SCOTUS: Fisher II oral arguments

Parents Forum
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I think I understand what you’re saying, but the question I asked was “Do you think it’s a wise decision for your son to accept Harvard’s admissions offer?”. That’s a separate question from a) what people actually do, or b) whether people derive enough emotional gratification from attending a school like Harvard that they’ll attend even if it hurts them in the long-run.

I think most parents would think that, when all is said and done, the benefits of attending Harvard (rather than the alternatives I posed) outweigh the drawbacks, even if their student is in the lowest quintile (which is different than being unqualified). After all, even among a bunch of special snowflakes it is foreordained that 20% of them will be in the lowest quintile. :slight_smile:

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@lookingforward, I have no issue with Gruetter. The fact that a decision based in whole or in part on a person’s race is discriminatory is a bedrock constitutional principle. It is the essential first step in any analysis of these types of cases. No offense intended, but you are conflating prior situations where the courts have said discrimination is permissible in the given circumstance with the position that prior cases found no discrimination. In my not so humble opinion when we forget that first step the analysis becomes muddled because we forget that any decision to use race as a factor must be looked at critically. This was really the point of Fisher I. I don’t think it is possible to understand what is before the Court here without acknwledging that principle.

Within the context of the law, saying something is “based on” a protected classification means that membership in the class played some role in the benefit being conferred or withheld. There is simply no legal distinction in this context between a decision based only on a person’s race and a decision based in part on a person’s race.

I agree the Harvard case is a different animal, which is why I mentioned up the thread that one option, albiet an unlikely one, is that the Court will hold Fisher II over until the Harvard and UNC cases make their way to the Court. I don’t think that Harvard’s mission as a private school is what makes the case distinctive though. What does is that unlike UT, Harvard does not have the option of establishing realistic objective criteria to fill some portion of their class. So in that instance holistic admissions may be the most narrowly tailored option available.

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@al2simon in your example the rational choice may in fact be to take the golden ticket to Harvard in part because pretty much everybody graduates from Harvard, and while Lehigh and BU are fine universities, there is a substantial prestige difference with Harvard. So the reward is high and the potential risk is low(ish). Probably a good bet.

How about a kid though who is looking at being a competitive student at TAMU, or being a bottom quartile admit at UT? Graduation stats from UT are nowhere near Harvard’s, so not getting out is probably a realistic concern. Also, at least in Texas, there is really not a ton of prestige difference between UT and TAMU. So then maybe the risk reward shifts a bit, and the decision to take the risk becomes less understandable.

I do think you make a good point about athletic admits, although I would add that there are tons of academic programs available to athletes that are not available to normal students. In addition the graduation rate for athletes, at least in the revenue sports where you would expect the highest variance from “normal” admits is nothing to be proud of in most big sports schools.

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Oh, I think some would beg to differ about UT’s prestige vs A&M’s. But it’s changing. Slowly.

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What can I say, my wife’s entire family are Aggies :slight_smile:

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Clearly. =))

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I agree completely with what you’ve written. I personally think that Sander raises some interesting questions even if his “research” has major flaws, and it would be good if capable people would analyze these questions to help figure out what is in the best interest of the students.

Unfortunately, there are strong taboos against doing research in this area, so sensible, moderate people stay miles away from research involving these questions. Sadly, this means that many of the remaining participants in the public debate have a very strong ideological axe to grind or are closet bigots.

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@lookingforward, I would exclude it because it’s so open to meddling by parents and consultants (look up the websites and articles by consultants advertising for business for an idea of the “advice.”)

I’ve read the thread and the Atlantic article on the suicides in Palo Alto. In our state, there’s been a string of suicides in Newton. Reading student essays on the topic, and watching “Race to Nowhere”, reading Doing School, etc., I’ve been struck by the overall time obligation today’s high school students are supposed to meet. I think some of the depression is caused by exhaustion, the consequence of years of going with too little sleep.

I think it’s hard to prevent young, smart, healthy people from developing outside interests. It’s a straw man to posit that if colleges didn’t care about extracurriculars, students wouldn’t take part in them. First, if that were true, then ECs should be dropped, because students would drop them after admission. Second, if colleges were not to ask about them, students would be freed to follow their own interests.

I don’t think the current college admissions system serves our good students well. I think it encourages dependency on adults. It curtails normal and healthy investigation of new interests. It channels teenaged energy into narrow paths. It discourages the development of adult identity. It tilts the field towards affluent families that can support such pursuits.

Admit students on the basis of proven academic skills. Can they write a coherent essay on a topic without adults to coach, massage, prune, edit (or even write) their work? After that hurdle has been passed, in that group of students I’m sure you’ll find enough people interested in writing for a newspaper, getting involved in the community, helping others, debating issues, forming college sports teams, creating new forms of artistic expression.

