Posted on 09/07/2024 3:18:36 PM PDT by grundle
https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2024/09/07/affirmative-action-3/
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
September 7, 2024
Here are two very different points of view on affirmative action.
This 7 minute video from MSNBC is called “MIT diversity data confirms ‘worst fears’ about end of affirmative action.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIyZL_I0ysQ
The MSNBC video includes this chart:
This article from the Atlantic is called: “The Painful Truth About Affirmative Action: Why racial preferences in college admissions hurt minority students — and shroud the education system in dishonesty.”
Now here’s my take on this issue.
The MSNBC piece only seems to care about how many students get admitted to elite colleges. It does not seem to be concerned about how many of them graduate vs. how many of them drop out.
By comparison, the Atlantic piece cares very much about their graduation rate. The article points out, with multiple real world example, that affirmative action sets students up for failure by “mismatching” them to the wrong college.
If a student’s academic abilities are in the 90th percentile, then she or he is best off going to a college where the other students are in the 90th percentile.
But if this very same student goes to a school where the other students’ academic abilities are in the 99th percentile, then he or she is being set up for failure and dropping out.
That’s the argument from the Atlantic, and it’s an argument that MSNBC and other supporters of affirmative action ignore time and time and time again.
If all we care about is admission rates for students, then affirmative action is a great idea.
But if we are concerned about graduation rates for students, then affirmative action is a horrible idea.
I’m going to finish this blog post with an except from the Atlantic article, and I’d like to point out that this is the exact kind of thing that the supporters of affirmative action never talk about:
A powerful example of these problems comes from UCLA, an elite school that used large racial preferences until the Proposition 209 ban took effect in 1998. The anticipated, devastating effects of the ban on preferences at UCLA and Berkeley on minorities were among the chief exhibits of those who attacked Prop 209 as a racist measure. Many predicted that over time blacks and Hispanics would virtually disappear from the UCLA campus.
And there was indeed a post-209 drop in minority enrollment as preferences were phased out. Although it was smaller and more short-lived than anticipated, it was still quite substantial: a 50 percent drop in black freshman enrollment and a 25 percent drop for Hispanics. These drops precipitated ongoing protests by students and continual hand-wringing by administrators, and when, in 2006, there was a particularly low yield of black freshmen, the campus was roiled with agitation, so much so that the university reinstituted covert, illegal racial preferences.
Throughout these crises, university administrators constantly fed agitation against the preference ban by emphasizing the drop in undergraduate minority admissions. Never did the university point out one overwhelming fact: The total number of black and Hispanic students receiving bachelor’s degrees were the same for the five classes after Prop 209 as for the five classes before.
How was this possible? First, the ban on preferences produced better-matched students at UCLA, students who were more likely to graduate. The black four-year graduation rate at UCLA doubled from the early 1990s to the years after Prop 209.
Second, strong black and Hispanic students accepted UCLA offers of admission at much higher rates after the preferences ban went into effect; their choices seem to suggest that they were eager to attend a school where the stigma of a preference could not be attached to them. This mitigated the drop in enrollment.
Third, many minority students who would have been admitted to UCLA with weak qualifications before Prop 209 were admitted to less elite schools instead; those who proved their academic mettle were able to transfer up to UCLA and graduate there.
Thus, Prop 209 changed the minority experience at UCLA from one of frequent failure to much more consistent success. The school granted as many bachelor degrees to minority students as it did before Prop 209 while admitting many fewer and thus dramatically reducing failure and drop-out rates. It was able, in other words, to greatly reduce mismatch.
Feelings vs. evidence. Intentions vs. results. Posturing and virtue signalling vs. achieving real progress.
I have had money taken from me for 50 years to try and “even” things out.
50 years
Five decades
Half a century
If they can’t fix it in 50 years, then they need to stop trying.
Would you keep bringing back plumbers that couldn’t fix a leak in your house for 50 years?
Well said. It’s not about solving the “problem.” It’s about taxation, revenue and control. DEI is the new manifestation of the same.
wouldn’t it be novel if a middle ground could be found between accepting students based on DEI qualifications to meet specific set “BEFORE admission” numbers and those who actually graduate by hard work in spite of a “tipped scale”.
Supporters of Equity also focus on graduation rates.
That Atlantic article is from 2012. Could it be published today? Or would it only survive in a “crackpot” website which the Atlantic would then demand to be cancelled?
