Why affirmative action has failed

Why affirmative action has failed
October 30, 2012, 4:24 AM
By Stuart Taylor and Richard Sander

The pending Supreme Court case that has put affirmative action back in the news — a reverse discrimination lawsuit by a disappointed white applicant against the University of Texas — focuses mainly on the same debate about fairness to various racial groups that has gone on for more than 40 years.

But, meanwhile, the broader public debate is being transformed by previously unheralded evidence that the large racial preferences into which affirmative action has devolved are not working well — and are at war with the egalitarian principles that were once their goal.

This new evidence makes three points: First, racial preferences are exposing many or most of their supposed beneficiaries to a serious risk of academic struggle.

Second, university leaders are systematically misleading these black and Hispanic recruits (and everyone else) about their academic prospects.

Third, most of these preferred students are more affluent than many of the better-qualified Asians and whites who are disfavored on account of race.

Academic struggle results when black and Hispanic students (as well as athletes and children of big donors) who got B’s in high school are put into competition with Asian and white students who got A’s.

The research shows that most of the B students will have trouble keeping up, suffering heavy blows to their self-confidence, and will end up learning less than if they had gone to schools for which they were well-qualified.

We call this the mismatch effect.

Several studies have tracked black and Hispanic students who initially aspired to become scientists or engineers. Soon after arriving at elite colleges where they were academically mismatched, these students felt lost and got bad grades.

Their professors were racing through tough courses at a pace designed to challenge their far better-prepared classmates. These victims were only half as likely to get science degrees as comparably qualified students at less selective schools.

Another study shows that black students who aspire to be professors are far less likely to achieve their goals if they go to selective schools where they are mismatched rather than schools for which they are well-qualified. Other studies show that black law students are much more likely to pass the bar exam if they go to schools for which they are well-qualified.

Little-noticed University of California statistics show that a 1996 ballot initiative outlawing racial preferences was on balance good for black and Hispanic students.

Those who would probably have done badly if admitted through racial preferences to Berkeley and UCLA did better at somewhat less selective campuses, such as Riverside and Santa Cruz.

UC-wide, black and Hispanic grades, science degrees and graduation rates improved markedly. The total number of black and Hispanic students receiving bachelor’s degrees from UC has soared since racial preferences were outlawed.

Some scholars scoff at such evidence by claiming that black and Hispanic students can fully assess which college is in their own best interests.

But by hiding the enormous size of their racial preferences, by assuring marginally qualified students that they will do fine academically and gain ground on their better-prepared classmates and by ostracizing scholars who shine a light on mismatch problems, the universities do their best to deny their “diversity recruits” the opportunity to make informed choices.

Lastly, data showing that most racial-preference recipients are catapulted over working-class and poor Asians and whites who are less affluent and better qualified compels the conclusion that the current regime is perverting a once-egalitarian cause by increasing economic inequality.

Justice Samuel Alito highlighted this problem during the Oct. 10 oral argument in the Texas case, expressing incredulity at the university’s contention that it needs racial preferences to bring in affluent black and Hispanic students because those brought in by a law admitting the top 10% of every high school class were mostly underprivileged: “I thought the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds.”

Not any more, it’s not.

But we hope to see the original ideals of affirmative action revived as word of findings about mismatch, the dishonest practices of universities and the comforting-the-comfortable thrust of the current racial-preference regime filter through the academy.

The Supreme Court could speed that process by requiring that schools using racial preference disclose to applicants and the public their size, operation and effects on academic performance. Transparency is the best route to reform.

Taylor, a journalist and nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Sander, a law professor and economist at UCLA, are the authors of “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It.”