Posted on 08/22/2022 5:08:31 AM PDT by karpov
Among the arguments against the policy of admitting students to colleges because they have the right ancestry—that is, they appear to come from “underrepresented” minority groups—is the fact that it can mismatch students and schools. At least sometimes, students admitted to fulfill perceived diversity needs are far behind their classmates in academic ability and find the level of rigor in the classroom to be overwhelming.
Opponents of racial preferences contend that mismatch has serious consequences that are usually overlooked. Defenders of racial preferences minimize the extent of mismatch and say that the benefits of increased diversity outweigh any costs.
A recent Manhattan Institute paper entitled “Does Affirmative Action Lead to ‘Mismatch’? A Review of the Evidence” usefully focuses attention on this issue. Author Robert VerBruggen sums up his findings: “The research is mixed but generally consistent with a framework in which mismatch can be a problem but is not always, depending on such factors as how severely a student is out of step with his peers and how demanding his academic program is.”
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
What is ‘mismatch’ in this context?
Are they assigning a new definition to a common word?
Bring back the draft for both sexes.leave out the LGBTQ wombats who can stay mismatched. And have a generous GI bill for education only available in vettedd conservative schools.
We seem to a mixed Aristocracy/Caste system. Doors are opened to you if you come from the right family or from the right demographic “stock”.
Granting privileges to these people is a way to strike back at the privileged people. Or something.
A close friend of mine was admitted to a college far beyond his academic level; this was nearly fifty years ago. After two years there, he transferred to a college that was much closer to the level at which he belonged.
When he came back from the elite college, he was a changed man. He had been one of the most popular guys in our school, participated in everything, sports, music, social life. At the elite school he hadn’t made any friends and was seen as not up to it academically. He was bitter and resentful, and his irreverent streak had turned into a mean streak.
He never got over it. He had a good life, got a good-paying job at an elite suburban school, wealthier than the one he and I grew up in. But he was never again the happy, fun person he had been. He saw racism everywhere, and sometimes (I witnessed this first hand) created it when none was present in order to try to get special treatment, a behavior he would have scorned when he was younger.
Didn’t Thomas Sowell cover this problem decades ago?
Yep.
He did. The problem is that colleges and programs have reduced standards in an effort to reduce the mismatch. Virtually every discipline outside of STEM has been destroyed, and the libtards are working hard to lower STEM standards. Professional schools such as medical and law schools? What a joke. Unfortunately, most students in college don’t belong there, which is why perhaps a majority don’t graduate and so many take “bogus studies” majors. On th eother hand, the unqualified students do provide a massive amount of cashflow to the colleges, which supports a massive and parasitic administrative apparatus.
Interesting article but a copout.
It is clear that the preferred conclusion is that racial preferences have no significant effect. That is despite examples of candidates with preference admissions taking easier majors, being passed and graduating despite repeated plagiarism and subpar work.
The author even alluded to the fact that schools lower their academic standards to keep those students from dropping out but...nothing to see here... move along ... it’s all good as long as we kowtow to the cant of the left.
Truth is that racial preference is based on the bigotry of low expectations and cheapens the degrees and standing of all people in the preference groups, many of whom would have excelled with or without preferences, but are grouped with those who were faux scholars.
It diminishes the academic excellence of all American graduates and the knowledge base of the American workforce.
It debases the currency of science & logic and corrodes morality, eviscerates meritocracy which is the basis of our classless society (where anyone can succeed with talent, drive, luck and above all hard work). But hey. It’s all good.
“A close friend of mine was admitted to a college far beyond his academic level; this was nearly fifty years ago.”
Yup—this really hurts everyone.
In the corporate world it can get truly cruel—I knew one black guy promoted to President of a company (way over his head) and he destroyed it in two years.
He would have been fine as a mid level manager.
“A man has got to know his limitations.”
It is a cruel distortion to put people in an environment where they can not keep up. They are blighted by the experience and do not reach their full potential.
It is the typical leftist ploy. The left looks benevolent and gains votes while causing permanent harm to the recipients of leftist favors.
Look at what they have done to the black family, as well as the entire American social system, with their self serving, destructive multigenerational welfare system.
At least in the private sector there are consequences.
In the public sector, not so much.
It is true that folks over their head in the public sector are not normally fired.
However, they suffer with the stress of chaos at the job due to their own incompetence.
It is a horrible way to live a life—and I have known several black folks in the public sector who died young from heart attacks—probably due to that stress.
Libralism rots everything it touches. Apparently all your friend was taught was wokism. How much undergrad education at so called elite schools is actually knowledge based is problematic. The son of a friend went to Swartmore and entered the architecture program knowing that an advanced degree would be necessary to become licensed. He found his BS was worthless as the core courses were all mush and irrelevance and no real STEM oriented architecture advanced degree program would even look at him. One grad school admin officer after actually going through his transcript with him class by class concluded by saying ‘I would get a lawyer and sue fraudulent representation,that school stole your parents money and four years of your life.’
Remember Mika Brezenski graduated from an Ivy. Your friend may have been just like this young man and have been throughly disorganized and confused and asking himself ‘was I dumb or was the school a scam’. I would go with your friend being scammed and given the ‘minority mind-fxck’ at this so called elite school.
PS:
My friend’s son, who is white, took years of angry stumbling around to ever get his bearings. He had a really bad time and blamed himself to such a degree he was deeply demoralized and had lost decade in getting his footing in the real world. He had had great parents and didn’t fall into the substance abuse trap although coming near to it and had two failed marriages. He is doing well now in the private sector but the period of college and after is still a dark cloud for him.
Being the ‘right’ race may have cushioned your friend’s entrance into the real world, although I see he became part of the problem by becoming an edumacationist. His two years of liberal ‘minority mind-fxuk’ did him permanent damage as he was well trained in what is now called ‘systematic racism’, which was the goal from day one of his arrival in the halls of ivy.
Thank you for your comment. I am a little lost because I don’t have a friend whose “right race” cushioned his entrance. It seems you are responding to someone else’s comment here. However we are in agreement that the goal of college according to the teachers & administration is no longer education, nor the ability to think or reason.
I am glad your friend’s son found his way. The loss of America’s moral underpinnings and the distortion of morality fomented by the left have made it very difficult for our young people to develop a moral compass and a sense of worth.
Sorry that was meant for Steely Tom. This is Monday
Yep. I often need to refocus on Mondays. LOL
Mismatch is where the student is way above or way below the academics of the rest of the college. If a kid with high stats goes to a lower level college, he has to work hard to find others on his intelligence level. That is easier than for the low performing kid at a school filled with much higher performing students, where he is always at the bottom of the class. It’s a disservice to send an underperformer to a selective college when a good state school would have given him the education he needs among a group of similar kids. The high performing kid at a less selective school can get scholarships and more attention from professors which can give him opportunities he may not have had at a selective school where he has to compete for everything including club memberships.
Ah, yes...the soft bigotry of moving standards.
Patronization.
Thank you.
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