Because ideally diversity on campus would mean diversity in classes, Greek life, clubs, in dorms, in the dining hall. But once on campus, kids make their own choices about those things (except maybe dorm assignments which I believe colleges DO try to balance racially if they can). Diversity in academic disciplines and clubs and such can be encouraged, but ultimately colleges have little control there (except Us where students apply to one specific major and it’s a huge PITA to transfer to a different one). Students choose their classes, clubs, friends…and as long as they meet the requirements of the college in terms of grades and paying on time, there’s nothing the college can really do to change that.
But in your specific example -STEM - colleges do actually try to support people who want to be in it and might switch out. Many colleges have chapters of WIE, for example (women in engineering), so women in that field have some female role models and support. I imagine some schools have that for URMs pursuing certain fields as well.
GaMom was right that this is true for engineering and CS (and maybe Finance, at a handful of schools) but most assuredly not true for other STEM majors.
In any case people do choose majors for reasons other than average salary level after college, unimaginable as that may seem to a certain (your?) mindset. College is not vocational school to everyone and some people want to do research, or teach, or go into public service. Some people crave power of the sort that engineers do not have, perhaps in politics or international business. The “STEM-or-die” bias you have is one I simply do not share, and I think I’ve made that clear on several occasions.
It is the main reason that I keep saying I don’t see the relevance of the switch trend you keep talking about or see its relevance to AA in college admissions.
OHMom Believe it or not, kids tend to mix with kids with similar interests. If most URM are in non-STEM then there wil be little interaction with STEM students. This also occurs with academic achievement levels. Students who are at the top of the class tend to interact together and not with students at the bottom of the class.
Your idealistic version of diversity requires that URM and Whites and Asians are similarly situated but unfortunately huge admission preferences negatively affect this interaction from actually occurring.
So explain why there is a difference in switch rates depending on whether you control for high school qualifications. Because if “they just don’t like it” is what you want to run with, that would predict that even after controlling for qualifications, blacks switch at higher rates than whites and Asians. But they don’t.
fabrizio OHmom can’t explain it without acknowledging that huge racial preferences in the admission process actually harms its intended beneficiaries which is why she parrots “it’s irrelevant” repeatedly and brings up red herrings such as
“In any case people do choose majors for reasons other than average salary level after college, unimaginable as that may seem to a certain (your?) mindset. College is not vocational school to everyone and some people want to do research, or teach, or go into public service. Some people crave power of the sort that engineers do not have, perhaps in politics or international business. The “STEM-or-die” bias you have is one I simply do not share, and I think I’ve made that clear on several occasions.”
Her comments do not address our underlying concerns and issues of the huge racial preference given to many URM and as you state “obfuscate” the issue.
Exactly. She, GA2012MOM, and others can hate mismatch all they want, but they can’t come up with an alternative explanation to the facts. They won’t admit they can’t, either, which I understand.
@fabrizio Why should I explain something I don’t think is relevant? The switch thing is your thing, not mine.
@voiceofreason66 - To a point that may be true, you tend to interact with kids in your classes (but also those in your dorm, your club, your sports team -that’s a big one, your frat/sorority house, those who you see in the library at the same time maybe). Kids sometimes also sort themselves somewhat by affluence of parents too - those who can afford to go out to sushi dinners off campus in their cars or travel on weekends to ski or whatever. (Amherst actually tries to address the latter by making ski trips free for every student, rental gear and all).
I cannot remember choosing my friends in college on the basis of our majors. Or the classes we shared either. It was more about dorm/res house and non-academic interests.
Well, you asked for it: mismatch easily explains the two facts. That’s why it is, in fact, very relevant to this thread, despite your repeated protestations to the contrary. You knew this perfectly well, which is why you repeatedly claimed it was not relevant, and why you and GA2012MOM deliberately tried to obfuscate the issue by bringing up a red herring: some people are going to switch for whatever reason, so who cares?
Yeah, people switch because they find out it wasn’t what they thought it was. Or because they find they like something else more. There are many reasons at the individual level. Aggregate to the group level, and if I assume qualifications are constant, I’ve no reason to expect that the proportion of students within each group who switch should differ across groups.
And hey, what do you know? There is no difference in switch rates when you control for qualifications. You only see a difference when you don’t control for qualifications. In that case, blacks switch at higher rates compared to whites and Asians.
The most obvious explanation for this is that thanks to racial preferences, academically weaker blacks and Hispanics are being admitted. Some people of all racial classifications might switch because the courses are too difficult, but when you have relatively more academically weaker black students, more will switch because of this reason compared to whites and Asians.
Thing is, you knew this. So it’s incredibly callous of you to say “who cares?” in response to this. Who cares? I think the students who have to leave their first choice majors because they are academically weaker than their peers, not because they dislike the material or like something else more, would care. A lot. You can retort that I don’t “really” care all you want; it doesn’t matter. I’m sure these students care, and for you to say that you don’t care and that what you care more about is the school having nice photo ops, that shows how out-of-order your priorities are.
One state at a time. It says a lot that when you actually put it to a vote, even “liberal” states like California, Washington, and Michigan overwhelmingly vote against racial preferences.
@fabrizio OK, so **let’s say/b that academic mismatch is a thing that actually happens. More URMs show up at Harvard or whatever planning to major in Physics or Biology or some other STEM thing and then switch to Philosophy or English more than this happens at some school where students have lower SAT scores.
At what schools are URMs staying in STEM more, other than HBCUs which we discussed some time ago? (I exclude HBCUs here because there is the huge variable of role models and support for black students specifically, that seems to work really well, even with on-average academically weaker students than the elite schools.)
So, at what schools are URMs staying in STEM more than they are at non-HBCU elite schools?
I am genuinely curious to know what schools that are doing a better job than the elites, if “better job” is going to be defined here as “staying in a STEM major if that is the student’s intention at enrollment”.
I feel like that distinction belongs to Laguardia but I suppose it depends how you define “creative”. I turned down your school and M&A and PA (LGA used to be two different schools) for a full ride at a progressive private, so I feel like I got the best of both worlds.
NYC kid with parents earning under $20K was me too.
It does indeed depend how you define “creative”. LGA students can, I imagine, out-music, out-act and out-draw Stuy students, no?
M&A and especially PA were extremely difficult to get into in my day. The audition process was grueling for vocal and drama, heard it was also for studio art and instrumental music/composing/dance.
This year LGA accepted 664 students out of 9000 applicants. I imagine Stuy’s acceptance rate was lower than that - not everyone can or wants to go into the arts. But when I think “creative” I think “arts”.
I realize it takes a lot of creativity to design robots and solve high level math problems too, I was being just a little facetious.
Wow, LGA has a 7% accept rate. What is Stuy’s acceptance rate, do you know? Having trouble finding it online.
When I was in HS we took the one test and if we scored highest we got into all 3 - Stuy, BScience AND BTech, a little lower score you could choose Science or Tech, a little lower just Tech. Is it still that way?
Science is actually the one I would have gone to if I’d gone to one of them, most of my JHS friends were going there. Stuy didn’t have that nice new modern building back then that is has now though, Science had a “campus” that we thought was cool.
Let’s not say that and instead say what you think is a better (or just an alternative) explanation.
Not the right question to ask. It is not “what schools?” It is “which students?” Controlling for high school qualifications, blacks switch at the same rates as whites and Asians.
You seem to be - correct me if I’m wrong - suggesting that these students who are mis-matched would do better at different, presumably easier, schools where more students share their SAT scores. That’s why I asked which schools these might be.
Why ask? You already know the answer: a “different school where more students share their SAT scores.” As for a specific school, again, that depends on the student.