Flashbacks re Michigan's Affirmative Action vote

mini · November 10, 2006, 3:02pm

“The 65% black graduation rate at U-Michigan is inexcusable.”

Oh, just plot graduation rates against family incomes and you’ll see that it is easily explainable. For white students too.

“Although I understand that some URM students drop out to go support their families, they are the same ones eligible for need-based scholarship assistance.”

The overwhelming majority of students who don’t finish college nationally don’t finish because of family income/health-related problems. The students may have had need-based assistance; the families didn’t.

Given that, and the very high black graduation at UMichigan relative to family income status, I think one should also look at the income different for NON-graduates. Study after study shows signficant economic advantages for those who get “some college” vs. those who don’t, and, further, they are far, far more likely to complete school later. This is actually very easy to see. The average undergraduate student in the U.S. is 24.5 years old, and it isn’t because they are all entering college for the first time late.

ucsd_ucla_dad · November 10, 2006, 3:08pm

If whites think they’ll gain an advantage by the elimination of AA at top universities, they need to think again. They may just find themselves overshadowed by other racial groups that perform better in general and, with the elimination of racial bias as an admissions criterion, be admitted in much smaller percentages than before. This is what happend in California at the top UCs. Whites were among the most negatively impacted as Asians were admitted in far higher numbers. It’s eye-opening to see the before and after numbers.

The debate should not be a black versus white issue - especially with the changing demographics of the country. This actually presents a problem for the pro-AA viewpoint - how to define the ethnic formula for a particular school. Exactly what should the breakdown be for UM as far as percentages of white, AfAm, Asian, Hispanic, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, Middle Easterners, etc.? How frequently will the target quotas change? There’s a huge influx of Hispanics into this country who are considered URMs. This will cause the formula to change yearly and any affected groups will not be happy about it. At least the elimination of AA puts the ball in the individual’s court (to do well in K-12) rather than removing any control from them because of artificial ‘targets’.

kluge · November 10, 2006, 3:41pm

Collegialmom, here’s a portion of your earlier post:

The issue was the waitlisting of Gratz while a theoretical URM with identical grades and test scores would have been admitted. So if Gratz would succeed with her “qualifications” why do you assume that the theoretical URM wouldn’t?

interesteddad · November 10, 2006, 3:50pm

Yep. There are currenly more Asian American students at UCLA than white students. I know that Calif has a huge Asian American population, but I don’t believe it’s that huge.

There are actually signs at many schools of affirmative action for white students over Asian American applicants. For example, in CEO’s UVa study, the data indicates that a white student with the same SAT scores as an Asian American student is more likely to be admitted. That is exactly the argument made by CEO against affirmative action for blacks, but their study is notably silent on the issue of affirmative action for whites in the same data. Likewise, I have missed CEO’s concern for the obvious affirmative action favoring male applicants over female applicants.

Just so I am not misinterpreted, I philosophically hate affirmative action. However, I think the objective of having American higher education bear some resemblence to the ethnic makeup of the population is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that my daughter gets a “better” education (in the broadest sense) in a multicultural environment. So, we are faced with one of those big gray areas filled with imperfect options.

Overall, I don’t find it that troubling that a school would take the best “x” percent of white students, the best “x” percent of Asian American students, the best “x” percent of Latino/a students, and the best “x” percent of African American students. I certainly don’t think that approach is any less flawed than pretending that SAT scores are somehow more valid.

Frankly, I’m very impressed with the results of affirmative action at my daughter’s school. 11.6% of the incoming freshmen this year are African-American. Yet, the selectively for African-American students was quite high (37% acceptance rate, about the same as for Asian Americans) and the yield was only 6% lower than the overall yield.

For the most recent period available (Class of 2004), the 4-year black graduation rate was only 4% lower than for white or Asian American students. The 6-year rate is 15% lower, which may suggest that – once they take time off, they are gone.

In any case, as negative as I was about affirmative action a few years ago, I’m not seeing the problems in actual practice. If anything, my hunch is that we are seeing a significant cohort of very highly-qualified black students, probably reflective of second-generation elite college black students now moving through the pipeline.

smurfgirl · November 10, 2006, 3:57pm

100 students getting in off the waitlist!?!? I wish! Check out the Common Data Set, in the past 5 years not one person was admitted off the waitlist.

