This, which I called Aricidiano 2015, is the paper I was commenting on:
http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/aa.pdf
@coase linked to it a couple of times upthread.
I don’t want to speak for @hunt, but I think it is worth mentioning that the debate on the mismatch theory, and whether affirmative action policies provide a net benefit or a net detriment is really an argument geared more towards the prong of the strict scrutiny test that deals with whether creating a diverse classroom is a compelling state interest. I don’t think that the Court is headed that way in Fisher II. It certainly appears to me that the Court is thinking more in terms of whether the use of race in holistic admissions is necessary at all given the large portion of the class brought in under the 10% rule.
Just as a guess, I would bet that the Court probably stays away from a challenge to the idea that managed diversity with some form of preference system is acceptable for at least the next several years, if for no other reason than to allow the Grutter decision, with its 25 year expiring mandate, to play out.
< So the next question is: do either the students or the schools know ahead of time that the decision to enroll in a selective school is bad for a given student>
Only God knows what future brings. No human being could possibly predict the destiny of another human being. Never.
I’m confused by how the mismatch theory applies to Fisher. Fisher is not arguing to get rid of the 7% rule, is she? She is arguing to get rid of considerations of race in holistic admissions. But even if mismatch theory is right, the students who are “mismatched” are going to be students from bad schools coming in on the 7% rule, and athletes**. She’s not arguing to stop those students from being admitted.
** At least, that’s my theory. Certainly I’ve seen no one produce evidence that the students of color admitted by holistic admissions have worse academic records than the students of color admitted under 7%.
Here is the report from the task force on the 4 year graduation rate at UT. It is full of data and recommendations some of which were not implemented. The data is on the 2004 cohort which makes it a bit dated. There is a chart on graduation rates by ethnicity and rank and just about every thing else. There is not a chart that combines variables (race/rank). A lot of factors go into that including among others- changing majors late in the game, double majors, five year combination programs, concentration of engineers, lack of academic readiness, course availability, advising, easy to follow degree plans and financial aid. It is a major focus of the university to increase the 4 year rates.
They are making progress, but in my opinion the high number of students who are admitted to undergraduate Studies attempting to transfer in to a high demand major (business, CS and Engineering) who will later leave the university because it is very hard to do is going to plague them.
https://www.utexas.edu/graduation-rates/documents/GRAD-REPORT.pdf
Come on, now. You yourself don’t really believe this–after all, you made a prediction about your daughter when you had her retake that chemistry class. Of course, our human predictions are not infallible, but often they are pretty darn good.
I think you’re right–but I wonder if the Court will really want to suggest that the 10% rule is, by definition, a less discriminatory way to achieve diversity. Wouldn’t that mean that other state universities would be required to use it instead of holistic review–or at least, some other plan that was no more discriminatory than a 10% rule? That would be a big deal.
To add: Also, approving of the use of something like the 10% rule to achieve diversity creates some problems. How was the figure of 10% (or 7%) derived? Would a school, or a state, be allowed to carefully calibrate that number in order to achieve “enough” diversity? This takes you right back to the challenge of trying to explain how using, say, 5.6% because that’s what you need in order to get the “right” number of URMs is different from a quota.
The University of Texas argues the top 10% rule isn’t enough to achieve diversity. That’s why they practice affirmative action in holistic admissions.
Let’s send him to the gulag for those thought crimes.
So Tiger, what would make racism better in America?
I don’t think anybody needs to show that, because, as I understand it, Fisher is only challenging the use of race in the holistic process. So what could matter is that URMs admitted under that process have lower academic credentials than non-URMs admitted under that process–and thus, arguably, could be mismatched. That students admitted under the 7% program might also be mismatched is true, but irrelevant to the argument. Some members of the basketball team might be really mismatched, too, but that also wouldn’t be relevant to this case.
@gettingschooled I totally agree with you about the graduation rate being negatively affected by UGS students accepting that admission to that school with unrealistic hopes of transfering to Engineering/Business. I think UT should really impress on students who accept UGS with that expectation about how difficult it is to do an internal transfer to McCombs/Cockrell. Its likely as competitive as it was to get awarded the major through the freshman admission process in the first place.
@Hunt the Court could conclude that top 10% provides a race neutral process to achieve diversity for UT and other Texas public schools short of mandating its implementation at other states. Remember, the top 10% rule is based on state law, passed by the Texas legislature. In states that have not mandated such a practice, and don’t specifically forbid the use of race, (race is not considered in California or Michigan), those schools could continue to consider race. However, if those states were to adopt a variation of the top 10% law, they could not. This would effectively move the affirmative action battle from the courts to the statehouse.
