Thank you @Data10 for giving some context to the data. All data has to be looked at with a wider view and that is the view that I am trying to give my son (future Computer Engineer) despite my belief that he can overcome any educational obstacle.
The numbers show that about 4% of all graduating engineers are African American (less than 1/3 of expected based on population) and that some schools seem to do much better at producing black engineers than others. This is no different if a female of any race told me that they wanted to be an engineer (women make up ~20% of all engineering graduates), I would point them towards the schools that have the most success at producing women engineers, because track records matter to me.
It is amazing to me that AA has not change the dynamics at all for some fields (less black men in medical school today than 40+ years ago) even as many more black men are going to college in comparison to black men in the 1970’s. That is because AA can not truly hide the achievement gaps that start elementary school in the most challenging fields. HBCUs definitely help bridge some of those gaps. My son will probably have the opportunity to chose from a plethora of fine institutions of higher education. I find it weird that the schools of his Great-Grandparents, Grandparents, and Parents are suddenly not “good enough” for him in a lot people’s minds, despite being the foundation that his opportunities were built on.
Not everyone views life or academics as a competition. Some people have other priorities.
Doing well is a worthy goal.
It’s the “can compete” and “as well as others” that gives me pause.
I don’t want to open up a whole other can of worms here, because it really is off topic — but a person who graduates from Harvard with a C average is still a Harvard graduate. (As is a person who graduates from Directional U, but I can see and appreciate why some people may feel that the C average + degree from prestige U. might be more beneficial to them than a degree + A average from their local commuter college.
Of course, it is legit and appropriate for you to set whatever goals and standards you feel are appropriate within your own family. But perhaps it would be helpful to be less judgmental of others. If half of African Americans at elite colleges are graduating in the bottom 20% of their classes (and I have no means of determining whether that stat is true or not*) – they are still graduating. And I would see that as an accomplishment to be celebrated. No matter what selection process a given college uses there is still going to be a bottom 20% in the end.
I can’t find any data about class standing/ class rank of college students – just about graduation rates. I don’t even know whether “bottom 20%” ranking is a thing that would be tracked or reported --so the "data that 1/2 of all African Americans attending some prestigious PWI are in the bottom 20% of all graduates " is somewhat questionable to me. Where would that come from?
As I have stated before, graduating from Harvard or some of its peers basically means you have a pulse and did not do something so grievous to cause expulsion. It does not mean that you learned much relative to what was taught. . Someone else more qualified may really have benefited.
And if those students who struggled had to step down from a rigorous program of study to a less rigorous program because they were overshadowed by students who really were strong in that area, both the student admitted and the student not admitted are worse off.
I have seen that stat quoted quite often over the years. I have linked one such place below although I believe I recently saw it in an article with a paywall. The article that I am attaching also mentions another often quoted stat that showed ~50% of African American students in that particular study finished in the bottom 10% of their law school class. My kids have been raised in a way that would make such statistics unacceptable, even at Harvard.
Part of the reason that the achievement gap persists between African Americans and other races is that some in the society at large rationalizes such data (racism, being poor, bad schools, there is no achievement gap because the test is bias, etc.) to make AA possible. I am not saying that those issues have no affect on results, but I have seen too many people say “so what” as long as URMs can get into top schools, and that keeps the current “status quo” in place forever.
I’m questioning the claim because I don’t know the source of data or how the data could possibly be compiled. What colleges publish any sort of class rank data correlated by race or ethnicity? Many colleges use some sort of ranking to determine which students qualify for honors at graduation – but that only provides info about a small fraction of students at the top end.
I know where to find the data on graduation rates — but I’ve never seen data anywhere in any context about college class ranking. So that’s why I’m skeptical. I don’t want to see some article from some magazine with the quote – I want to see the source of the data that supports that claim.
I’d note that the article you linked to is from 2012 and apparently sources that statement to an op ed piece by a writer who works for a right-wing think tank and writes for conservative publications. — and who didn’t cite any source for that claim.
So I’m looking for real numbers, not talking points.
