As far as the solutions go, the California experience—and I am in Ca-- has shown that if racial quota is banned AOs will find another way to circumvent it, and you end up with a situation where middle class unhooked kids may be worse off.
As many have suggested a sensible compromise–if the congress allows it—may be to let private colleges set some racial preference so that observable academics of URM fall within a half standard deviation or less of unhooked admits. That way both the stigma and unfairness will be largely mitigated.
"College itself is social engineering, so therefore admission to college (and which college) is part of that social engineering. "
And it does not take much imagination to assume that this very issue is going to be a hot topic in future politics. If we’re currently holding Congressional hearings over whether Facebook, Google and Twitter promote one political view over another, how long do you think it will be before the eye of public inquiry turns towards examining why publicly funded institutions employ a huge majority of professors from one political party and have created an environment where students and professors of another political party feel uncomfortable?
None of this is happening in a vacuum. For better or worse (and probably both), there is going to be increased public scrutiny over how colleges handle admissions, hiring and the overall social environment on campus.
Colleges like Harvard may have a large enough endowment that they eventually make the choice to stop accepting all federal funding so they can be free of any public scrutiny, but most other colleges are going to be subject to the same type of inquiry that is happening with business and our public institutions.
“AOs will find another way to circumvent it, and you end up with a situation where middle class unhooked kids may be worse off.”
From a read of the data coming out of the Harvard lawsuit, it’s hard to imagine how middle class unhooked kids could be worse off at Harvard anyway.
They did try other ways for over a decade, but the result is still 42.2% Asian and 24.5% White at UCB. For better or worse, CA legislation to ban race consideration on public school admission has been very effective.
On this measure, Harvard is fine. On the broadest measure of academic “observables” for the admits, the academic index, on average all unhooked groups are within 0.5sd of the unhooked white group.
From the Arcidiacono rebuttal report, here are the z-score differences, with whites taken as baseline:
Asians: +0.15
Hispanic: -0.26
Black:. -0.43
The academic index combines GPA with SAT/ACT and SAT subject test scores. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out the exact formula being used, but there is an adjustment for HSGPA based on size of high school and actual or imputed class rank. It’s not clear to me if AP scores are included in the index.
I have also extracted what I believe to be the actual SAT score differences in the unhooked admit groups directly from the z-score data, and the differences are smaller than I would have expected. Asians were higher than whites by about 24 points, 21 of which were on math. Whites were higher than Hispanics by about 40 points total and higher than blacks by a bit less than 60 points total. I’ll post some details of the analysis later.
(Note that these numbers are slightly different than the graphs provided in the reports, but I think they are accurate and robust with the detailed z-score data.)
I cannot help but notice the topic of “equal opportunities” coming up time and again in this thread.
Here is a talk by Canadian David Azerrad on this very topic at Harvard. It is both fascinating and disturbing.
The AO’s instead changed the transfer rules to favor non-white and Asian students who are more likely to attend CC. This way URM with very low standized testing scores can get admitted through the back door becuSe the UC’s do not look at the scores unlike the elite schools. It is routine for UBC to be giving degrees to kids who received 1000 on the 1600 SAT.
This single sentence has so many points that I would like to rebut;
- In CA, favoring CCC applicants is not AO's decision. It's directive from CA state government that is constantly pushing UC, harder every year, to better represent CA tax payers interest.
- These days, the "backdoor" is not so wide. Transfer to top 4 UC with employable majors are highly competitive and unpredictable even to those with 4.0 GPA from CC.
- Thanks to this transferablity, a lot of qualified students go to CC and transfer instead of applying as a freshman, not because it is easier, but because it can save money.
- If Whites can use the CC route but chose not to, it's not really discrimination. If the CC route was so profoundly easier, then we would be seeing a lot more students, including Whites, trying it.
- If a student got 1000 on SAT but managed to get near A grade on Calculus & Physics chain, then obviously the SAT score doesn't represent the student's true ability. Many of them are replacing those who got 1500 on SAT but turned out to be unable to college level work and drop out, whose ability was not correctly represented by their high SAT scores, rather than increasing student population and cost.
- Last year's UCB enrollment has 2.9% AA and 13.6% Hispanic. California's K-12 student population is 5.5% AA and 54.3% Hispanic. I am pretty sure some of those AA and Hispanic students are in fact high academic achievers. Therefore the rest - getting 1000 on SAT - are even smaller % and are very likely from very low SES since UC AO can't consider individual applicant's race, and if some of them are academically less qualified, that's something we can accept and accommodate.
- The UC AO has been vocal on its resentment on the California law prohibiting considering race and gender on individual applicant because they wanted to increase URM. They would never intentionally make any policy favoring Asian applicants who are already several times over represented to their population.
