<p>“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.)”</p>
<p>mini: do you have access to this statistiscal analysis? I know you work a lot with statistics. By the way, this would make for a lot of well-to-do African-Americans in Virginia vs Massachusetts, so do you have those stats of average incomes of black college students in these flagship state universities vs whites? Otherwise, it is just another guess, not a conclusion, and we all know what that is worth in statistics! (maybe the cost of the paper?)</p>
<p>UVa and UMass are two completely different categories of schools, serving two completely different categories of customer base. UVa’s most recent overall 6-year grad rate is 93% compared to 66% at UMass.</p>
<p>Almost universally, the most selective colleges have the highest grad rates. I think the prime reason is the correlation with family income and the correlation between SATs and family income that mini often cites. Well-to-do, high SAT kids in New England don’t go to UMass in large numbers.</p>
<p>Private colleges and universities are the UVa of New England. There are no “flagship” publics (like a UVa or a UMich) in New England. The high-end of the market has always been served by privates here, dating back to the early colonial days.</p>
<p>So then the question remain: wouldn’t it be better for these students to begin at less expensive 2 year community colleges, or the less demanding of their state’s college system, and transfer up to the more expensive, challenging flagship universities when they have more preparation?</p>
<p>I’m not sure how many of the graduating black students at UVA actually have done this, because they do have a transfer-in program from CCs at UVA.</p>
<p>“So then the question remain: wouldn’t it be better for these students to begin at less expensive 2 year community colleges, or the less demanding of their state’s college system, and transfer up to the more expensive, challenging flagship universities when they have more preparation?”</p>
<p>It would be a fair question IF (and where) they were leaving because of academic preparation. But, as noted, they are in many cases outperforming their white peers of the same socio-economic class. So, on the contrary, it is more likely that they are the ones who benefit most from having a more challenging curriculum and more challenging peers.</p>
<p>This is exactly what the UCal system found when looking at entering SAT scores. The CollegeBoard made (and makes) just a single claim for the SAT - it predicts first-year academic performance. But when they examined the data, the UCal trustees found that was true EXCEPT for Black/Hispanic students. In the case of Black/Hispanic students, they routinely outperformed what was predicted by the SATs, which is what caused the trustees to revamp their SAT policy.</p>
<p>Your question is truly a fair one, but the underlying data assumptions for it just aren’t there.</p>
<p>Here is the link to a WSJ article from today about the latest loomimg lawsuit claiming discrimination against Asian-Americans in college admissions. The link may be password protected. A quote from it:</p>
<p>“The University of Michigan may be poised for a similar leap in Asian-American enrollment, now that voters in that state have banned affirmative action. The Center for Equal Opportunity study found that, among applicants with a 1240 SAT score and 3.2 grade point average in 2005, the university admitted 10% of Asian-Americans, 14% of whites, 88% of Hispanics and 92% of blacks. Asian applicants to the university’s medical school also faced a higher admissions bar than any other group.”</p>
<p>“Where is this data for state flagship universities? I must have missed it being posted.”</p>
<p>That is precisely the data that none of the universities release, or at least directly. I’d love to see it, too. All we have is rather generalized data showing an association between higher graduation rates and lower percentages of Pell Grant recipients, and that is clearly insufficient. </p>
<p>But without such data, arguing that these students should be relegated to community colleges isn’t supported.</p>
<p>Whatever data has predictive value at state universities should be used to screen out the high percent of black or other students who are likely to drop out. </p>
<p>I think that for a lot of students, community colleges are a really good place to start, and at some flagship universities they are a direct path to acceptance for junior year. </p>
<p>In addition, a lot of community colleges offer very practical training that give students a faster track to earning sorely-needed money. They also are usually nearer to home, so that saves costs.</p>
<p>Is there a prejudice against community colleges or less highly ranked state universities? Many students have great, successful experiences there.</p>
