New college admission standards recommendation to further diversity at the high school level
Educators and people who set education policy are constantly tweaking college admissions standards in order to reach the holy grail of enough diversity, or the right kind of diversity. Here’s an article appearing in The Atlantic which offers a new and unusual suggestion. See if you can follow the logic here:
Universities tend to give a leg up to affluent, high test-scoring suburban [secondary] schools””which then incentivizes wealthier parents to seek out segregation. But what if those incentives could be changed?
And thus Scott-Railton’s idea was born: to take demographics of schools into account in college admissions””giving priority to applicants who attended schools with a certain threshold of low-income students (say, above 40 percent). In other words, admissions officers would look favorably on students who attended an economically integrated school, much as they do those who have had unusual travel experiences or outstanding extracurricular achievements.
In a nutshell, he argues, this idea would drive integration in three ways: It would create an incentive for middle class and wealthy parents to enroll their students in socioeconomically integrated schools, it would create countervailing considerations for white parents considering leaving currently integrated school districts, and it would provide an incentive for private schools to enroll more low-income students.
But the issue for most parents isn’t race per se: it’s the academic and social atmosphere of a school. The article completely ignores that fact—as well as the fact that affluent black parents in good school districts tend to have “white flight” (black flight?) if the demographics of the school change in a negative way by taking in a lot of low income students (I have a post about that somewhere; don’t have time to locate it now).
The reality is that economic demographics (which is what we’re talking about here) are linked with a host of things that affect the atmosphere—academic and social and even safety—of a school. I don’t think some slight advantage in the admissions process at colleges would compensate in most affluent parents’ minds (white or black parents) for what they perceive as a reduced atmosphere for learning and an increased amount of danger in the high school environment in which their children spend four long years. If the people proposing this new college admissions policy think it will stop white (or affluent) parents from pulling their children out of schools they perceive as creating a bad academic and/or social environment, they’ve got another think coming.
Another thing the article completely ignores is the issue of what happens to students who are given a leg up in the admissions process and who would not get into the college if they hadn’t been given those extra points. They tend to not succeed in college, or at least to have a great deal of difficulty there. This phenomenon has been documented many times, including in The Atlantic:
Over time, it has become a political lightning rod and one of our most divisive social policies. It has evolved into a regime of racial preferences at almost all selective schools — preferences so strikingly large and politically unpopular that administrators work hard to conceal them. The largest, most aggressive preferences are usually reserved for upper-middle-class minorities on whom they often inflict significant academic harm, whereas more modest policies that could help working-class and poor people of all races are given short shrift. Academic leaders often find themselves flouting the law and acting in ways that aggravate the worst consequences of large preferences. They have become prisoners of a system that many privately deplore for its often-perverse unintended effects but feel they cannot escape.
The single biggest problem in this system — a problem documented by a vast and growing array of research — is the tendency of large preferences to boomerang and harm their intended beneficiaries. Large preferences often place students in environments where they can neither learn nor compete effectively — even though these same students would thrive had they gone to less competitive but still quite good schools.
We refer to this problem as “mismatch,” a word that largely explains why, even though blacks are more likely to enter college than are whites with similar backgrounds, they will usually get much lower grades, rank toward the bottom of the class, and far more often drop out. Because of mismatch, racial preference policies often stigmatize minorities, reinforce pernicious stereotypes, and undermine the self-confidence of beneficiaries, rather than creating the diverse racial utopias so often advertised in college campus brochures.
The problems are vast, and the sort of tweaking recommended by Scott-Railton and company seem doomed to failure, or to make the problem even worse.
Trying to elevate failure is always doomed to failure. Lots of money is spent and lives ruined to make sure that this always happens when dealing with a basket of failures.
What the kings of idiocracy always do is to figure out, under the guise of “helping increase diversity and equality,” is a large underclass the primary failure of which is a failure to thrive.
The Mismatch article at The Atlantic originally had comments, but as The Atlantic got rid of comments several months ago, there are no longer any comments to peruse. Not my father’s Atlantic- not the one he subscribed to.
The Atlantic article pointed out that when UCLA ended affirmative action, the number of black students was cut in half, but the number of black graduates stayed the same.
In his book on affirmative action programs worldwide, Thomas Sowell pointed out that the beneficiaries of affirmative action programs tend to be the already better off members of the target group.
I am reminded of a book I read some two decades ago about a black freshman math student at Brown. He was the prototype of those whom affirmative action programs would seek to boost up. He attended high school at a horrible school in Washington DC. His mother was single. He took great initiative to learn math on his own, as the teaching he got in school was not good. For his efforts to learn, his peers disparaged him.
