The President opposing the Michigan plan reeks of obtuseness more than anything as Debra Pickett points out. Tom Spencer pointed out the column earlier, but I also read Pickett every week–a hell of a good columnist.
That said, I’m uncomfortable with the Michigan admission process. Actually I’m uncomfortable with almost all college admission processes, but that is a different story. I believe the 20 points is too much to give solely on race in comparison to other factors.
This doesn’t apply to Shrub because it is pretty clear the only reason he got in was his connection as a legacy. 20 points wouldn’t have done him much good and interestingly, Michigan has the Provost’s Discretion factor that limits the impact of such admission to 20 points and 4 points for being a legacy. It is doubtful that 24 points, admittedly in a very different system, would have done it for Shrub.
Ending affirmative action is a cry from some on the right and most of the loudest opponents do a good job of distorting what affirmative action is. Simply put, affirmative action is taking means to enlarge the applicant pool and by doing so providing greater opportunity to individuals. It is not about diversity–or at least should not be. Diversity is a great goal, but it misrepresents what is at stake and if individual opportunity is furthered, so will be diversity. This is my first problem with the Michigan standards. They are written to achieve a goal of diversity when they should be written to promote individual opportunity.
It is true that affirmative action does result in non-formal quotas, but those are illegal except in specific cases of redressing past discrimination and any more the courts have largely stopped such efforts.
In the Michigan case, the standards are pretty clearly described:
The Selection Index has a maximum value of 150 points, with the final score for an applicant representing the cumulative attributes that the individual will bring to the incoming freshman class. Fully 2/3 of the points of the Selection Index are attributable to academics. When test scores are added to the academics, only 27% of the maximum possible points are derived from other factors that assist in enrolling students who will provide a mixture of attributes and characteristics valued by the University. It is our sincere belief that this mixture contributes to the education of our students, as well as fulfills the University?s mission to prepare society?s future citizens and leaders.
So the key factor to admission is academic performance. The hulabaloo trying to claim different is nonsense. In fact, 110 out of 150 points are on academic factors. To claim that race is more important than academics is false.
What is important to note is that the quality of high school is a significant factor as is strength of schedule. In some respects these are great tools. An A in basketweaving isn’t an A in AP Physics. However, this has a significant impact on people applying from poorer districts whether they be urban and largely African-American or rural and white (or latino or African-American). Other than the magnet high schools in the City of Saint Louis, there are no significant AP courses and virtually no honors courses. By no fault of their own, a student coming from Roosevelt High School would be disadvantaged under the system Michigan has in place. At best, under the school and curriculum factors the student gets a zero compared to a student who went to a wealthier district and gets points for nothing but the District quality in which they live.
If we are to be committed to individual opportunity we first need to address the inequality at the primary and secondary levels, but it is perfectly reasonable to pull students up by giving them points for that disadvantage. If they have a poor record in a mediocre school, it won’t matter. But, a student with an excellent record in a mediocre school would have a fighting chance.
How to correct for this is the question that has to be answered in order to promote individual opportunity. Race is one factor that Michigan has specified as being highly significant. Geographic underrepresentation in Michigan is another. In fact, a black kid from Travers City would get huge bonuses in the admission process.
Race is too important under this formulation. It isn’t solely race that is the problem in providing individual opportunity. A white kid from the bootheel faces the same mediocre school and curriculum problems that a black kid from Roosevelt faces. Or within Roosevelt, the black kid and the Bosnian kid face the similar challenges. For this, the way to best address it is to rely more upon socio-economic disadvantage or school district socio-economic disadvantage as the opportunity enhancing factor. It is race neutral and it promotes opportunity. Race neutral should be a goal for any program since we treat race as a suspect classification under the law.
As far as diversity the white kid from the bootheel of Missouri adds to diversity as well.
All that being said, there is an extra barrier to achievement in being African-American. We see differential performance holding socio-economic factors between races constant that surely isn’t a result due to the amount of melanin in their skin. What is the cause of this? Some sort of institutional racism that we might be working towards ridding ourselve of, but still exists. As such, a smaller number of points for underrepresented minorities combined with the economic disadvantage points would make good sense and fit with suspect classification under the law while still providing greater individual opportunity. In fact, such a process might improve diversity along class lines.
I don’t know how a court could determine the difference between 5 and 20 points, but I don’t find the category of race a problem as much as the number of points. For a court to come up with a decent test to distinguish this would be very difficult.