But don’t admit someone who can’t write a grammatical sentence because they have superior hand-eye coordination. Don’t admit someone who can’t add because their parents walked them through the process of founding a charity. Don’t admit someone who spends most of her time in meetings but hasn’t read an entire book since middle school. Certainly, college is not “study all the time,” but extracurricular interests cannot outweigh the ability to function in a classroom. (and I’m not restricting it to physics classrooms!)

Give them time to grow up without feeling that every moment must be documented for the College Application.

I know I sound cynical. I have great faith in my children’s generation. I don’t have as much faith in some of their parents. Too much of the “achievement” is stage-managed. I’m also concerned that the process is ratcheting into middle school. I used to worry that high school freshmen were too focused on college. Now I’m hearing from fellow parents who’re worried that their 6th graders are too focused on college.

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I mentioned earlier that Texas A&M uses some outreach methods to increase minority enrollment. I had a chance to listen to the Dean of Engineering at TAMU a few weeks ago, and she brought up some unique challenges they face when recruiting URM’s to their program. They found many qualified hispanic students, for example, do not want to move far from home (or move at all) to go to a 4 year college even when they are highly qualified. Part of it is cultural, part financial, she said. Moving away from family, to live on campus at 18 is even harder for the daughters. So recently, TAMU has implemented 4 engineering academies throughout the state whereby TAMU faculty will travel and teach the first 2 years of the engineering curriculum at selected community colleges and then the student will finish the last 2 at TAMU. These students are fully admitted to A&M when they start, no transfer application required for the last 2 years.

Another possible way to increase enrollment (and success) for future generations…

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"So this case really turns on whether it is constitutionally OK to give a break to somewhat more advantaged minority students. I think the constitutional and policy arguments for that kind of preference are quite weak.

Which is why the standard is strict scrutiny. And why Kennedy is annoyed that this didn’t go back to the lower court. No way UT can prevail under strict scrutiny imo. Eventually pure race preferences are going to disappear as Justice O’Connor predicted years ago. They really can’t be sustained in perpetuity. "

Your reasoning is based on the fact that there is grade inflation. If Average GPA is 3.7+ like H Y P of course a 3.0 is not that hard to get.

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@al2simon: I feel as though I have been speaking Greek as I have on three occasions referred to work by Peter Arcidiacono of Duke and coauthors that does exactly what you ask.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19063683/#Comment_19063683
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19064376/#Comment_19064376
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19068542/#Comment_19068542
The first notes that Arcidiacono finds that “less-prepared minority students at top-ranked campuses would have higher science graduation rates had they attended lower-ranked campuses.” It was published in the American Economic Review, which is the leading general interest journal in economics: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/stem.pdf

The second argues that schools have better information about students’ likelihood of success, and they knowingly enroll some students who have a lower likelihood of success. The article, “Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Tradeoff,” is forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Literature, which is a sibling of the American Economic Review: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/aa.pdf

The third explains how the narrowing GPA gap between whites and students of color can be explained by changes in major. If students with low first-year grades leave demand fields such as STEM, their grades will naturally rise. See “What Happens after Enrollment,” by Arcidiacono et al.

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Guess I hit a nerve, Periwinkle. I think that it’s the stilted nature of K-12 that encourages dependence, stifles exploration, rewards “in the box” thinking. And the insistence on hierarchical measures. Kids on CC routinely reveal their narrow thinking. Not all, but many. Same old/same old.

We’re OT. Give it its own thread and I may blast on that.

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@coase, you keep bringing up Arcidiacono’s work on mismatch as if it stood alone and was undisputed. Why?

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@tiger1307 wrote

Of course, liberals never have an agenda.

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So if Fisher wins, will Texas still be able to use the 7% rule?

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I don’t see why not. There’s nothing discriminatory about the percentage rule.

There’s nothing physically stopping anyone from moving to another school district to attend a different school. Heck, our family physically moves every few years.

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@“Cardinal Fang” The law was amended in 2009 so that if the use of race is prohibited, then UT reverts to the top ten percent rule. In 2013 several legislators proposed removing that amendment and replacing it with language allowing UT to use 7-8 percent and then use non-race based holistic to fill the 25 percent, but I believe it died in committee.

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The percentage rule does have a discriminatory intent, which is to increase the attendance of specified groups without absolute regard to the academic achievements. It may be a good idea, but it obviously discriminates.

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The percentage rule is race neutral in that it admits without regard to race. If you are in the top whatever percentage of your class, you can be admitted to the school although not necessarily to your major. It does rest on the premise that schools are zoned based on neighborhood and neighborhoods are segregated.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the lone dissenter in Fisher I and in her dissent she said that she did not believe the top ten percent law was truly race neutral since it depended on de facto segregation of neighborhoods.

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The percentage rule ensures geographic representation from all school districts/ voting districts in Texas, not just from the wealthy suburbs of Dallas & Houston.