SCOTUS: Fisher II oral arguments

[coase]

If it’s true that black students do worse than other students for the first year at some school, but (the same) black students do just as well as the other students for the rest of their undergraduate career, then it would make sense to say that first year grades reflect “growing pains” and ought not to count. I don’t think that’s an inconvenient fact, either. If it’s true, it suggests that the black students are quickly catching on to what the white students already knew about college.

The other possibility is difference in the choice of major. See “What Happens after Enrollment,” by Arcidiacono et al. Here is part of the abstract:

At the private university we analyze, the gap between white and black grade point averages falls by half between the students’ freshmen and senior year. This outcome could suggest that affirmative action policies are playing a key role to reduce racial differences. However, this convergence masks two effects. First, the variance of grades given falls across time. Hence, shrinkage in the level of the gap may not imply shrinkage in the class rank gap. Second, grading standards differ across courses in different majors. We show that controlling for these two features virtually eliminates any convergence of black/white grades.