After his junior year in high school, he attended a summer math and science program at MIT for minority students. He found himself behind his peers in the program, who tended to have college graduate parents and attend suburban schools. He did his best to keep up, but it wasn’t enough. At the end of the program, he was informed that MIT would probably not be interested in admitting him- which is NOT the message his better prepared peers got.
He ended up at Brown and got a math degree, so he didn’t end up that bad.
Nonetheless, his experience at the MIT summer program supports Sowell’s assertion that affirmative action programs tend to help the better off.
I think there is probably also a social mismatch involved. There is a lot to adjust to when you go to college: the academics, making friends, finding new interests on campus. It is probably better to go one step at a time and achieve success in the academics. You can worry about where to eat on your Aspen ski vacation later.
Diversity is a ruse to force equal outcomes. They believe that all people are equally talented and able to do college work. In their eyes the only reason perfect proportions of the races aren’t attending college is because of racism or discrimination. Oh, that it were true. Then their cockamamie plans might be worth something.
In the 1950s my state university allowed all in state high school graduates with a C average or better to matriculate. No other requirements. The weeding out was done in the first two years. Those who graduated were those able to do the work. A simple meritocracy.
I went to college to escape being drafted. I stayed in college because I could do the work. I graduated with a degree in oil exploration geology. I had several job offers waiting on graduation. (I was still single, the Korean War was still on, and that made me draft bait.) When my draft notice arrived at my mother’s residence (far from where I was working in the oil patch) she tipped me off and I quickly enlisted in the Navy. When my draft notice actually got to me, I already had a report date for Navy OCS.
College is not a secret ticket to success. For me life has been a never ending education. Training, testing, study, and staying on top of the requirements of the Navy/airline pilot profession continued until the day I retired. The college degree was a base on which to build. It seems to me that many people seem to think that getting the degree is a magic ticket to success. Nope, it’s only the beginning. And that’s why college should be about meritocracy and not diversity.
J.J. Says:
June 3rd, 2018 at 12:14 am
Diversity is a ruse to force equal outcomes. They believe that all people are equally talented and able to do college work. In their eyes the only reason perfect proportions of the races aren’t attending college is because of racism or discrimination.
* * *
At a blog post I read today but can no longer find, the author made the point (roughly paraphrased) that, before the advent of Affirmative Action’s landslide admittance rates, minorities could look at their members who DID succeed in college (or the professions) and see very highly talented individuals (because they had to not only meet, but often exceed, the standards of their peers).
So, they made the “cargo cult” connection that the determinant of success was simply attendance at college, and NOT the innate ability or hard work of the graduates.
So when they got admitted (whether by merit or AA), they naturally expected to do just as well in classes and on graduation as the earlier role models.
Well — sad to say — most people really are just average, and when the average person doesn’t get above-average results, it just HAS to be someone else’s fault.
Hah – if I could edit comments, I would add that they obviously believe Garrison Keillor’s old saw that “all of the children are above average.”
Diversity is “color” judgment or discrimination, a progressive form of racism, sexism, etc., which enables political, social, and legal leverage, while ignoring and often normalizing the purported problems (e.g. bias, prejudice). Another wicked solution a la Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic, and congruent, but lower in order than elective abortion (capital punishment of the wholly innocent, disarmed, dismembered, decapitated, and denied a voice to protest), first, and slavery (redistributive an dependent change), second. Another euphemism that denies its poor character at best, and liberalism (i.e. divergence) at worst. Principles matter.
Frequently the beneficiaries of AA are not only the better off members of the group but more and more often frauds.
Jamaican Americans and African children of dictators and mixed race white looking people like Val Jarrett or Obama types steal the set asides
J.J.
That is funny. I went to a state school with the same admission requirement. The first day of school all the freshmen assembled in the auditorium for a presentation and the President of the university addressed the students and told them to shake hands with the person on either side of them. He said that you better get to know them now because by the next semester half you you will be gone. They were ruthless in culling the student body. I’m an EE and the head of the department told us that is we didn’t study and make good grades, they would replace us with somebody who would. They weren’t joking either.
Some fifty years ago the Coleman Report found that the most important variable in how kids do in grade school is the education and occupation of their parents. The next important variable is the parents of the other kids in the room. That is why putting your kids in schools with mostly poor kids is a bad idea. Middle class parents understand this.
I just learned from a usually accurate source the FAA is engaged in grotesque AffirmAction. Applicants to become air traffic controllers (ATC) are assigned points towards a grade necessary for admission to ATC training.
Turns out one is awarded ten points for being a high school athlete, but only two points for having any aeronautical knowledge or experience, such as having a private pilot license ( granted by the FAA, which runs the ATC school !!)
This good news will make me fly commercially even less.
Frog.
Tucker Carlson spilled the beans on this program on his show. He thought it was done under the Obama administration to increase diversity.
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