Affirmative-Action Update: Where Are All the Black Students?

DiversityInc.com ^ | July 24, 2006 | Compiled by the DiversityInc staff

[radiohead]

Yes. You are correct.

[GSlob]

"Maybe, maybe not"
Probably not. There was a guy - Mikhail Botvinnik, former world chess champion [and a professor of electical engineering at an elite engineering school in civilian life]. He used to run a "postgraduate" chess school for prodigies - those who did start playing around age 3 and got to international master level by early teens. Many tried to start early, not many got to that level. Kasparov is his best pupil, so you could imagine the kind of selection he went through.

[kittymyrib]

What is the percentage of Asian students? Some how they missed that ethnic group. It's tough having to admit that one group is obviously superior to the rest.

[Stegall Tx]

Do you know where I could find stats on the number of black students who have GRADUATED from college (especially UCLA) within five or six years of high school graduation? I've looked around, but can't find anything.

Isn't that the basis for Thomas Sowell's denunciation of Affirmative Action? I.e., since it places good students in excellent schools, they are outclassed by their peers and consequently drop out at a disproportionate rate.

If the percentage of black students graduating UCLA rises while the number of black students decreases, wouldn't this support Dr. Sowell's premise?

[Myrddin]

You may recall that Prop 209 was started as a backlash by s couple conservative Bay-area profs because the Dem-controlled CA Assembly had passed a bill (vetoed by Wilson) requiring AA quotas to extend to grading and graduation.

As if that was ever going to fly in the classroom. I've seen the stats on exams in my senior sequence biochem classes at UCSD. The raw score spread across 400 students was 87 to 93 points. A couple people scored 98. Ten "non-contigous minor" students scored in the high 60's. If you know what you are doing, you're in the tight pack from 87 to 93. No affirmative action can make up for being 30 points down. You can bet the students angling for med school aren't going to purposely screw up a test to make non-performers look better either.

[Myrddin]

BTW, I agree with gaijin. You do rock. Keep up the good work. Encourage the top performers to go for the gold.

[Political Junkie Too]

Of nearly 10,000 black students who graduated from Los Angeles County high schools this past June, just 1 percent will attend UCLA... This year, black enrollment at UCLA will be the lowest in more than three decades—a 57 percent decline since 1996.

Is the proper statistic for this article enrollment or applications? Do we know what the black application rate was this year vs. the acceptance rate vs. the actual enrollment rate?

-PJ

[radiohead]

Do we know what the black application rate was this year vs. the acceptance rate vs. the actual enrollment rate?

Why find that out? Might it show that, for whatever reason, fewer blacks applied and therefore, fewer blacks were accepted? But that wouldn't support the libs need to show how blacks are always the victim, huh?

[Political Junkie Too]

I'm afraid that it will show that the high school graduates weren't qualified to apply, i.e., that they shouldn't have graduated high school in the first place. Also, I don't think this would be limited to blacks.

-PJ

[jude24]

Where's the Affirmative Action to balance the decrease of males attending college?

There's not been a decrease in male enrollment; male enrollment has only grown slower than female.