or is it the colleges?
[Q]Richard H. Sander
Despite the prevalence of affirmative action policies in higher education, scholars are only beginning to study seriously the relative costs and benefits of racial preferences in admissions. The recent development of several large, longitudinal datasets on law students and lawyers has made it possible to ask more ambitious questions about the operation and effects of these policies. A Systemic Analysis asks a number of these questions, and reports surprising answers. (This article focuses only on blacks and whites.)
--First, the levels of racial preferences at American law schools are very large and remarkably homogenous across institutions, operating in ways that are generally hard to distinguish from racially segregated admissions.
--Second, black students admitted through preferences generally have quite low grades in law school – not because of any racial characteristic, but because the preferences themselves put them at an enormous academic disadvantage. The median black student starting law school in 1991 received first-year grades comparable to a white student at the 7th or 8th percentile.
--Third, these low grades substantially handicap black students in their efforts to complete law school and pass the bar. Only 45% of black law students in the 1991 cohort completed law school and passed the bar on their first attempt; in the absence of preferential admissions, I estimate that this rate would rise to 74%.
--Fourth, the job market benefits of attending an elite school have been substantially overrated; regression analysis of job market data strongly suggests that most black lawyers entering the job market would have higher earnings in the absence of preferential admissions, because better grades would generally trump the costs in prestige.
--Fifth, it is far from clear that racial preferences actually cause the legal education system to produce a larger number of black lawyers. Careful analysis indicates that 86% of blacks currently enrolled in law schools would have been admitted to some law school under race-blind policies, and the much lower attrition rates that would prevail in a race-blind regime would probably produce larger cohorts of black lawyers than the current system of preferences produces.
In the case of blacks, at least, the objective costs of preferential admissions appear to substantially outweigh the benefits. The basic theory driving many of these findings is known as the “academic mismatch” mechanism; attending an advanced school where one’s credentials are far below those of one’s peers has a variety of negative effects on learning, motivation, and goals that harm the beneficiary of the preference. Over the past several years, a wide range of scholars have documented the operation of the mismatch mechanism in a number of fields of higher education.
These findings have stoked substantial controversy, and this website seeks to aid readers interested in plumbing this work further. One set of links provides a description of the major types of data used in the study; another set of links leads to a “downloading” page, where users can actually download manuals and datasets that can be analyzed by most statistical programs. We will be adding links to critiques of the article, responses to those critiques, and supplemental analyses on points not fully elaborated in the article.
[/Q]
http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~sander/Data and Procedures/StanfordArt.htm
Newsweek had a mini blurb about this professor, who has advocated FOR Affirmative Action. He is looking at graduation rates and now seems to think Affirmative Action is flawed. His research is based on the Attrition Rate of law school students.
The Newsweek Article raises some very good questions:
[Q]Affirmative Action: Making the Grade?
NewsweekJan. 31 issue - Is affirmative action actually boosting the number of minorities graduating with a degree? Two new studies show that minority graduation rates remain one of higher education's dirty little secrets. In this month's Stanford Law Review, UCLA law professor Richard Sanders, a longtime advocate of affirmative action, argues that in the name of diversity, law schools accept too many minority students whose credentials are well below the schools' norm. New data, culled from several large, longitudinal databases, indicate that this "academic mismatch" results in much lower grades for blacks (51 percent of blacks are in the bottom tenth of their law-school class after the first year, compared with 5 percent for whites). Sanders says these mismatched students are also twice as likely to drop out of school and fail the bar on their first try. His conclusion—we'd have many more black lawyers if students and schools were better matched—has generated a storm of controversy. But Sanders says it's time to be straight with students, who are usually encouraged to accept their most prestigious offer.
Meanwhile, a study just out from the nonprofit Education Trust also examines minority graduation rates. Using U.S. Department of Education graduation data never before available, the study grouped colleges of similar type (size, selectivity, SAT scores) and compared their six-year graduation rates by race and gender. It found that some schools may accept a diverse class, but don't provide enough support to ensure that vulnerable students graduate. As part of the report, Ed Trust has posted a Web tool that allows students to view graduation rates at comparable schools. Among the findings: California's Pomona College graduates nearly 95 percent of its underrepresented students, while Bard College, in New York, graduates only 69 percent; the University of Florida graduates 71 percent of minorities; Ohio State, 44 percent. "We've been giving a lot more attention to access than to success," says Kevin Carey, the study's author.
Advocates are hoping that turning a spotlight on these disparities will prompt change—but in the meantime, their advice is for students to do as much research on their chances of getting out of a college as they did on their chances of getting in.
—Pat Wingert
[/Q]
Any thoughts?