<p>No prejudice. I think that any white students displaced by affirmative action admissions policies can expect to have successful experiences at community colleges, and perhaps even transfer to the flagship universities down the road!</p>
<hr>
<p>It seems to me that what we are really moving towards is a perverse system where the most expensive private colleges and universities are successfully educating a cohort of African American students approaching the percentages in the general population (13%), while flagship state universities move in the opposite direction towards campuses with essentially no black students (UCLA is already there, for all intents and purposes).</p>
<p>This will undermine the ability of the flagship universities to compete for students with the private institutions. For example, 1% or 2% black enrollment would have disqualified any school from my daughter’s list – prima facia evidence of a lack of diversity. </p>
<p>Conversely, the private colleges love it. I guarantee that Stanford and Harvard and Williams and Swarthmore and Duke and Pomona are thrilled to get the best and brightest African American students from the state of California now that they are no longer considered for admission to UCB or UCLA. It looks like there will be even more good black applicants at the privates as Michigan joins California in exporting their top black students. If the voters of California and Michigan believe this benefits their states or their universities, more power to them.</p>
<p>The biggest irony is that this is occuring at a time when we are seeing students from the first wave of aggressive Af Am recruiting by “white” schools taking the national stage: Barack Obama, Devall Patrick, and so on and so forth. The further irony is that the first wave of affirmative action relied heavily on enrolling significant numbers of “risk” students. That is not the case at the elite schools today. They are enrolling outstanding Af Am students.</p>
<p>“Is there a prejudice against community colleges or less highly ranked state universities? Many students have great, successful experiences there.”</p>
<p>Sadly, in my state it is. It used to be guaranteed that a successful community college graduate was guaranteed a place at the flagship state university. Now that has been discontinued, in favor of courting out-of-state full-pay transfer students. </p>
<p>But I hardly see that this matters much. Low-income minority students tend to do as well (or maybe a little better) than low-income non-minority students at flagship state universities, and if they happen to leave after two years, the state universities are more than ready to sell their places to the highest out-of-state bidders.</p>
<p>hoedown wrote “At MSU the gap is virtually the same as UM–although I don’t in fact know if MSU uses AA or not. Can anyone enlighten me on that?”</p>
<p>[here you go, hoe, from a post I wrote on MSU’s board; hope it helps]</p>
<p>My sources in MSU admissions are telling me things are uncertain. If by ‘hardcore’ smurfette means we don’t use a point system well, no, we don’t. But keep in mind, the hard-edged point system UM used for undergrad was struck down by the S.Ct as an illegal quota (a la Bakke, 1978), and yet the concept of Affirmative Action – that is, that schools can decide race be used (for underrepresented minority applicants) as a ‘plus’ factor ranking with other plus factors – was upheld. People are wrong to say Affirmative Action = quotas, because they don’t. Such is scare tactics used by wrongheaded individuals. UM, MSU or any prominent school has the right to determine diversity is a factor that enhances the educational atmosphere for all students, white, black, Asian, Latino, etc… But the Democrat and Republican candidates for governor (and the 2 parties), along with GM, Ford and a host of other Michigan companies, opposed Prop 2/MCRI… and yet, 58% of the electorate voted for it. It now sets a very racially polarizing atmosphere on campus and in the state. I agree with the State News (MSU’s student paper), Prop 2 is backward legislation.</p>
<p>… so again, to answer your question, the pat answer MSU officials are giving is that, no, Prop 2 doesn’t have an immediate known affect. But officials quietly are very worried of the long-term affects with their hands clipped for recruiting or outreach of racial minorities, and not just for students. While they’re not allowing themselves to be quoted, for now, many are quietly cheering UM on (as am I) in its quest to hopefully defeat of Prop 2 in the Supreme Court. But with Sandra Day O’Connor having retired and with she being the lead Justice backing UM law school affirmative action, along with the fact Bush has replaced her with a hard-line conservative in Sam Alito, the chances for UM’s success are greatly diminished.</p>
