Universities Record Drop In Black Admissions

momsdream · November 22, 2004, 10:21am

I have many comments on this, which I'll reserve until others read it. But, the last line is kind of funny. What did anyone expect? The schools aren't going to let their african american numbers drop.....they'll just change the process. What's interesting is the drop in applications. Seems that black students are now moving to apply to more privates.

By Michael Dobbs
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2004; Page A01

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Despite winning a marathon Supreme Court struggle last year to continue using race as a factor in admitting students, the University of Michigan is reporting the smallest class of African American freshmen in 15 years.

A similar decline in the number of incoming black students has been recorded at many state universities across the country, from California to Georgia to much of the Midwest. The trend has alarmed and puzzled college admissions officers, who place great importance on targeting and recruiting talented minorities.

"You don't see many people of color in the dorms. I feel a little isolated," said humanities student Ashley Gilbert, one of 350 black freshmen enrolled this year at the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus, where there are 5,730 students in the entering class. The number of black students is down from 410 last year and nearly 500 in 2001.

The pattern is by no means uniform -- both the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia report steady numbers of African Americans enrolling -- but it is sufficiently widespread to cause concern among university presidents and students alike. State flagship institutions appear to be experiencing the biggest declines, while some private universities and many community colleges and second-tier state schools are reporting an increase in minority enrollment.

There is no single explanation for the drop in African American enrollment, officials at the University of Michigan and other colleges say. But one important factor is the unexpected fallout from the June 2003 Supreme Court decision, which required the University of Michigan and many other schools to change their entrance procedures to evaluate applicants individually rather than automatically award extra admissions points to minority students.

Other factors include the sharply rising cost of college tuition, which has an intimidating effect on low-income groups, and a restricted applicant pool. According to the College Board, 1,877 African American students nationwide scored higher than 1300 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT last year, compared with nearly 150,000 students overall who achieved that score. Minority students with higher SAT scores have become the target of frenzied competition between state and private colleges.

"Something is going on here that is larger than just this university," said Ted Spencer, chief admissions officer at the University of Michigan. "We are all shooting for the same small group of students."

In addition to Michigan, other colleges that have reported significant drops in the number of black freshmen include many campuses in the University of California system, Penn State University, the University of Minnesota and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as the private University of Pennsylvania. Enrollment of African American freshmen was down this year by 26 percent at the University of Georgia, 29 percent at Ohio State University and 32 percent on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois.

Enrollment of Hispanics has remained generally stable at major state universities over the past few years, except in California, where it has fallen at flagship institutions such as the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles.

The problem seems to be particularly acute at the more selective state universities, such as Michigan, which have introduced more complex admissions procedures to comply with the Supreme Court decision. Instead of awarding underrepresented minorities extra points, Michigan now requires applicants to write essays explaining what they would contribute to the "diverse" atmosphere on campus and how they have reacted to personal "setbacks" or "ethical dilemmas."

Admissions officers note that applications to Michigan for attending this year dropped among all groups of students, but particularly among blacks. The number of African American freshman applications to the university declined 28 percent, from 1,868 to 1,337. The number of black freshmen this year was the smallest since 1989, though the overall freshman class is the largest in Michigan's 187-year history.

"The application became significantly harder," said Jason S. Mironov, president of Michigan's 39,000-student body. "Unless you were absolutely sure you wanted to go to Michigan, many students were reluctant to spend a great deal of time with the application."

One problem, according to Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman, is that the June 2003 Supreme Court decision was viewed in some quarters as a defeat for the university even though it upheld the principle of affirmative action as a means to achieving diversity. "There are some misconceptions that we lost the case," she said, referring to the stipulation that the university had to overhaul its undergraduate admissions procedures.

Some students agree. "What a lot of people remember is a big case about race at the University of Michigan," said Gilbert, the first-year humanities student. "By the time the case was decided, most students had already decided where they wanted to go to school. Many students of color chose to go to historically black colleges, or to Michigan State."

Others say rising tuition and declining state subsidies may have discouraged lower-income students from applying to prestigious state universities such as Michigan. Although Michigan offers full financial aid packages to in-state students, its out-of-state costs are among the highest in the country.

"A lot of African Americans feel like they won't get in here and, if they do get in, they won't get the financial aid they need," said Tania Smith, a sociology senior who served on a university advisory group on student diversity.

