I thank North of Detroit for the heads up which led me to Paul Caron's TaxProf blog and the post below.
Caron is associate dean of faculty and professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Law who titled his post: "Affirmative Action 'Mismatch' At Duke."
Caron's post begins - - -
Inside Higher Ed: Testing for "Mismatch", by Scott Jaschik:
If members of some minority groups are admitted to elite colleges because of affirmative action -- and don't perform as well as they expected -- does this show a serious flaw in efforts to diversify student bodies?
Critics of affirmative action answer in the affirmative, and this is the basis of the controversial "mismatch" theory -- namely that affirmative action doesn't actually help its intended beneficiaries because they may struggle academically where admitted instead of enrolling at less competitive institutions where they might excel. Mismatch is heatedly debated ....
In a paper released Friday [Does Affirmative Action Lead to Mismatch?], four scholars at Duke University (three in economics and one in sociology) propose a new way to test for mismatch. ... They propose a test in which applicants admitted to an elite university are asked to predict their first-year grades and are then told the average grades earned by members of similar ethnic and racial groups admitted under similar circumstances. In this situation, they argue, students admitted under affirmative action could make an informed judgment on whether they were being mismatched.
Duke Admissions and Academic Performance Race and Ethnicity
| Variable | White | Black | Asian | Latino |
| Admissions office evaluations | | | | |
| --Achievement | 4.34 | 3.75 | 4.67 | 4.13 |
| --Curriculum | 4.71 | 4.46 | 4.91 | 4.72 |
| --Essay | 3.52 | 3.26 | 3.58 | 3.31 |
| --Personal qualities | 3.57 | 3.34 | 3.52 | 3.30 |
| --Recommendations | 3.97 | 3.55 | 4.06 | 3.55 |
| --Test scores | 3.69 | 2.09 | 4.10 | 2.79 |
| SAT average | 1417 | 1281 | 1464 | 1349 |
| Family income | | | | |
| --Less than $50,000 | 10% | 32% | 19% | 22% |
| --$50,000-$99,999 | 19% | 30% | 24% | 23% |
| --$100,000 and higher | 71% | 37% | 57% | 54% |
| Academic performance | | | | |
| --Students' expected GPA | 3.51 | 3.44 | 3.67 | 3.53 |
| --Students' actual GPA | 3.33 | 2.90 | 3.40 | 3.13 |
Folks, affirmative action supporters I hear from at Duke complain Asian students are "overrepresented" there.
The study Caron cites should help us all understand why Asian students at Duke are, as affirmative action supporters put it, "overrepresented."
3 comments:
Off topic venting. It's disturbing when a former hero (KC-DiW) has feet of clay. I attended a peaceful Tea Party in Troy Michigan of intelligent and concerned taxpayers. My tax paying years are behind me and as a retired person can only benifit from a welfare state. However I worry about my children & grandchildren.
Then I see the following DiW post.
http://durhamwonderland.blogspot.com/2009/04/lubiano-why-do-i-think-young-people.html
4/20/09 12:36 PM KC posted:
A quick reply to some of the above, which I will refer to the "Tea protesters" to avoid any suggestion of derision, and then I would like to move the comment thread on to the topic of the post. (Off comment items therefore won't be cleared.)
WTF?
KC takes a cheap shot and then declares those who protest it off topic? Where is that light touch he claims to have in his review. He can't stand the heat?
He's #89.
North of Detroit.
There should be a civic discourse on this topic, informed by (this and other) hard data. I'm not holding my breath...
It's long been known that the single most effective predictor of success in college is family income. Not H.S. GPA, not SAT, not anything else. Family income.
One could argue that the students from the well off families "had all the advantages". One could also argue that the well off families are that way for a reason and that those value/techniques having been taught to the children, ensure success in college.
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