I just discovered my duplicate wording of “opponents of” in the title, and I have fixed it at my blog.
If that were true, then they would be against affirmative action.
This is the excerpt from the Altantic that was included. Supporters of DEI always ignore this kind of thing:
A powerful example of these problems comes from UCLA, an elite school that used large racial preferences until the Proposition 209 ban took effect in 1998. The anticipated, devastating effects of the ban on preferences at UCLA and Berkeley on minorities were among the chief exhibits of those who attacked Prop 209 as a racist measure. Many predicted that over time blacks and Hispanics would virtually disappear from the UCLA campus.
And there was indeed a post-209 drop in minority enrollment as preferences were phased out. Although it was smaller and more short-lived than anticipated, it was still quite substantial: a 50 percent drop in black freshman enrollment and a 25 percent drop for Hispanics. These drops precipitated ongoing protests by students and continual hand-wringing by administrators, and when, in 2006, there was a particularly low yield of black freshmen, the campus was roiled with agitation, so much so that the university reinstituted covert, illegal racial preferences.
Throughout these crises, university administrators constantly fed agitation against the preference ban by emphasizing the drop in undergraduate minority admissions. Never did the university point out one overwhelming fact: The total number of black and Hispanic students receiving bachelor’s degrees were the same for the five classes after Prop 209 as for the five classes before.
How was this possible? First, the ban on preferences produced better-matched students at UCLA, students who were more likely to graduate. The black four-year graduation rate at UCLA doubled from the early 1990s to the years after Prop 209.
Second, strong black and Hispanic students accepted UCLA offers of admission at much higher rates after the preferences ban went into effect; their choices seem to suggest that they were eager to attend a school where the stigma of a preference could not be attached to them. This mitigated the drop in enrollment.
Third, many minority students who would have been admitted to UCLA with weak qualifications before Prop 209 were admitted to less elite schools instead; those who proved their academic mettle were able to transfer up to UCLA and graduate there.
Thus, Prop 209 changed the minority experience at UCLA from one of frequent failure to much more consistent success. The school granted as many bachelor degrees to minority students as it did before Prop 209 while admitting many fewer and thus dramatically reducing failure and drop-out rates. It was able, in other words, to greatly reduce mismatch.
The Atlantic still publishes plenty of articles that are critical of far left ideology. I think they could still publish this one today.
Admission and graduation rates are legitimate places to focus attention, but there’s a more subtle one that merits attention - the rigor of the majors the students who are the focus of ‘Equity’ admissions gravitate to. I don’t have stats to support this contention, but I’d bet a paycheck a disproportionate number of these kids bail out of rigorous disciplines (like those in the STEM fields) and end up in relatively bogus areas (like various ‘victim studies’ majors). And at a place like MIT where it’s tough to find a b*llsh*t major to hide in, that trend is going to have some noticeable consequences.
There’s now a fashionable trend at some universities to add “diversity” considerations to math and science courses, and I suspect it’s the direct result of attention to phenomena like that described above.
A few years back, I had a conversation w/ a major donor to a private urban black high school. The guy bragged to me that the school’s graduates’ college matriculation rate was 98%.
I asked him what was the rate of college graduation from that cohort. He hadn’t even considered the question. To his shock, I explained to him why he hadn’t been told.
AA denies qualified students admission, giving it to the lesser qualified based on skin color, genitals or sexual behaviors that have zero predictive qualities to student performance.
Lesser qualified cannot compete against non-AA admitted students, grades suffer, lose confidence, drop out/kicked out, but get to keep 100% of their loan obligations.
School gets to virtue signal about their admissions of non-qualified but still admitted AA students, that’s their reward. Leads to more gushing news articles, awards from their in-groups, goverment cheese, promotions for the DEI hires. But the vast majority of AA students who fail out/rejected qualified students? Tough sh*t for them.
Its not as if universities’ first obligation is to their students, or anything.
Discrimination is part of the human condition. We do it every day, decide what things are better than others based on our prior experience.
Discrimination based on race, sex, or sexual behavior is illogical since it has no predictive ability. It is done for revenge for sins never experienced, by persons never suppressed, against persons innocent of the percieved crime. That is what makes it evil.
You don’t understand Equity. It means: Graduate minorities regardless of whether they understand the material or not. Guarantee equal outcomes, period.
Wrong statistic. Today’s graduation rates are manipulated by lowering standards. Eighth graders in my father’s day were better prepared academically than today’s inner city high-school graduates.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.