@calmom Those original numbers come from the 2009 book “No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal” Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life by Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford which are graphed in chapter 6 Figure 6.3 on page 246. Here is real statistical evidence from 2 Princeton University based sociologists. There is so much data here pointing to achievement gaps and issues with AA across the many data sets gathered, but I don’t expect anyone on either side of the issue to be swayed because most are locked in their positions on AA. Here are the actual numbers presented for African Americans in the 1993 and 1997 entering cohorts for those graduating in 6 years.
@wyzragamer I have gotten through 30 minutes of the YouTube video so far. I have seen the discussion from two of the AA proponents and they did a good job of presenting their case on why AA should continue while also speaking to Blum’s overall plan to systematically disassemble Affirmative Action policies.
I look forward to watching the rebuttal arguments from the AA opponent on the panel. I like seeing a scholarly conversation on AA from both sides of the aisle.
@hebegebe “The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations” sums up why it is okay for such a large percentage of African Americans to be at the bottom of their classes. Why should they complain if they are graduating? As you already know, that is just not good enough for the ChangeTheGame crew.
@calmom I wanted to clarify what I meant by “competing” because that was not clearly pointed out. When I talk about my son “competing” that doesn’t mean he has to be #1 in his class (although that would be nice), that means that he is getting the most out of his gifts, that he treats people like he wants to be treated, that he gives back to his community, that he is working hard for what he wants, and that he never takes for granted what he has been given. You are right that some do not care for “competing” and that’s okay, but my son has big dreams and so he has to “compete”.
@ChangeTheGame – thank you for the data reference. I’d just point out a couple of things:
The data is from “1993 and 1997 Entering Cohorts Combined (N =3,788)”. So the last of that cohort would have graduated in 2003 – so looking at the data from a college admissions perspective (that is, focusing on year of matriculation) – this is data that is more than two decades old. Leaving aside concerns about sample size, I don’t know why you would assume or expect those patterns to remain static over time.
The same data you cited also found similar patterns based on socio-economic status. (“When graduating seniors are disaggregated by social class rather than
by race, students from affluent family backgrounds exhibit better grades
and higher class ranks than do students of more modest means.”) The book seems to do a very good job of exploring all the different nuances and factors that come into play – for example, they also found that Asians underperformed when they looked at GPA’s, and controlled for variables such as SAT scores - contrary to stereotype.
The takeaway message seems to be that minority students do less well at the more selective colleges when it comes to final GPA than at less selective colleges – but I think graduation rates are higher at the more selective schools, which would skew results. The researchers say exactly that:
So what’s better – graduating with a lower GPA or not graduating at all?
I think there’s probably a strong argument to be made that the student who graduates from a more selective (and presumably more academically demanding) college with a lower GPA is better off than the student who graduates from a less selective college with a higher GPA. Because GPAs across different schools are not equivalent. An “A” earned in chemistry at the local community college is not the same as an “A” earned in chemistry at the flagship U, much less at a highly selective private college.
And apparently, the authors of the book you cited agree with that argument:
Also noteworthy - the issue of grade inflation and grade compression, which “appears to be positively correlated with institutional selectivity.” (footnotes 54 & 55):
That argument about whether attending a more selective college is better for a given student frequently goes around and around on these forums… although the higher grade inflation at more selective colleges means that one’s GPA may not necessarily be lower at a more selective college.
At least for public universities, one rebuttal is Grutter(2003) was never intended to allow racial preferences on an indefinite basis. The majority opinion expected race based preferences would be eliminated within 25 years. At a more fundamental level, there is Justice Thomas’s view: "a State’s use of race in higher education admissions decisions is categorically prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause.”
@calmom Nice rebuttals. I will try to respond to each of your points over several posts
No one knows if the patterns have gotten static. The data presented could have gotten better or it could have gotten even worse. Just the fact that this data exists 30+ years after AA admissions policies were put in place is damning from my personal perspective. I find it interesting that you call the data old or have concerns about the sample size of information that you don’t care for and use some of the other findings to buffer some of your thoughts below.
Social class matters a lot and that is why I would favor tips for low SES status instead of race because I believe it would pull some of the same kids accepted by AA so I am glad you agree about social class being important. I think that the book does a great job of looking at all sides of the issue of AA. I also love how the “Asian underperformance” still showed that 20% of Asian students were in the top quintile because that is all that I asking to see from African Americans.