I was in the same situation as Jen Gratz and I still didn’t get in last year.

mini · November 10, 2006, 4:01pm

“For the most recent period available (Class of 2004), the 4-year black graduation rate was only 4% lower than for white or Asian American students. The 6-year rate is 15% lower, which may suggest that – once they take time off, they are gone.”

Or they found a place where they could go to school and be closer to their families. Or found a school where they could work virtually full-time and earn a degree at the same time. Or will go back to school later.

That 15% is not necessarily a sign of failure - either on the part of the student or the school. The student who had two years at Swarthmore may have benefitted no less (and perhaps in some cases more) than the student who graduated did in her first two years.

But I think the argument is different for public vs. private colleges. The public colleges have an obligation and an interest (in my judgment) to prevent the continuation of a permanent underclass - I would argue that it has an even greater interest in doing that than in accepting the students with the highest SAT scores or GPAs, especially since so much of the latter are caste/class determined. I would not make quite the same argument with private schools, where the argument in favor of diversity is that it enhances the private educations of ALL students (beginning with the white, full-freight ones.)

zoosermom · November 10, 2006, 4:37pm

Does anyone know how the change in California has impacted graduation/retention rates? If kids are ending up with more appropriate placement and graduating at a higher rate as a result, would that be a good thing?

michuncle · November 10, 2006, 4:44pm

The Gratz story is all about her failure to send back her wait-listed form to UMich. All the other 100+ wait-listed students who mailed back the one page form were admitted. She would have been admitted, but she didn’t make the effort. If I were looking for a poster child for an anti-AA campaign, she would not be it.

Southgate is part of the “Downriver” communities south of Detroit. It’s a series of working class suburbs that send their students to all of the surrounding universities and colleges in the area. And some of those students do go on to attend UMich. With some exceptions, these are basically white and working class areas.

It is true that if Gratz was a minority woman, she would have been admitted to UMich in 1995. It is also true that Gratz failed to follow up UMich’s offer to put her on their wait-list for admission.

In 2004, for example, 11,606 white students applied for admission to UMich. (Detroit Free Press, May 28, 2004). 7,599 white students were admitted and about half that number actually came to campus. Of URMs, some 2400 applied, 1,479 admitted and about half showed up. I’m guessing that these numbers and their ratios are fairly constant over time.

What has always bothered me is this: When a white student is denied admission, the complaint is that some under achieveing URM took his/her place. My question is: Given the overwhelming number of admitted white students, can a denied white student say with certainty that there are no other white admitted student with stats lower than their own? White students never ask if there were other white students that scored lower and were admitted.

As for the issue of wait listing: in 1995, all wait listed students were admitted to UMich for the Fall semester.

<a href=“http://fairchance.civilrights.org/press_room/details.cfm?id=47386[/url]”>http://fairchance.civilrights.org/press_room/details.cfm?id=47386</a>

collegialmom · November 10, 2006, 4:51pm

kluge: if you look at the original grid, there were URMs admitted with much lower stats than hers. Statistically she had a better chance of graduating per the discrepancy between black and white graduation rates.

As to her ACT scores, the difference in points given in the admissions system was only 2 points more given for an ACT of 36 vs 25 (her score) the year that Jennifer Gratz applied. The big differences were in the miscellaneous category. She did not meet any of these critieria in the misc category, which can be very significant:

Miscellaneous
(Assign only 1 option)
Criteria Met Points
Socio-economic Disadvantage 20
Underrepresented Racial/Ethnic Minority Identification or Education 20
Men in Nursing 5
Scholarship Athlete 20
Provost’s Discretion 20

Here is the link to the original point system that was the basis of the lawsuit. It is no longer allowable per the outcome of the lawsuit, however, was what the lawsuit dealt with.

<a href=“U-M Weblogin - Stale Request”>U-M Weblogin - Stale Request;

michuncle: Please send reference about the waitlist data, as I have never seen that; per Jennifer being offered the waitlist and her statistical chances of getting in from it.

This strict point system is over, but the same problems remain in the eyes of the Michigan voters. I really don’t think they will be giving up sson.

hoedown · November 10, 2006, 4:54pm

At UCB, the black graduation rate was on the rise under affirmative action.

In 1998 it was 71%. The most recent figures for UCB, which reflects the post-AA situation, is 70%. So no, at least at UCB, it did not go up after affirmative action was banned. It makes it hard to assert that affirmative action caused the rate.