- Last year's UCB transfer enrollment shows 27.3% Asian and 27.2% White. Comparing to the same year's freshman enrollment of 42.2% Asian and 24.5% White, I would say whatever the AO did about transfer was favoring White, although slightly, and discriminated Asian quite a bit.
- Considering that California's K-12 student population is 23.2% White, It's hard to say that Whites were disadvantaged by UCB's current practice.
“As far as the solutions go, the California experience—and I am in Ca-- has shown that if racial quota is banned AOs will find another way to circumvent it, and you end up with a situation where middle class unhooked kids may be worse off.”
What do you mean? The UCs have, as others have pointes, are about 3-4% AA. Are you talking about private colleges? Of course those wouldn’t be subject to UC/CSU as it bans use of race in public colleges.
“As many have suggested a sensible compromise–if the congress allows it—may be to let private colleges set some racial preference so that observable academics of URM fall within a half standard deviation or less of unhooked admits.”
If the supreme court rules that race in admissions is discriminatory and illegal, why would Congress pass a law that basically says, yes we’re ok with partial discrimination. Anyway such a bill would get vetoed by current president and you’re not going to have votes in senate to over turn it even if the house flips in Nov.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/admissions-source-school
If you go the UC admission stats website by schools you will find that Ca schools with 30+ NMSF kids have essentially the same admission rates to UCLA/UCB as schools with zero NMSF. So, my point is that for an unhooked kid at the top 1-3% of all Ca graduates he/she would be better off under the old holistic system that considered the whole state demographics albeit by race than the current one by geographic location.
The current status is that race can be considered in college admissions and I imagine congress can set some parameters if it wants to. With Roberts daughter attending Harvard College for the next four years and Kavanaugh confirmed this month, the Harvard College Admissions case would have a 4-4 tie at best, thus unlikely to become law of the land. The status quo may last into foreseeable future.
Are you suggesting that Roberts would have to recuse because his D attends? If so, why, given that her admission decision has already been made.
^ I am just going by the precedent where Clearance Thomas had to recuse himself in the case of VMI admissions when his son was enrolled in the school at the time.
We’ve been through this on scotus, Kagan would also have to recuse herself, so it would be 4-3:
“The principal conflicts of interest that I would encounter arise from my service as solicitor general,” Kagan wrote on her Senate questionnaire, adding that the only others she was aware of would involve Harvard litigation.
Here’s the thing though - imo, racial preferences in admissions would have such a substantial effect if it were considered discrimination and made illegal, that I would like all nine justices to participate, not seven or eight.
Justice Kagan was the dean of harvard law, why do you gloss over this? My feelings aside, she won’t be allowed near the case.
Supreme Court justices are the sole judge of whether to recuse themselves in a particular case.
^Indeed, there are no rules to go by only precedents; the justices are not subjected to any higher reviews or congressional oversight. Kagan only agreed to recuse herself during her confirmation hearing because she was directly involved in the cases as solicitor general.
But ultimately it boils down to justice’s own comfort level. I think cases involving former employers would be quite different from those affecting justice’s kid. How is any employer let alone a former employer going to impact a justice’s career or pay? Probably nothing, as none of the justices is planning to look for another job. But kid’s future is in the hand of the college he/she attends as the college’s future is being decided by the justices.
jzducol your SCOTUS voting math is not correct. The five votes to make AA illegal will be there by next week though I think the Harvard Case by itself will not be enough. But a number of additional cases are headed to the court. There is just no way that discriminating against poor unhooked Asian kids is going to be allowed to continue as the the US is no longer just a black-white country. Besides when the Harvard Admission Racial Data sets get published they are going to cause a scandal because of the massive gaps between the scores of the admitted students of different groups. The Asians are quickly gaining political power and they are going to go ballistic when this data gets released.
^ I know the vote is there to “make AA illegal” but other than the Harvard case I am not aware that “a number of additional cases are headed to the court”.
Yes there are numerous other cases headed that way. Very soon AA will be struck down for any colleges accepting any state or federal money. Besides it has to change anyway because the demographic make up of the USA has changed so much in the past 25 years. It is completely unfair to expect Asians who were themselves subjected to massive discrimination to allow their children to be denied admission to the top colleges because of a system that gives extra points to black and hispanics. The Asians had nothing what so ever to do with the racial injustices of the USA over the past 300 years.
I am not sure if it will cause a scandal. As if it has been a secret at all.
They have already sort of abolished Affirmative Action. They have holistic admission with diversity quota now. And now we use AA to abbreviate African American instead.
Unlike Affirmative Action, diversity quota is not designed to to revert the historical racial injustices.