<p>… to follow up my post, the Republicans, Dems and Michigan corps are saying: ‘if it ain’t broke, why fix it.’ … Study after study on flagship U AA refutes 2 common myths of the anti-AA crowd: 1) when practiced within Bakke’s parameters (which UM wasn’t viz its undergrad admissions program and why it was struck down), AA does NOT = quotas, which are, and have been, illegal, 2) that black students who get in via AA are NOT taking seats from qualified white kids – just ain’t happening… But these war cries from the anti AA-crowd are designed to obfuscate not educate. And Michigan’s wiser pols (on both sides of the aisle – DeVos and Granholm opposed MCRI) and corporations thought such a vote would be bad for business; bad for academics in sending a hostile and divisive message by passing MCRI. This in a state that’s already struggling with the infamous ‘brain drain’ and the loss of tons of jobs…</p>
<p>“Conversely, the private colleges love it. I guarantee that Stanford and Harvard and Williams and Swarthmore and Duke and Pomona are thrilled to get the best and brightest African American students from the state of California now that they are no longer considered for admission to UCB or UCLA. It looks like there will be even more good black applicants at the privates as Michigan joins California in exporting their top black students. If the voters of California and Michigan believe this benefits their states or their universities, more power to them.”</p>
<p>Aren’t the black students who are recruited by these top private schools exactly the ones that would have gotten into the UCs without AA? I thought these students would be the ones who have the stats, and the ones that would be more affected by diminishing AA would have (slightly) lower stats?</p>
<p>“Sadly, in my state it is. It used to be guaranteed that a successful community college graduate was guaranteed a place at the flagship state university. Now that has been discontinued, in favor of courting out-of-state full-pay transfer students.”</p>
<p>That is different in some other states, such as Virginia and Maryland, which is why it is hard to generalize. </p>
<p>I don’t know how easy it is in Michigan, California or other states to transfer from community college to 4 year schools?</p>
<p>I have reviewed the original CEO data and I can tell you that this “cell” they are talking about–with the 1240 SAT and the 3.2 GPA? There were almost no applicants in that cell. That’s a pretty specific set of criteria, and it also represents a fairly atypical U-M applicant. I believe it was around 20, the vast majority of them being non-URMs. So you have to realize that the CEO is publishing precise-seeming statistics that are, in fact, based on hypotheticals. They’re extending their regression down into an area where U-M simply doesn’t get very many apps. It’s not invalid to use regression to make statements about things that haven’t actually happened, but as you get out to the edges of that imagined regression line, I think your conclusions are more and more speculative.</p>
<p>Is there a differential between a borderline URM and a borderline non-URM? You bet. That’s what a boost is about. But their percentages are open to question, especially when they are based on a sample of less than 5 black applicants.</p>
<p>As someone else said, it’s all about how you look at it. If you look at the selectivity for black applications and white applications, it’s pretty similar. In some years it was even more selective for black applications than white applications. I don’t know if any outlets published Gurin’s response to the CEO report, but she covered this. </p>
<p>As for CC transfer: U-M & MSU have articulation agreements with all the community colleges. Several hundred students transfer to UM from the state’s 2-year colleges each year. One concern I have with community colleges as a “track” for underpriveleged kids is that attending community colleges can depress aspirations. Community colleges typically serve a wide range of students with very different goals, and exposure that peer group, instead of that more typically found at flagship universities, can change the ambitions of college bound students. CCs are a great option for some students (and many do succeed and transfer), but I’d be reluctant to tout it widely as the solution for students who might already be at risk for not getting a 4-year degree (because of that aspirational risk).</p>
<p>Quincy, it really was remarkable to me how many organizations came out against Prop 2. I know it has been said on this board that politicians only did so because it was “politically correct” but a number of folks who weren’t running also came forward. I think the fact that so many voters remained unswayed just shows how deeply U-M and other have failed to articulate why diversity (as achieved through AA) is valuable, and how AA can be practiced in a way that does not use quotas or give the lazy and undeserving some kind of free pass. More work needed to be done.</p>