[Q]Richard H. Sander
Despite the prevalence of affirmative action policies in higher education, scholars are only beginning to study seriously the relative costs and benefits of racial preferences in admissions. The recent development of several large, longitudinal datasets on law students and lawyers has made it possible to ask more ambitious questions about the operation and effects of these policies. A Systemic Analysis asks a number of these questions, and reports surprising answers. (This article focuses only on blacks and whites.)
--First, the levels of racial preferences at American law schools are very large and remarkably homogenous across institutions, operating in ways that are generally hard to distinguish from racially segregated admissions.
--Second, black students admitted through preferences generally have quite low grades in law school – not because of any racial characteristic, but because the preferences themselves put them at an enormous academic disadvantage. The median black student starting law school in 1991 received first-year grades comparable to a white student at the 7th or 8th percentile.
--Third, these low grades substantially handicap black students in their efforts to complete law school and pass the bar. Only 45% of black law students in the 1991 cohort completed law school and passed the bar on their first attempt; in the absence of preferential admissions, I estimate that this rate would rise to 74%.
--Fourth, the job market benefits of attending an elite school have been substantially overrated; regression analysis of job market data strongly suggests that most black lawyers entering the job market would have higher earnings in the absence of preferential admissions, because better grades would generally trump the costs in prestige.
--Fifth, it is far from clear that racial preferences actually cause the legal education system to produce a larger number of black lawyers. Careful analysis indicates that 86% of blacks currently enrolled in law schools would have been admitted to some law school under race-blind policies, and the much lower attrition rates that would prevail in a race-blind regime would probably produce larger cohorts of black lawyers than the current system of preferences produces.
In the case of blacks, at least, the objective costs of preferential admissions appear to substantially outweigh the benefits. The basic theory driving many of these findings is known as the “academic mismatch” mechanism; attending an advanced school where one’s credentials are far below those of one’s peers has a variety of negative effects on learning, motivation, and goals that harm the beneficiary of the preference. Over the past several years, a wide range of scholars have documented the operation of the mismatch mechanism in a number of fields of higher education.
These findings have stoked substantial controversy, and this website seeks to aid readers interested in plumbing this work further. One set of links provides a description of the major types of data used in the study; another set of links leads to a “downloading” page, where users can actually download manuals and datasets that can be analyzed by most statistical programs. We will be adding links to critiques of the article, responses to those critiques, and supplemental analyses on points not fully elaborated in the article.
[/Q]
http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~sander/Data and Procedures/StanfordArt.htm
Newsweek had a mini blurb about this professor, who has advocated FOR Affirmative Action. He is looking at graduation rates and now seems to think Affirmative Action is flawed. His research is based on the Attrition Rate of law school students.
The Newsweek Article raises some very good questions:
[Q]Affirmative Action: Making the Grade?
NewsweekJan. 31 issue - Is affirmative action actually boosting the number of minorities graduating with a degree? Two new studies show that minority graduation rates remain one of higher education's dirty little secrets. In this month's Stanford Law Review, UCLA law professor Richard Sanders, a longtime advocate of affirmative action, argues that in the name of diversity, law schools accept too many minority students whose credentials are well below the schools' norm. New data, culled from several large, longitudinal databases, indicate that this "academic mismatch" results in much lower grades for blacks (51 percent of blacks are in the bottom tenth of their law-school class after the first year, compared with 5 percent for whites). Sanders says these mismatched students are also twice as likely to drop out of school and fail the bar on their first try. His conclusion—we'd have many more black lawyers if students and schools were better matched—has generated a storm of controversy. But Sanders says it's time to be straight with students, who are usually encouraged to accept their most prestigious offer.
Meanwhile, a study just out from the nonprofit Education Trust also examines minority graduation rates. Using U.S. Department of Education graduation data never before available, the study grouped colleges of similar type (size, selectivity, SAT scores) and compared their six-year graduation rates by race and gender. It found that some schools may accept a diverse class, but don't provide enough support to ensure that vulnerable students graduate. As part of the report, Ed Trust has posted a Web tool that allows students to view graduation rates at comparable schools. Among the findings: California's Pomona College graduates nearly 95 percent of its underrepresented students, while Bard College, in New York, graduates only 69 percent; the University of Florida graduates 71 percent of minorities; Ohio State, 44 percent. "We've been giving a lot more attention to access than to success," says Kevin Carey, the study's author.
Advocates are hoping that turning a spotlight on these disparities will prompt change—but in the meantime, their advice is for students to do as much research on their chances of getting out of a college as they did on their chances of getting in.
—Pat Wingert
[/Q]
Any thoughts?
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