The squeeze on lower-income students has been compounded in some states by a shift from need-based aid to merit-based aid. Georgia, for example, now awards only merit aid, which is tied to students' academic performance, rather than their financial need. Other states are following suit, as legislators respond to the concerns of their predominantly middle-class electorate. Federal Pell Grants to lower-income students have generally not kept pace with inflation.

"Low-income students are generally the most risk averse to loans," said Dell Dunn, vice president for instruction at the University of Georgia, which enrolled 418 African American students this year, down from 521 last year. "They don't like to borrow money because they are worried about paying it back."

In some states, the decline in minority enrollment has followed the outlawing of affirmative action programs. According to a study by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California, acceptance rates for black and Hispanic students fell sharply after Californians voted down affirmative action programs in 1996. The impact was greatest at the most selective campuses, such as Berkeley, where the acceptance rate for African American students fell from 49 percent in 1997 to 24 percent in 1998.

By contrast, in Texas, minority enrollment at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M has been creeping up, despite a 1996 court ruling outlawing affirmative action. Many experts attribute the increase to a 1997 law that guarantees high school seniors who graduate in the top 10 percent of their class admission to a state university. Although ostensibly race-neutral, the measure has had the effect of boosting the admissions chances of students attending heavily minority schools.

University of Michigan officials oppose the "10 percent plans" because they restrict admissions decisions to class ranking, excluding such factors as leadership ability, teacher recommendations and extracurricular activities. The University of Michigan officials also argue such plans discriminate against students from highly competitive high schools.

Critics say the admissions system at Michigan and similar state flagship institutions is more art than science and has become even more subjective as a result of the Supreme Court decision. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Michigan admissions officers say they base their decisions on a mixture of academic and nonacademic factors that reflect the "whole student."

"The point system, while flawed, was at least transparent," said Michael Phillips, editor of the Michigan Review, a conservative student publication opposed to affirmative action. "Now nobody is quite sure what is happening."

marite · November 22, 2004, 10:35am

Just an anecdote.

An African-American student friend of S has received a likely letter from an Ivy already. He is an NMSF and S describes him as "incredibly smart." Although the Ivy has a notification date of December 15, it seems to have decided that it needed to act fast in order to secure his acceptance.

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 11:16am

One explanation for the drop- NAS Report Presents Evidence of Need for Colorblind Admissions

Please click here for a new 50 page NAS report (PDF) that looks at results of recent social science studies and finds them undermining key arguments used by supporters of racial preferences in university admissions. :

<a href="http://www.nas.org/reports/river_change/affirm-act_soc-sci.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.nas.org/reports/river_change/affirm-act_soc-sci.pdf</a>

=======================================================

The following is the press release for this report undermining key arguments for race based AA

NAS Report Presents Evidence of Need for Colorblind Admissions

Web Site Coordinator, National Association of Scholars (609) 497-2480

<hr>

PRINCETON, NJ (18 October 2004) -- Click HERE for a new NAS report (PDF) that looks at results of recent social science studies and finds them undermining key arguments used by supporters of racial preferences in university admissions. Three of the studies surveyed were sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the very same organization that in the past has been most active in rallying public support for the current affirmative action policies in the academy.

In the eyes of much of the academic establishment, William Bowen and Derek Bok's The Shape of the River is the definitive defense of affirmative action. Released in 1998, this book, which was also sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, claimed that racial preferences at America's elite universities were crucial to the growth and maintenance of a healthy black middle class. In this new NAS report, which is titled "The Changing Shape of the River: Affirmative Action and Recent Social Science Research," Russell K. Nieli, a Lecturer in Princeton University's Politics Department, summarizes several studies that directly contradict this and other central claims of the Bowen and Bok book. The research Dr. Nieli summarizes has received little publicity from mainstream media, and is generally unknown outside a narrow circle of specialists.

In one of the studies summarized, it was found that after controlling for initial student input factors, including difficult-to-measure character traits like maturity and motivation, no advantage whatever was found of attending a more competitive college in terms of a graduate's future earnings. All of the earnings advantage of attending a more selective college was shown to lie in the superior caliber of the students that the more selective colleges can recruit, rather than any independent "school effect" of attendance at the institutions in question. This Mellon-sponsored study serves to undermine one of the major contentions of the Bowen and Bok book that in placing blacks in more selective colleges, affirmative action policies have greatly enhanced the economic position of the black middle class.

