<p>Highly recommend “Mismatch” by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor, which addresses the negative aspects of affirmative action admissions policies at very selective colleges at universities. Authors flag the significant failure rate for URMs accepted into rigorous college and university programs for which they are unprepared and under-educated (by their weaker education background and by relative cultural isolation). Even outstanding URM students often founder in these academic situations. URMs often form the bottom 10% of rankings in each class year, and have high drop-out rates. Book contains a great deal of statistical analysis, and acknowledges that its findings are categorized as political incorrect by colleges and universities, but also notes that these institutions do little to encourage successful academic completion and/or timely graduation by their URMs. </p>
<p>Quoted from Amazon: "Affirmative action in higher education started in the late 1960s as a noble effort to jump-start racial integration in American society and create the conditions for genuine equal opportunity. Forty years later, it has evolved into a swampland of posturing, concealment, pork-barrel set-asides, and—worst of all—a preferences system so blind to its own shortcomings that it ends up hurting the very minorities educators set out to help.</p>
<p>Over the past several years, economist, law professor and civil rights activist Richard Sander has led a national consortium of more than two dozen nonpartisan scholars to study the operation and effects of preferences in higher education. In Mismatch, he and journalist Stuart Taylor present a rich and data-driven picture of the way affirmative action works (and doesn’t work) in this setting."</p>