Quote:
Originally posted by bilmore
I've read the abstract, and the authors' discussions. Premise: artificially place a whole line of people into slots in schools that they would not have normally tested/applied into. (The model being, the schools are ranked from the top/hardest/most-prestigious to the bottom/easiest/least-prestigious. Like mine.) Because they are placed into a rigor for which they may not be prepared through their past learning, they end up occupying the lowest rungs of the academic ranking in their respective schools, with the concomitant rates of failure and nonachievement. Without the artificial placement, people would go into the schools which they tested into more appropriately - i.e., the line of applicants would still mostly get in to some school, but the line would shift down to fill lower-ranked slots in lower-ranked schools. They would all thus occupy a more random pattern of ranking within those schools, with a higher passing rate and a more fruitful learning experience. Thus, more successful, graduated, bar-passed lawyers. (The failure rate among people admitted through any kind of AA criteria is very high - theory is, they get in, but aren't prepared to swim in that pool.)
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All kinds of assumptions in there. For example, I am aware of a certain highly regarded liberal arts instiatution where after-the-fact statistical analysis showed that the greatest preference in admissions (e.g., the most significant deviation from each of two measures - a class ranking measure and an SAT measure) was given to alumni children, followed (in rough order) by athletes, prep school graduates, artists, and minorities, with a negative deviation for certain minorities. Deviations differed when using class ranking and SATs in different circumstances, so for example Prep schools had a big deviation on class ranking but a much smaller one on SAT scores (presumably because prep schools are themselves competitive so going deeper in the class lands you better students than in a school that takes everyone in a given town). Minorities as a whole received a preference that did only a little bit more than offset the bias created by preferential treatment for others, particularly alumni kids (mostly white) and preppies.
So, in this setting, the odds are that even though minorities receive preference, it is less of a preference than are given to many other groups, and so in terms of where they will stand in the class, they are likely as a group close to average. Certainly they will not be struggling as much as the alumni kids or athletes.
Also, within the school, as with any school, one can take a wide range of courses -- I know that in at least one law school admissions office, for example, graduates in the History and Philosophy departments get "bonus points" for degree of difficulty; it is not hard to find a radically different range of challenges, and frankly, as always, the kids taking the dweeb classes may find as much or more social stigma attached than those taking the guts.
So, I suspect his article makes interesting cocktail party conversation, but would be shocked if he actually had a point he could prove. On the other hand, I think someone probably could prove the point that if you stopped granting bias to overwhelming white groups (alumni kids, preppies), that would have a more positive impact on minority advancement than just about any preferences that could be given.