What would be best is having a representative statistical outcome. So I would want to see African American data follow what is expected (20% of African Americans in top quintile of students for example like what the data on Asian Americans showed). I agree that graduating is the number 1 goal for all students, but for students like my kids (due to their households higher SES and their parents educational background), the chances of not graduating already is much lower than a low SES student. For low SES and 1st generation students who get into elite schools, those schools may be the best financial option so their may not be much of a choice.
Again, graduating is good, having a large percentage of African Americans at the bottom of classes is bad. I have seen the negatives outweigh the positives from my own personal experiences to disagree with the author’s outlook but I have no issues with the data. If this data on African American lower class ranks held true throughout the many colleges and universities who practice AA in the US, it feeds into many of the stereotypes that plague black students. I am not sure that the authors can account for all of those effects.
@roethlisburger AA as we currently know it is probably already on its death bed. With the current makeup of the SCOTUS, the next accepted Supreme Court case on AA could be the one that overhauls the college admissions process.
I wonder what the court would say about pre-college programs like SAMS (or MITES) that have a significant - more than AA at any college AFAIK - race component to admissions?
@OHMomof2 That is a very good question. One of the things I have seen with my son getting in to SAMS and his group chat communications with a large portion of his SAMS cohort is the low SES status of the vast majority of those students. If the courts rejected those programs admissions practices for being too race dependent, that makes sense, but the program would not have a problem focusing on low SES students and still selecting a pretty diverse group of attendees without looking at race. If that type of policy excluded my son, he would have understood. He has had many advantages and missing out on programs like SAMS (although he could have gone to paid summer programs) does not affect him like it would low SES students.
@ChangeTheGame , first let me shake your hand and pat you on the back. While I disagree with portions of your statements, overall, you are a brilliant bracing breath of fresh air here on CC … at least for me.
A few quick comments.
I posted this statement elsewhere here, but it fits with your recent posts in this thread: A childhood acquaintance, the son of a college professor, is a college professor at a PWI who has 3 sons. All three sons attended HBCUs for their undergrad degrees, and all three later received graduate degrees (including 2 PhDs) from Yale, Harvard, and U Maryland. You point is very valid, that HBCUs have a “magic formula” for cultivating minority talent that is possibly missing from PWIs as a whole. My son will be starting college in 2020, and I have ensured he has all the information he needs to not automatically dismiss HBCUs because of the lack of respect HBCUs generally receive from the population at large (including many minorities.)
I agree completely that there is a component of mentoring/support/affection even at HBCUs for the students that often isn’t readily apparent for AAs at PWIs. A lot of people view that belief as a sort of criticism. I don’t. Fact: Statistics routinely say minority students (especially boys) in PW public schools are “disciplined/punished” more than non-minority students. One way to view this is to say “minority students make more trouble at school than non-minority students.” Another way to view the stat is that refer to other research that indicates that teachers (and people in general) view the same conduct differently if it comes from a AA student or a white student. Assuming that mischaracteration of character extends to higher education, the cushion of empathetic understanding at HBCUs may make it easier for high-achieving AA students to continue to be high achievers in college. It’s not that the adults at PWIs will single out AA students for negative treatment, it’s that the professors and administrators at HBCUs will instinctively recognize high-achieving AA students as being deserving of their full attention and support.
My grandparents, parents, and siblings all attended HBCUs. I have spent a lot of time on HBCU campuses, in that environment, and understand them very well. I was a high-achieving student who attended a PWI. I have spent a lot of time on PWI campuses, with PWI students, professors, and administrators, and understand PWIs fairly well. Just saying that to say that.
I could type way too long here, so I better chop it off before I ramble into eternity. Keep up the thoughtful posting. I appreciate reading it, even if I don’t speak up often. I don’t have the stamina you do to keep pounding the drum. However, your posts are very welcome, very respected, and much needed. Thank you.
@OHMomof2 , I don’t know what the outcome will be, but as a former participate in a MITE program, I would hate to see SCOTUS work to end such programs. Being chosen to attend my MITE program and being in that environment for that summer had a tremendous effect on me as a 16 year old. And it had and continues to have a tremendous impact on other attendees. Read “A Hope In The Unseen” for an in-depth example.