January 2012
Lowering admission standards hurts those it is supposed to help.
IF RACIAL preferences in higher education were
good for racial minorities in higher education, we surely would have seen
definitive evidence of it by now.
Instead, a widening shelf of empirical research
suggests that the opposite is true – that affirmative action in academia is not
advancing minority achievement but impeding it.
In the University of California v. Bakke
case more than 30 years ago, the Supreme Court gave colleges and universities a
green light to admit applicants on the basis of race if their aim was to secure
the blessings of a “diverse’’ student body. Many educators and policymakers
concluded that lowering academic standards for black and Hispanic candidates –
though awkward and controversial – was a worthwhile tradeoff, since it would
increase the number of minorities with advanced degrees and prestigious careers.
Build racial diversity into each freshman class, it was widely believed, and
more diversity among graduate students, academics, and professionals would
ensue.
But it hasn’t worked that way.
In a report published last year, the US
Commission on Civil Rights explored why black and Hispanic students who enroll
in college intending to major in science, technology, engineering, or math – the
so-called STEM fields – are far less likely than other students to follow
through on those intentions.
The problem isn’t lack of interest; incoming
minority freshmen start out more attracted than their white counterparts
to a science or engineering degree. Nor is racism to blame; the commission found
that discrimination “was not a substantial factor’’ in the rate at which black
and Hispanic students give up on science and math majors. Yet the bottom line is
disheartening: Even after decades of affirmative action, blacks (relative to
their share of the overall population) are only 36 percent as likely as whites
to earn a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline — and only 15 percent as
likely to make it all the way to a science-related PhD.
And it’s not only in science and math that the
supposed beneficiaries of racial preferences fall behind. According to UCLA
economist and law professor Richard Sander, more than 51 percent of black
students at elite law schools finish their first year in the bottom 10 percent
of their class. Black students fail or drop out of law school at more than twice
the rate of white students (19.3 percent vs. 8.2 percent). And while 78 percent
of white law school graduates pass the bar exam on their first attempt, only 45
percent of black graduates do.
The inability of racial preferences to vault
more minority students into high scholastic achievement shouldn’t come as a
surprise. When an elite institution relaxes its usual standards to admit more
blacks and Hispanics, it all but guarantees that those academically weaker
students will have trouble keeping up with their better-prepared white and Asian
classmates. Minorities who might have flourished in a science or engineering
program at a middle-tier state college are apt to find themselves overwhelmed by
the pace at which genetics or computer architecture is taught in the Ivy League.
Many decide to switch to an easier major. Others drop out altogether.
This is the cruelty of affirmative-action
“mismatch’’ — the steering of minorities to schools where they are less likely
to succeed. Absent such preferences, black and Hispanic students would attend
universities for which their credentials better suited them. Many would earn
higher grades or degrees in more prestigious and challenging fields; more would
go on to graduate school and careers in academia or the professions. If it
weren’t for race-based admissions policies, in other words, underrepresented
minorities wouldn’t be so underrepresented.
Racial preferences, says University of San Diego
law professor Gail Heriot, have backfired. She is one of three members of the
civil rights commission urging the Supreme Court to recognize the damage it
unleashed when it allowed racial “diversity’’ to trump the Fourteenth
Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws. Skin color was always an
ill-contrived proxy for diversity of experiences and beliefs. What more than 30
years of race-based admissions have made clear, Heriot argues, is that “even
with the best motives in the world, race-based admissions do far more harm than
good.’’ Especially to the students they are supposed to help.
Globe Columnis, Dec. 23, 2011
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