Other studies surveyed show that there is widespread hostility among white and Asian college students to the preferential treatment of blacks and Hispanics; that this fact heightens racial tensions on campus; and that it also increases the feeling on the part of the beneficiaries of racial preferences that they are academically inferior and incapable of a high level of academic performance. This last factor is shown to have a harmful effect on the academic achievement of black students -- who earn considerably lower grades in college than their SAT scores would predict -- and it is also related to the fact so few black students persist with an initial freshman-year intention to pursue a career in academic teaching. Material is also presented that suggests that affirmative action policies in colleges and graduate schools create a perverse incentive structure that discourages black and Hispanic students from working as hard as their white and Asian peers.

The study concludes with some reflections on why a policy that has been shown to have almost all of the pernicious effects that its many critics have always said it would have is still with us thirty years after its inception. Adopting the analysis of Shelby Steele, Dr. Nieli believes that a peculiar form of post-60s white guilt is at the heart of white administrators' support of affirmative action, and that the need to alleviate this guilt through symbolic gestures rather than to set wise educational policy is what sustains a clearly irrational set of programs whose multiple faults recent social science research has only too well illuminated.

The National Association of Scholars is America's foremost higher education reform group. Located in Princeton, it has forty-six state affiliates and more than four thousand professors, graduate students, administrators, and trustees as members.

sybbie719 · November 22, 2004, 12:19pm

The Dartmouth talked about ED applications dropping 9.1 % overall and the % of African Americans applying to ED dropping 21% this year.

There are a lot of reasons that African Americans are not applying to traditionally white school. I see my self reading some of the AA threads student possibly feeling damned if you do, damned if you don't. African American students bringing their "A" game to the table, and you still hear prople saying that "you only got in because you are black". Black with good SAT scores and grades are caught between both worlds, once feeling that you are not good enough and going back to the hood, where other blacks accuse you of "acting white". I remember when my daughter was young and we lived in the Bedford -Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, although she knew all the kids on the block, she was also just the kid who lived on the block as often she was either coming or going. I know as a parent I made a concerted effort to ensure that my child went to school in a diverse setting. Where the elementary school was literally across the street from my house, I commuted my daughter into the city for 13 years, because I knew a large number of kids would go to elementary, middle and high school all with in a 5 block radius.

I remember my neice turning down Georgetown, UVA and University of Richmond (where she was getting a free-ride) for Howard, because she said she wanted to feel embraced by other blacks. One of my daughter's best friend (after spending her whole educational life in prodominately white schools), applied to only HSBC's for pretty much the same reason. For many black students they want to feel valued and embraced as a person of color, they don't want to be viewed as the angry black man or woman nor do they want to feel as if they are the spokes person for the race.

I know that this issue is pretty much color blind but for many people money is a big issue, because many parents can't see their children take on huge amounts of debt as many are not really familiar with the financial aid process. It's not that they don't value education (they do) it is that they have a hard time wrapping their mind around $40,000 a year. I remember some of my friends asking about the cost of Dartmouth and they thought the $40,000 was for all 4 years, when I said, per year, their mouths, dropped.

Many african american parents also try to steer their kids into going to schools where you can get a job once you graduate. I know many kids who applied to the CUNY honors program, because they could go to school for free, get a laptop and a stipend. I have heard parents tell their kids, if you want to major in business, you can get a good education at Baruch, because every company in NYC knows about Baruch and they can save the money.

If you are not going to school in a big city, for young african american women, hair is a big issue. It was one of the first questions that my daughter asked when visiting schools. I know in my daughter's situation, she can't wait to get home this week so that she can go to the hair salon, because there is no place in Hanover where she can get her hair done. She did not want to wear braids and has worn her hair in a pony tail for the past 8 weeks. But she said after the Christmas break she will be going back with braids.

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 1:13pm

The opportunity to obtain a college education in America is not only about costs. In fact there are many low tuition colleges among the 4000 American institutions of higher learning. The drop in blacks, especially among the institutions which use race based AA, is explained by the miniscule number of top black students who are EQUALLY QUALIFIED to their fellow students at these top institutions, many of which are low tuition elite public colleges, such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, U.of Texas-Austin, the U.of Michigan, and the U.of Washington. The lesser qualified blacks may have serious reservations, other than economic ones, in applying to elite colleges for which they are not academically matched or for which they are underprepared and not fitted. There simply are not enough academically qualified blacks to attend the elite colleges. This presents a "cascading effect" in all the selective colleges to the less selective colleges, where there is immense competition for the pitiful numbers of qualified blacks. The solution for the problem of the scarcity of qualified blacks is not race based AA, but to better prepare blacks, at the k-12 level, before they enter the elite colleges or any college for that matter.