That couldn’t possibly work for UT. They use 7% instead of 10% because if they used 10%, they’d have too many freshman. The number has to be based on how many students they intend to enroll. They can’t just say something like, “There are lots of Hispanics in the second 10%, so let’s admit the top 20%.” The top 20% plan is completely unworkable, because if they used it UT would just have admitted the entire top 10% (which they don’t have room for) and another 10% too.
Well, I don’t know. What if somebody challenged the holistic race-conscious admissions process of the University of XYZ on the grounds that it could adopt a 10% approach on its own without a state mandate, and that such an approach would be less discriminatory than the race-conscious approach. Wouldn’t that be a pretty good argument under a strict scrutiny analysis if Fisher comes out as you suggest?
Probably when you feel the need to start a post with that disclaimer, that’s what you’re doing.
That argument doesn’t go through. A student could only be (potentially) mismatched if they have significantly lower academic credentials than the student body as a whole, not the student body admitted under holistic review. Do URMs admitted under holistic admissions have among the worst credentials of all students at UT? Maybe, but I’d bet against it, and I’ve certainly not seen any evidence in the briefs bearing on that. People here are claiming that holistic review is used to admit the kids of black professionals from suburbs, not goodish black students from bad schools who already got in under the 7% rule.
@OHMomof2 - It kinda already is. After all, the goal of the Fisher case was to overturn AA. It is somewhat difficult to have a thread about about the case without an affirmative action discussion taking place.
@Cardinal Fang, I recall listening to the NPR story on the oral argument in Fisher v. Texas and in the exchange where Justice Scalia referenced Black students struggling at UT, the attorney who represented the University indicated that African-American applicants who are admitted holistically actually performed better at UT than those who were admitted through the top 10% law. I’ve posted a hyperlink to the article below, but you can also listen directly to the audio. The article notes that after Scalia made his mis-match comments, Attorney Garre stated the following:
“Garre shot back that the academic performance of minorities admitted under the affirmative action program at UT was higher than those admitted under the Ten Percent Plan. ‘Frankly,’ he added, ‘the solution to the problems with student body diversity is not to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools.’”
Yes, I think that is the box that Kennedy at least is trying to avoid. I think the question eventually becomes, for schools that do not already have a large portion of their class determined by stats, a balancing of what the school defines as its educational mission against whatever harm the Justice’s see in the use of race in the decisions being made. My guess is that in such situations the Court is likely more open to the type of arguments that @lookingforward for example is making, that the school’s particular educational mission simply can’t be served by a completely neutral set of admissions criteria for a large portion of the class. Hard to see the Court not applying at least some type of presumption in favor of the schools on a question like that, know what I mean?
@“Cardinal Fang” As I understand the theory in Fisher, it is that there is no need to look at race in the holistic pool because some significant level of diversity is achieved in a race neutral fashion by the percentage admits. UT responds by saying, yes we get a certain amount of diversity through the percentage admits, but we need more to establish a “critical mass”. To which Roberts asks, “what is a “critical mass”?” And UT says, “that’s a great question!” At which point, Kennedy’s head explodes, and he says “isn’t this why we remanded the case two years ago? So you all could figure out what a “critical mass” is, and why it is important?” And UT says “you were serious about that?”
I don’t that necessarily follows. It could be that URMs admitted under holistic review are mismatched, and that URMs admitted under the 7% rule are woefully mismatched. (Just as an example, imagine that average graduation rate is 84%, and that holistic URMs graduate at 72% and 7% URMs graduate at 65%.)
I guess you could make the argument that the 10% method is not a less discriminatory method of achieving diversity because it is much more likely to result in mismatch, thus harming URMs more than the holistic method.
@Hunt, just to be clear I’m not predicting that the Court would necessarily rule that way, just asserting it is a potential alternative route. Specifically, in regard to your assertion a court mandated imposition of something like the top 10% law on every public college and university in the US is the type of judicial over-reach that I don’t think this court, or any court will want to do. It totally wrecks havoc to any pre-existing admission process and I just can’t see the courts going down that path.
However, where in essence a state body has already created a race-neutral means of achieving diversity, I can see how the Court could rule it is simply deferring to the state legislative process. Such a ruling would essentially be a compromise between the conservatives on the Court who want to strike down UT’s admission practices and the liberals who want to limit the damage to this case alone and save the ultimate battle for another day.
@Ohiodad51 which is why there’s an outside possibility that this case is remanded once again, this time all the way down to the district court to help develop further facts including on the issue of what is a critical mass. Kennedy appeared to be open to that idea in oral argument; however, the conservatives did not seem receptive to it.