Minorities who are admitted with lower academic profiles than other students under affirmative action programs are harmed. There have been several studies showing that minorities admitted to universities under lower standards earn poor grades and drop out at much higher rates than the general student body. The CA university system before and after the passage of Prop 209 is a good case study.
Let’s look at the mechanics of the the affirmative action process using SAT scores as a proxy for high school academic achievement. According to USNWR, the median SAT for students accepted at UC Berkeley is 1440 and the score for UC Santa Cruz is 1250. Under affirmative action programs before Prop 209, minority students would have been admitted to programs with scores significantly below whites and Asians (I have seen reports of around a 200 point SAT delta). So, a minority student with a respectable 1270 SAT would have been admitted to Berkeley, where they were unprepared for the academic rigor. Despite special programs to help coach-up minority students like extra tutoring or summer writing classes, this student would be far more likely to drop out than students who were admitted on merit. Meanwhile, if this student would have attended Santa Cruz, where they would have been a good fit academically, the probability of their graduating would have been on par with the other students admitted on merit.
The other side of this coin is that an Asian student with a 1550 SAT would have been rejected by Berkeley where they would likely have excelled.
California schools, including Berkeley, are test blind. How a student performed on the SAT/ACT is irrelevant and won’t be considered. Also, high school gpa (not the SAT) has been found to be the most predictive in terms of college performance.
When Rosa Parks was told to sit at the back of the bus, the harm in this specific incident was not that she would have to walk a few extra steps to and from the back. The harm was that she was treated as less than equal to whites, based purely upon her race.
When it comes to AA, even if someone impacted by AA gets into a different elite university (which is not at all a certainty), the harm still remains that they were treated differently purely based upon race.
I am strongly in favor of giving admission preferences to students based upon low SES, but using race to affect admissions is simply wrong.
Thor, I was using SAT as a proxy, to avoid getting bogged down in GPAs, weighted GPAs, course rigor, etc., etc. It was used to illustrate a concept. Regardless of the mechanics of the analysis, minority students who are admitted into schools for which they are not academically qualified drop out at a higher rate than students admitted on merit. Is this really helping them?
These are nettlesome issues, certainly. My son, a high-achieving and full-pay Black student, was just admitted to NYU. His grades weren’t at the very top of the scale but well within the standards by which students of any race are admitted there. Did his being Black help? Was it a deciding factor? Hard to say, but at any rate I expect he’ll thrive there as he and his older sister have at majority-White institutions their whole lives.
Broadly, it feels like we’re nearing a national decision to codify past racism as intractable and even appropriate. If all continuing efforts to redress racism are themselves deemed racist, what conclusion are we left with except “oh well, I guess Blacks are just dumber”? The work isn’t done, but many Americans want to be done with it anyway.
I know someone who works for a non-profit in Chicago that helps kids from disadvantaged backgrounds who want to attend college. Their program has two phases. First, they start working with kids before they even start high school to set expectations and provide a roadmap of what is required to gain admittance to a college worth attending. They cover what classes to take, what grades they need, and what standardized test scores are required for different schools and programs. They then provide tutoring and mentoring support to help keep the students on track. They provide some “tough love” and drive kids to take the hard classes and take school seriously, often when there is social pressure not to. The second phase is helping them navigate the complicated school application process, including identifying schools that are a good fit, filling out applications, and applying for financial aid.
The beauty of this program is that they are preparing students to win acceptance based on merit, and they are instilling the work habits and skills to succeed in college. This is a far better than admitting students based on the lower standards of affirmative action and having a disproportionate number of them drop out.
That would be quite a sensible approach. Given that wealth seems to provide an advantage in all dimensions of college admission (academic attainment, ECs, school support/guidance, essays, etc.), I’d imagine that many/most people would support giving low SES students - regardless of race - a lift up.
Any positive or negative effect for students affected is most likely the difference between admission to colleges of a given level of selectivity versus colleges that are slightly more or less selective.
I.e. at the elite college level, it may be the difference between admission to an elite college and admission to a slightly less elite college.
For whatever reason, many colleges seem to be less enthusiastic about improving SES diversity than racial/ethnic diversity. Likely reasons:
It would be more expensive in terms of the financial aid budget.
SES diversity is a less obviously visible type of diversity than racial/ethnic diversity.
For college marketing in terms of “we welcome students like you!”, the greater visibility of race/ethnicity may mean greater student response to racial/ethnic diversity than SES diversity.
Thor, Re-read my post. I specifically state the example was under the regime prior to Prop 209, which was passed in 1996. It is an easy example because students were applying to schools with different rankings and admissions standards under one state university system.
I agree this would be more sensible, yet the reality is that once you get beyond the 125 or so colleges that meet full need, affordability for low income students becomes the rate limiting factor.
Low EFC students who don’t have relatively high stats don’t have as many options for college. Pell Grants barely make a dent in 4 year residential college costs. The Federal government has signaled there might be an increase in Pell Grants coming, while some states are experimenting with free community college. No easy answers to get more low-income students in college, and more importantly graduated within 4 years.
I may be missing the point, but comparing the inescapable impact of Jim Crow laws to a debate over whether admissions is possibly* being improperly tailored at maybe 0.5% of the country’s 4-year colleges doesn’t seem to be making much of a point, either.
1 I get but 2 and 3 comes across as so performative/superficial (which I know it generally isn’t), and they contribute to the continued stigmatization mentioned above.
If we want to repair the growing rifts in this country, I feel we need to be equally concerned with the future of disadvantaged URMs and that of poor white kids.
The idea of replacing affirmative action with an accommodation for SES-disadvantaged applicants is intriguing, but there are some stumbling blocks:
(perhaps most obviously) Outcomes/obstacles still vary considerably by race within any particular SES band
No elite college comes close to enrolling a student population that is representative of the SES of the country—the elite schools are between 11% Pell-eligible (Caltech) and 22% (Princeton), with a massive skew toward families in the 1%. Nationally, 35% of students are eligible for a Pell Grant, and just 1/100 are in the 1%
There are not enough high-stats Pell-eligible students to allow each of the elite schools to hit 35% or whatever higher benchmark we’d want them to be held to under a SES-based system—there would need to be significant accommodations made for test scores and “rigor,” maybe even far more than there are now.
Fraud/business losses/etc
I am very skeptical that people who say they are okay with SES preferences now will happily and quietly give up their child’s “deserved” seat at HYP anymore than they did under AA. Killing AA forever just to replace it with something perhaps even more vulnerable seems unwise.
Interesting back story on Ed Blum and the history of test cases in case law. The story was published right after Blum lost his UT case so it’s a bit old.
If we want to repair the growing rifts in this country, I feel we need to be equally concerned with the future of disadvantaged URMs and that of poor white kids.Blockquote
And disadvantaged/poor minorities who aren’t URMs?