Please read the new NAS report, which is titled "The Changing Shape of the River: Affirmative Action and Recent Social Science Research," with the link given above.
Quote:

[The study concludes with some reflections on why a policy that has been shown to have almost all of the pernicious effects that its many critics have always said it would have is still with us thirty years after its inception. Adopting the analysis of Shelby Steele, Dr. Nieli believes that a peculiar form of post-60s white guilt is at the heart of white administrators' support of affirmative action, and that the need to alleviate this guilt through symbolic gestures rather than to set wise educational policy is what sustains a clearly irrational set of programs whose multiple faults recent social science research has only too well illuminated.]

Zuma · November 22, 2004, 1:21pm

Dartmouth tries to get early dibs on high-scoring blacks who seem to be reluctant matriculate at the Big Green given other choices. There are excellent privates that are willing to lend a hand and take low-scoring blacks (I'm talking 1050 SAT and even lower), with excellent financial aid, but their location makes them a hard sell.

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 1:27pm

Brown, as well as the rest of the Ivies admit low scoring and underperforming blacks, many of whom are from the middle and upper classes.

Blacks admitted with the race preference and AA are NOT EQUALLY QUALIFIED. If they were, they would not need PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT IN ADMISSIONS and AA would be totally uneccessary.

You can't have it both ways.

Certainly, there are blacks who are admitted to the Ivies and other competitive colleges with EQUAL QUALIFICATIONS, without the benefit of race based Affirmative Action and preferential treatment. They are pitifully very few in number, because the black applicant group , by en large, lack the qualifications on an equal basis with the rest of the admitted class. According to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education (JBHE), if lower standards and qualifications were not used for blacks with race based AA, blacks would only be between 1% to 2% of the highly competitive colleges, instead of the 6% to 8% blacks that are there now who were admitted by lower standards and qualifications, enabling thousands upon thousands of addittional blacks to attend the elite, highly selective and more competitive colleges.

These underprepared, lower qualified blacks really belong in the lower tier colleges and there is nothing wrong with this, because there are 4000 other institutions of higher learning in America, giving plenty of opportunity for blacks, as well as anyone of any race, to obtain a higher education, because over 98% of Americans who received college degrees were educated in these other schools. Students should attend schools commensurate with their qualifications and preparedness according to the qualifications of the students in each school. Every other American does, so why not blacks? There is abundant opportunity for everyone to acheive a college education in America in the year 2004, especially for blacks. There are the community colleges, city and smaller state colleges and other private colleges which collectively represent the best higher educational system in the world.

"An Asian student with a 3.5 GPA and 1300 SAT may decide not to waste an application fee on a school where his odds of admission are only one-tenth that of a preferred minority (black) with a 2.5 GPA and an 1100 SAT." if these schools made their admissions process more transparent and let the truth be known, exposing the perversity of the process and how demented, unfair and immoral it is. These schools will never reveal their admissions data according to each admissions standard used and the criteria met by each student, DISAAGREGATED by race and ethnic group, because this will expose the adcoms hypocrisy, their double and triple standards in admissions, by using different standards of admission for different groups. Asian Americans are required to meet higher objective standards of achievement, such as SAT scores and GPAs, and a higher holistic criteria than any other group, including blacks, latinos and whites, in order to be admitted. The holistic criteria consists of charcacter, leadership, special talents, awards (Intel Finalists, International Math, Physics and Chemistry Olympiad Gold Medals, national literary and music awards, etc.)motivations, perseverance, and the overcoming of obstacles, such as economic disadvantage and cultural and language differences for Asian Americans, from being one of the smallest racial minorities in America.

ohio_mom · November 22, 2004, 1:38pm

Ohio State had a huge drop in applications. Their solution was to add a bunch of essays so that they could evaluate kids on those in addition to scores. Seems that the essays were off-putting for everyone.

emeraldkity4 · November 22, 2004, 1:41pm

where?
I am a parent who is supporting the counseling staff at my daughters inner city high school by helping students to finalize their applications and essays. VIrtually all of the students I am advising are, low income black students who haven't been paying as much attention to academics as they could have been, but now want to make up for lost time and attend college. They are not adverse to attending schools in the south particulary if those schools have at least 50% black students.