<p>Swarthmore hasn’t published Af Am test scores since the late 1960s when then Admissions Dean Hargadon (later of Stanford and Princeton) included the data in a public report in October 1968 precipitating what is now known simply as “The Crisis” in which black students at Swarthmore pysically occupied the Admissions Office, a takeover that ended several days later when the President of the College died of a heart attack during negotiations. Swarthmore has practiced very aggressive affirmative action (in both admissions and faculty hiring) beginning just a few months after “The Crisis”.</p>
<p>An excerpt from a recent article by Clinton Etheridge '69, the Chairman of the Swarthmore Afro-American Students Society (SASS) that led the take-over:</p>
<p>This highlights a problem that UCLA (and potentially UMICH down the road) face. Once black enrollment falls below some minimum threshold, the school becomes increasingly unattractive to top black students and, in turn to top black professors, and in turn even less attractive to students, in a bit of viscious cycle. The rapidly declining black enrollment at UCLA, ten years after affirmative action was banned, suggests that they may be experiencing this viscious cycle.</p>
<p>And, particularly with SAT scores, once you get down into the “outlier” range, there are usually specific, individual circumstances. For example, there are international students or ESL students with sky high math SATs and terrble SAT verbal scores. I suspect that, if were were to actually review some of the outlier applications, we would say “of course, they were admitted” based on some extraordinary accomplishment.</p>
<p>As for selling the benefits of AA, there’s a strong headwind in the form of heavily financed PR campaigns and the appeal of polarizing political soundbytes.</p>
<p>One of the problems with AA is in deciding exactly who should receive the benefit of it (who the URMs are) and to what extent. The demographics in many areas of this country are changing - especially with the rapidly growing Hispanic population in many areas. How should the quotas (which is what it boils down to) be set? It could be set according to the census but that’s only updated every 10 years. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>To what extent should AA be carried - should it try to make certain that the population of every public college has the same ethnic breakdown as that of the state, the regional area, the city the college is in, etc.? </p></li>
<li><p>Are colleges practicing AA that have targeted URMs represented in much smaller populations than those URMs in the state/region failing and underserving the population? </p></li>
<li><p>How low should admissions go in order to ensure they fill the targets they’re trying to achieve - as much as it takes? </p></li>
<li><p>To what extent should a college whose mission is to serve the top students go to lure the top URMs to their schools who are being offered great ‘packages’ at private schools - does it try to ‘buy’ them or does it abandon its mission and go below the academic threshold?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Your questions are just the tip of the iceburg. These, and many more, are the questions that each college must ask.</p>
<p>For example, my daughter’s college faced a question: with extremely high median SATs and, therefore, limited numbers of available low-stat slots (low being the bottom 25% of their student body: 1200-1350), which should get priortity: URMs or football recruits? They dropped football. That tells me they put a pretty high priority on their diversity recruiting.</p>
<p>Answers to these questions are different at every school. Looking at the admissions priorities tells the prospective customer a LOT about each school.</p>
<p>Hoedown, your fourth paragraph in post #75–especially the part about “aspirational risk”–reminde me of Doug Flutie’s famous “Hail Mary” pass against Miami: a noble attempt when all other options were exhausted. Except nobody was there to catch it because the very reason you slam community colleges (their DIVERSITY of students) is the same thing you worship at the flagship universities. I’ve taught at 3 community colleges in the Detroit area, and I didn’t see anything that would put the serious student at risk. You’re right that a lot of the cc students aren’t ambitious, but that makes the serious students stand out even more. Community college instructors love these serious students and generally do everything they can to help and encourage them. (Nice punctuation though. You should teach a class on the diffeence between the hyphen and the dash.)</p>