As for the waitlist thing: yes, it happened. It was a very unusual year in that U-M decided to take everyone off the waitlist.

collegialmom · November 10, 2006, 4:58pm

michuncle: the original admissions grid is available. I don’t have time to find it now, but it does clearly show admissions stats by race, and yes, URMs were admitted with significantly lower grades and SAT scores. It is a scatter graph that was in many newspapers at the time of the lawsuit. After U-Michigan was forced to publish the scatter graph, the lawsuit was initiated because the very significant discrepancies shown. I will later try to find it for you.

Per Southgate. If you look at the data about Southgate, there is a relatively low rate of residents with either undergraduate or graduate degrees.

collegialmom · November 10, 2006, 5:03pm

In reading the article posted above about her chances on the waitlist, it totally begs the question about why the lawsuit was initiated, which was the vast discrepancy in admissions criteria being used for different groups at U-Michigan. Whoever wrote it obviously is biased and just wants to discredit her at this time, instead of focusing on the original reason for the lawsuit.

Anyway, the point system is gone. Are the citizens of Michigan satisfied now with U-M’s current admissions system? Apparently not. Should U-M spend millions fighting it? Are they using private time and money? I doubt it.

collegialmom · November 10, 2006, 5:47pm

From the NY Sun, October 2006:

"Discrimination against white and Asian applicants to the University of Michigan’s undergraduate, law, and medical schools is more severe than ever, a study released yesterday by the Center for Equal Opportunity says.

The study, based on admissions data released by the university in response to a 2005 Freedom of Information request filed by CEO, shows that the grades and standardized test scores of black and Hispanic undergraduates in 2004 and 2005 were far lower than those of their white and Asian counterparts.

The disparities persisted in the law and medical schools as well. According to the study, medical school applicants with MCAT scores of 41 and grade point averages of 3.6 in college science courses were admitted at rates of 74%, 43%, 12%, and 6% depending on whether the applicants were black, Hispanic, white, or Asian respectively.

A spokesman for the university, Julie Peterson, called CEO’s study “flawed” and “shallow” because the study does not take into account all the information considered in the admission process such as students’ high school curricula, extracurricular activities, and teacher recommendations. “CEO attempts to reduce human beings to a couple of simplistic numbers,” Ms. Peterson said in a statement yesterday…"

“What is really remarkable is that the weight given to race by the University of Michigan in its undergraduate admissions is actually heavier now than under the system that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2003”, the chairman of CEO, Linda Chavez, said yesterday in a statement. Mr. Clegg highlighted that today black students are 71 times more likely than white students to gain admission, whereas in 1999 they were 24 times more likely to be admitted."

I realize that the Sun is a conservative newspaper, but I don’t think that these statistical differences can be explained by ECs and teacher rec’d!

michuncle · November 10, 2006, 7:11pm

<a href=“http://www.oneunitedmichigan.org/pdf/gratzvsuom.pdf[/url]”>http://www.oneunitedmichigan.org/pdf/gratzvsuom.pdf</a>

This is a pdf document of Gratz vs Bollinger summary judgement (May 3, 1999). Basically, the judgement found Gratz did not send back the wait list form to the university and points out that all in-state applicants were admitted to UMich that year.

CM: Actually all of Michigan has a low rate of college graduates, not just Southgate.

interesteddad · November 10, 2006, 7:22pm

That’s the kind of “Voodoo Statistics” that permeate the CEO reports. That statement is SO misleading. They pick one arbitrary SAT number and then calculate the admissions odds for different color folk, making sure to pick the exact sweet spot in the statistics to come up with the most shocking result. Never mind that maybe only two black students got accepted with that SAT score. Never mind that they could find another “sweet spot” that shows white students being [insert schocking number here] times mor likely to be admitted than Asian American students…funny how CEO never highlights that one!

Unfortunately, JBHE does not have UMICH’s acceptance rate data in their latest issue, but let’s look at UVa as a reasonable proxie (and long-time fellow whipping boy of CEO).

UVa’s acceptance rate for African-American students for this fall’s freshman class was 48.45% compared to an overall acceptance rate of 36.8%.

A preference? Yes. But, hardly the “71 times more likely” bogeyman that CEO throws out there to cause nightmares for angry white voters about black armies pushing their sons and daughters off campus.