I have been trying to find not only schools where they could be admitted, but schools where they can thrive. I get worried when I see that the school has only 9% graduating in 4 years :eek!

jamimom · November 22, 2004, 1:47pm

Sybbie, you would be a gem in advising many colleges and private highschools on issues facing African American students. Another issue I have too often seen in needyfamilies is that the student who is so qualified to go away to some "elite" school on aid, is so sorely needed at home. That same student may be the one who is helping the family in all kinds of ways, and the pressure is very high for him to stay at home and get that free tuition and laptop at a commuter school, and stay available for the family. And that becomes a tough choice, as I really cannot say point blank that it would be better for such a student to go away.

sybbie719 · November 22, 2004, 1:52pm

Jami,

Case in point, look at our girl Candi, who is torn and feeling guilty about being away at Yale because she is not at home helping her family who is still dependent upon her.

jamimom · November 22, 2004, 1:59pm

Oh, Sybbie, you are ever so right. I just dashed off that response without a thought. I have many private thoughts about URMs that cannot fully be disclosed here because it is just to much of a draw for flames, but I will tell you that many of the priorities that certain minorites put in life are true food for thought. Many times education has to take a back seat when you think about other things that could be important. In my personal situation, I took in other kids from my family that could not be cared for rather than letting social services have them. In doing so, it increased my kid count from 4 to 9, a big difference, and a big change in standard of living, and you can see how it would affect educational opportunities, personal attention, etc. This is not a sort of thing certain ethnic groups do, and it is a certain thing that is done all of the time in certain communities. These kinds of values and issues are well worth representation in my book in many elite communities well above and beyond SAT scores and grades.

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 2:00pm

The numbers of blacks who are highly qualified students such as Candi, although pitifully low and miniscule, have not decreased, but may have increased, regardless of her economic situation. This does not explain the decrease of blacks at some elite institutions, especially when these schools are bending over backwards to recruit them with race preferences and AA. There are other explanations for this decrease in blacks in elite colleges. Please read the "The Changing Shape of the River: Affirmative Action and Recent Social Science Research ", which give the reasons why "qualified" blacks who are NOT EQUALLY QUALLIFIED may not want to apply or matriculate at the elites, even when given a full free ride at these elite schools, while being admitted with lowered standards, simply because the are mismatched academically.

Your will understand the resons for the decrease in blacks when you click on:

<a href="http://www.nas.org/reports/river_change/affirm-act_soc-sci.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.nas.org/reports/river_change/affirm-act_soc-sci.pdf</a>

sybbie719 · November 22, 2004, 2:05pm

"I am advising are, low income black students who haven't been paying as much attention to academics as they could have been, but now want to make up for lost time and attend college."

Emerald, this is a big thing, as you are well aware. Its a common misconception that people feel as long as you have good grades junior and senior years. That is why I tell many of my friends with younger kids to encourage their kids to take their grades seriously from the beginning.

It's funny that the same thing happens in college, kids do not realize that their college grades follow them the rest of their lives and they find themselves at 40 trying to explain how they have learned from being an 18 year old with a 1.0 gpa

mini · November 22, 2004, 2:10pm

"Another issue I have too often seen in needyfamilies is that the student who is so qualified to go away to some "elite" school on aid, is so sorely needed at home. That same student may be the one who is helping the family in all kinds of ways, and the pressure is very high for him to stay at home and get that free tuition and laptop at a commuter school, and stay available for the family. And that becomes a tough choice, as I really cannot say point blank that it would be better for such a student to go away."

I have seen that, too. Princeton, for example, thinks it has a good thing by eliminating loan expectations, and they have. That's well and good for middle income ($50-75k) students. But what impacts low-income students most greatly are workstudy and summer income expectations, all of which have increased at most (but not all) prestige schools in the past several years. Income that might otherwise be needed and utilized at home now goes toward tuition.

Ruth Simmons at Brown has now recognized this, and rather than go the Princeton route (which was aimed at middle class students), has turned all first-year workstudy expectations for low-income students into grants. (and so any work these students do can actually result in funds being sent home.) Of course, it's just a start, and not nearly enough, but at least she is thinking clearly.

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 2:14pm

BLACKS DON"T HAVE TO "GO AWAY" IN ORDER TO ATTEND AN ELITE SCHOOL. They could easily stay near their homes to attend an elite school.

