with remedial courses and special tutoring amd mentoring. They just weren’t qualified, because their schools didn’t prepare them.I once worked with the daughter of a controversial Chicago High School principal whose big concern was getting kids graduated, not preparing them for Ivy League schools. One of the controversies was over allowing girls to bring their babies to their school. He did that because he walked into the school and found a 59% dropout rate of freshman girls. It was a rough school and he wanted those girls to get a diploma and maybe break the cycle.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think very many colleges and universities apply affirmative-action based on race alone. It’s just one of the factors taken into account. In the Supreme Court case looking at Affirmative Action at the University of Michigan, the ruling was that the admissions office placed too much emphasis on race. Nobody disputed that Michigan was also taking many other factors into consideration in their admission decisions.
I think you’re right. But if I’m not mistaken, race was considered an independent factor in allocating points to an application, which by itself could make the difference between being accepted or not. I’m suggesting that it shouldn’t be an independent factor.
I’m inclined to make an exception if it were practical to implement: extra consideration for Native Americans and African Americans from the south who are descendents of slaves. The harm that our country has inflicted on those people has been so egregious, pervasive, long-term, deliberate, and racially-based, and without reparation, that I couldn’t argue against affirmative action for them. But suggesting college admissions policies requires a lot more thought than I’ve put into it.
Hey, I want extra consideration for being the descendant of illiterate immigrants. Where do you stop with extra consideration? If you are qualified, you don’t need extra consideration. You weren’t born with a silver spoon and a millionaire daddy? Neither was I. Why should I or my kids get screwed for what some rich Southerner did 150 years ago.
Perhaps it will make people uncomfortable, but if two people have identical grades from identical schools, and one of those is white and one isn’t, the non-white is more deserving on merit because they have had to achieve this against existing institutional racism, while the white person has benefited from white privilege smoothing their path.
The problem with that way of thinking is that that is not how admissions are done. It’s not even close to how admissions are done. It sets up a false scenario where the only thing under consideration that is different about two people is their race. That doesn’t happen. You have essays and recommendations and activities and sometimes personal interviews.
If race is one of the factors that’s considered that’s fine but more emphasis should be placed on applicants that are in need or that can demonstrate that they have a disadvantage in one way or another. Just being Black does not necessarily mean disadvantaged. I take exception to that. My child does not need an intellectual handicap, she is going to succeed because she worked for it. Each student must be evaluated on their own merits. The real solution is resolving the resource disparity between urban/rural and suburban schools. Every child in public school should be entitled to have the same resources and qualified teachers.
The problem is that being a racial minority does not, in itself, mean one is disadvantaged and being white does not, in itself, mean one is advantaged. Do the children of millionaire black parents deserve affirmative action? Is some poor kid born in Appalachia to parents who don’t even have high school diplomas not deserving of a leg up?
I was from a lower-middle class background. We were not impoverished. I got beat up a lot but there were no drive-bys in our neighborhood. In our district, there were rich schools on the other side of town. They had far better teachers and way more resources. Most of our parents weren’t well educated. Most of those kids had parents who were extremely successful.
It was way easier for those kids to excel and achieve. I was the only one from my neighborhood to make it into the track one high school classes (and only by forcing my way in over the objection of administrators who said really discouraging things such as “You’re not as smart as those kids so you’re going to have to work harder.”) It was a tough road and by the end of high school I was exhausted. I got to a fairly elite university (Johns Hopkins) but, once there, stopped working hard and just got by.
Years later I returned to school and got a law degree. But it was not from a top law school. I’m a divorce attorney. My daughter just graduated from NYU law (which is a top program) and has a job lined up with one of the largest and most elite law firms in the country. She wants to do securities litigation. She took the next step and she stands on my shoulders.
Though I’m white, getting as far as I got was plenty hard. It was way easier for kids from wealthier backgrounds with more educated parents to get into better schools and many of them have gotten rich in their own right. Money begets money.
No complaints here. I’ve done well and have a great life. I never pushed my children but they’re both ambitious. But most of the kids I went to elementary school with did not do as well. Several have died early. Some of those kids were every bit as smart as me in first and second grade. Yet they didn’t stay that way. Class is a powerful force.
Class based affirmative action is something I would whole heartedly support. Race-based affirmative action works to the extent race is an indication of class and it falls down to the extent it is not.
There is no problem with that way of thinking.
The statement is constructed to illustrate that even if the only difference under consideration between two people is their race, the general concept of adding “points” for being non-white as some affirmative action methods do, is still proper.
And this is precisely why standardized tests were invented.
But standardized tests don’t do what they claim to do. They provide false objectivity, which is why standardized tests are poor predictors of academic performance or of success.
Well, you’re at least partially wrong. They do allow a specific form of equivalencing. They are, in and of themselves, insufficient. But they do allow us to compare a student with a 4.00 in Belle Valley High to a student with a 4.00 in Inner City Tech. That is a real contribution.