We are talking about such small numbers. UVa only had 1121 black applicants out of 16,300 total applications. Guess what? Female engineering applicants get accepted at higher than normal rates, too. But, it’s not like any of these school are teeming with female engineers OR African American students.

<hr>

BTW, having expressed my disdain for the CEO reports, I have been reading all of them for years. The underlying data is fascinating, not for reasons of affirmative action, but for understanding issues like out-of-state admissions at UVa. The reports were also helpful in understanding that a college applicant needs to consider the statistics in her or her own “cohort”. It was the CEO UVa report that made me understand that a white female from New England better have 75th percentile stats to consider the school a match and at least 50th percentile stats to consider a school a plausible reach. I’m not angry about that. It simply is what it is. It bothers me much more that an academically underachieving 25th percentile starting wide receiver gets admitted than a 25th percentile African American female.

collegialmom · November 10, 2006, 8:34pm

UVA actually has the highest black graduation rate of all US public universities and is not very comparable to U-M. It is really a model for all state universities and U-Mich could learn a lot from UVA in that regard. The JBHE should have recent data on many public universities. I think that U-Michigan is more comparable to most other state universities besides UVA.

Michigan varies region by region, in percent of college graduates per population.

For instance, in W. Bloomfield:
55% of West Bloomfield residents age 25 and older have a bachelor’s or advanced college degree, with average income of 91,000.

For population 25 years and over in Southfield, Michigan (not Southgate which is more blue collar) Median household income: $51,802

<pre><code>* High school or higher: 87.3%

Bachelor’s degree or higher: 36.7%
Graduate or professional degree: 15.1%
Unemployed: 4.6%
</code></pre>

From a report by the Gov of Michigan: “In leading states, the commission found that 40 percent of adults have an associate’s degree or higher and 33 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher. In Michigan, those percentages are 29 and 22 percent, respectively. Eight percent of the state’s adults have a master’s degree or higher, compared to the national average of 14 percent.”

So in Southgate, where Jennifer Gratz is from, the percent is about 1/2 the state average. Not underrepresented?

Again, the U-M case was filed after the point system admission data was released following a Freedom of Information request. University affiliated persons were shocked to find out the extent to which race was being used as an admission criterion. Whether Ms. Gratz could have been accepted from the waiting list that year is not particularly relevant to the overall intent of the case, which was to determine whether the point based admission system was legal. It was found not to be. Since the case was not thrown out because of the wait list issue, it must be because the judge did not think it was a determining factor in his ruling.

collegialmom · November 10, 2006, 8:58pm

From what it’s worth, here are the black graduation rates from major flagship universities in 2005 from the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Average black grad rate for all of them was 42%.

UVA 86%
UC-Berkeley 70
U-NH 70
UC-CH 69
UCONN 65
U-Mich 67
U-Del 63
U Sth Carolina 54
U-Mass 50
U-Wisc 49
U-AZ 38
U-Minn 35
U-Utah 32
U-Alaska 15
UDC 7

Black graduation rates are higher are top liberal arts colleges and Ivies (included in article linked below):

<a href=“http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html[/url]”>http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html</a>

JBHE conclusions (more detail in article):

"This journal has always placed emphasis on financial pressures as a major agent in producing low black graduation rates. But, undoubtedly, cultural and family issues bear a huge responsibility. Invariably, the critical problem is that a very high number of young blacks are entering college with wholly inadequate academic credentials, ambition, and study habits.

We accept the view that a very strong black student graduation rate is a good indicator of institutional success in racial integration of a given campus. But readers are cautioned that a lower graduation rate can be a positive indicator of a college or university’s willingness to take a chance on academically dedicated young black students with substandard academic credentials."

ucsd_ucla_dad · November 10, 2006, 9:59pm

Since UCLA was discussed somewhat in these posts - its grad rate for AfAms according to the article is 73% versus 88% for whites.

mini · November 11, 2006, 12:31pm

The black-white comparison is irrelevant. Run the numbers against socio-economic status. (I think, for example, that you’ll find that African-American students at UCLA are outperforming white students at the same family income increments. I’m pretty sure you’ll find the same at UVA and Berkeley.)

ucsd_ucla_dad · November 11, 2006, 1:42pm

^^ No doubt true.

Flashbacks re Michigan's Affirmative Action vote

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