The drop in blacks, especially among the institutions which use race based AA, is explained by the miniscule number of top black students who are EQUALLY QUALIFIED to their fellow students at these top institutions, many of which are low tuition elite public colleges, such as UC Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, U.of Texas-Austin, the U.of Michigan, and the U.of Washington. The lesser qualified blacks may have serious reservations, other than economic ones, in applying to elite colleges for which they are not academically matched or for which they are underprepared and not fitted. There simply are not enough academically qualified blacks to attend the elite colleges. This presents a "cascading effect" in all the selective colleges to the less selective colleges, where there is immense competition for the pitiful low numbers of qualified blacks. The solution for the problem of the scarcity of qualified blacks is not race based AA, but to better prepare blacks, at the k-12 level, before they enter the elite colleges or any college for that matter.

When these admitted blacks with lowered standards are academically mismatched for these elite schools, a tremendous disservice is done to them, and many more blacks are realizing this by choosing not to attend.

Race based AA is not done in the best interests of lower performing blacks, but maily to soothe and placate the extreme quilt feelings of white liberals over the ensalvement of blacks 150 years ago and the Jim Crow Laws.

jamimom · November 22, 2004, 2:21pm

And Mini, I read your posts with great interest, particularly the work and research you do regarding applicants coming from homes with low income. I see a great divide in that population of students, in that there are kids in that category where their parents are willing to sacrifice everything to get the education for their kids (and the kids do take it all, growing up feeling this is the way it should be) and there are families that take the problem on as a family with the kids taking on a share of the responsiblities which cuts into building a college profile in terms of taking difficult courses, grades, test scores. A child in a low income bracket who has had 10 years of intensive, expensive private music lessons, test prep and every resource the parent could provide to pave his way into a top school is a whole different situation than a child in that same bracket who is often the one in the family getting the least of the resources because he may not so urgently need them, and is also the one helping a lot because he is the most able. Having lived in a world of postgrad families, I have seen kids whose families had little money, but still had every advantage academically.

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 2:30pm

Again, the numbers of blacks who are highly qualified students, such as Candi, although pitifully low and miniscule, have not decreased, but may have increased over the last decade, regardless of their economic situations. This does not explain the decrease of blacks at some elite institutions, many of which are low cost elite public schools close to their homes, especially when these schools are bending over backwards to recruit them with race preferences and AA. There are other MORE PLAUSIBLE explanations for this decrease in blacks in elite colleges. Please read the "The Changing Shape of the River: Affirmative Action and Recent Social Science Research "

rattle1 · November 22, 2004, 2:51pm

Jamimom,

Anecdotes don't prove anything, but social research from the Mellon Foundation does.

An excellent explanation for the recent decrease of blacks on elite campuses, both private and public ones (low cost and close to home), is given by the quote:

[Other studies surveyed show that there is widespread hostility among white and Asian college students to the preferential treatment of blacks and Hispanics; that this fact heightens racial tensions on campus; and that it also increases the feeling on the part of the beneficiaries of racial preferences that they are academically inferior and incapable of a high level of academic performance. This last factor is shown to have a harmful effect on the academic achievement of black students -- who earn considerably lower grades in college than their SAT scores would predict -- and it is also related to the fact so few black students persist with an initial freshman-year intention to pursue a career in academic teaching. Material is also presented that suggests that affirmative action policies in colleges and graduate schools create a perverse incentive structure that discourages black and Hispanic students from working as hard as their white and Asian peers.]

Jamimom or Mini, did these points above from social research ever occur to you?

mini · November 22, 2004, 3:26pm

This divide exists among higher income students and families as well, of course. The difference is that in the case of the higher income students, having neglected their kids for 17 years, parents are free to buy their kids the way into college. No, not at the top 200 schools. But once you put those aside, admit rates are around 90% ,and colleges and universities are desperate for warm bodies, of any color or shape, that can pay their way.

We, of course, homeschool. We easily spent per year on the kids more than we are paying per year at Smith. The way we look at it, educationally speaking, is there is nothing more important going on at Harvard, Yale, Smith, or Williams than is happening in our own backyard.

Meanwhile, some parents complain that they have to mortgage their houses to send their kids to college (though I know some in California who believe that is by far the preferred method of financing a college education, and getting a tax write-off for it in mortgage payments). That's fine - low-income folks generally don't have houses to mortgage.

We don't consider ourselves poor by any means (I help pay for the housing, feeding, clothing and education of 220 kids in rural India - now THEY are poor). We certainly don't feel poor. But my wife and I figured out one day that we could sell absolutely everything we own and still not be able to pay for the kids' college educations at the snooty places.

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