Well, the broadening and deepening thing sure didn’t work for Bush, did it?
But I think you’ve hit the language, Boo: “building a class” gets to the heart of the issue and short circuits the “rights” argument. Admissions is a tool to make the university better for students and the community. The stumbling block is all the dimwit, essentially undereducated admissions boards who still think it’s better for their students to mingle with the likes of Norquist, any Bush, or Lieberman than Muddy Waters or ML King or Dolores Huerta.
True, the “connections” are better, as the Bush/Norquist/Abramoff/Reid gang of thugs illustrates. But if money-grubbing “connections” are now the purpose of education, we might be better off getting rid of education.
Many people here are making the incorrect assumption that screening tests produce the best applicants.
They do not. That is because every screening test relies on past performance IN A DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT. The likelihood of a Heisman Trophy winner making it in the NFL is not 100%. Many college athletes flame out in the pros. Many high school academic stars flame out in college.
Thus, the notion that a test can predict who will do well in college is false. I am a statistician. I can say this with professional knowledge.
Let me more specifically make the statement: The notion that a SINGLE test can RELIABLY and ACCURATELY predict who will do well in college is false.
You can improve with 2 or 3 predictors. Hence GPA, SAT, essay, and extracurriculars.
Point being that a single cutpoint decision of “best at the test” is going to admit some who will not do well, and FAIL TO ADMIT MANY WHO WILL EXCEL in college.
I myself never had a date in high school, only dated a little in college, and am now happily married for 32 years. Should I have been excluded from the “marriage pool” due to my failure before grad school? No.
Same with college and grad school success. We believe that the tests determine who is qualified. They can account for about 60% of the variance, and the rest is not accounted for. People change in college, and you can’t predict how. In fact, if you could predict how they would do, what good is college? The whole point is that it should provide an experience that changes the person. And that is change for good or change for ill, cannot say a priori which.
Amen. Plus, there’s the feedback loop where the conformist values that the tests and other admission tools prize select for those dull virtues in the class makeup, which is then held up as the profile the tests are supposed to be looking for. Thing is, they’ll never measure excellence, only acceptability according to folks who wrote the “standards” in the first place.
The need for admission wrangles is a direct result of a crappy US education system that seeks to turn out nice children rather than those tiresome critical thinkers.
It’s been a while since I ran statistical analyses, but if I remember correctly, discovering a factor in a regression that accounted for 60% of the variance would be huge.
And it is huge. 60% is remarkable. I just made that up, BTW. I don’t know the exact amount.
The point was that it was not 100%. You can account for part of the variance but not all.
There is another issue as well- restriction of range.
For public colleges and universities, diversity should be measured as roughly similar to what exists in the larger population. If that means some students/applicants from some minority groups score lower on admission criteria of tests and grades, that mostly reflects that they were cheated in their education years before graduating from high school. (Well, unless one buys the IQ rot of minority inferiority. I’ve administered individual IQ tests and they do measure certain forms of intelligence to some degree — and most people are average.) And since we continue to refuse to equalize the K-12 educational experience, it’s racist not to use a quota system.
True, but should you admit someone to college who doesn’t demonstrate an ability to complete college? The extremity of that is the diploma-mill scams. But even if it’s people who have been failed by the educational system, should we encourage them to attend if they won’t have anything to show for it and debt besides?
I agree that the best way to fix that would be to improve the experience prior to college admissions, but the science IMO has shown that early-childhood (birth-3yrs) intervention is more effective than anything else so I’d rather spend the money in the child’s formative years.
Totally with you on how we should spend out money. Early.
If not for public grants and loans the private, for-profit colleges would almost disappear — a good outcome IMHO. Hell, just truth in advertising and recruiting would reduce the number. Kids aren’t informed what those programs cost and what they will have to pay before they sign up. Upfront disclosure of the program cost.
Something like half of those that start college don’t graduate. (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and Mark Zuckerberg are four that found they didn’t need a diploma although they were all capable. And I’ve known not a few college graduates that were ignorant and frankly stupid.) Why so many college enrollees? That suggests a serious education/training problem. We’re probably wasting a ton of money on the last two years of high school. Not enough vocational programs and the same is true for our community colleges that have been underfunded for decades. Add in the shrinking of PE, music, and art programs in our schools and it’s no wonder kids are bored and undereducated.
22 year-old leading the anti-affirmative action at the supreme court had shitty SAT scores. Well, “shitty” compared with UT standards.
Let’s be clear what’s really at stake in these decisions. It is not admission to get the opportunity of the experience of education. It is admission to the opportunity to get your degree ticket punched.
And that ticket is the magic talisman to get some future employer to avoid chucking your resume immediately in the trash. And that can mean thousands of dollars a year in future income.
So all the BS about “educational excellence” is just fog to cover the high prices of education. As is all the worry about “grade inflation”.
The sad fact is that only a minority of folks involved on either side of the lectern in this enterprise really give a shit about education or excellence.
The argument is over the allocation of tickets.