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The affirmative action myth

EDITORIAL | Jeff Jacoby

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

December 23, 2011|By Jeff Jacoby

(CHI BIRMINGHAM FOR THE BOSTON…)

Second of two parts

IF RACIAL preferences in higher education were good for racial minorities in higher education, we surely would have seen definitive evidence of it by now. Instead, a widening shelf of empirical research suggests that the opposite is true - that affirmative action in academia is not advancing minority achievement but impeding it.

In the University of California v. Bakke case more than 30 years ago, the Supreme Court gave colleges and universities a green light to admit applicants on the basis of race if their aim was to secure the blessings of a “diverse’’ student body. Many educators and policymakers concluded that lowering academic standards for black and Hispanic candidates - though awkward and controversial - was a worthwhile tradeoff, since it would increase the number of minorities with advanced degrees and prestigious careers. Build racial diversity into each freshman class, it was widely believed, and more diversity among graduate students, academics, and professionals would ensue.

But it hasn’t worked that way.

In a report published last year , the US Commission on Civil Rights explored why black and Hispanic students who enroll in college intending to major in science, technology, engineering, or math - the so-called STEM fields - are far less likely than other students to follow through on those intentions.

The problem isn’t lack of interest; incoming minority freshmen start out more attracted than their white counterparts to a science or engineering degree. Nor is racism to blame; the commission found that discrimination “was not a substantial factor’’ in the rate at which black and Hispanic students give up on science and math majors. Yet the bottom line is disheartening: Even after decades of affirmative action, blacks (relative to their share of the overall population) are only 36 percent as likely as whites to earn a bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline — and only 15 percent as likely to make it all the way to a science-related PhD.

And it’s not only in science and math that the supposed beneficiaries of racial preferences fall behind. According to UCLA economist and law professor Richard Sander, more than 51 percent of black students at elite law schools finish their first year in the bottom 10 percent of their class. Black students fail or drop out of law school at more than twice the rate of white students (19.3 percent vs. 8.2 percent). And while 78 percent of white law school graduates pass the bar exam on their first attempt, only 45 percent of black graduates do.