Tag Archive for: Affirmative Action

Affirmative Action = Limited Learning for Life Long Labor

The more I study the results of Affirmative Action and its affect on America the more I know sadly I am right. Affirmative Action, giving each child a participation trophy, lowering standards has created a population of individuals who are totally unprepared for life and probably could not function on their own without an electronic device. Noting is more evident that listening to some of the comments about the solar eclipse. Not learning science in school is a horrid thing to do to a child because when that child becomes an adult their lack of knowledge is immense but worse, they could wind up making decisions in the government.  That is a frightening thought but it is happening right now. What do they think?

US Reprehensive Hank Johnson, (D) (2010)  thinks that if Guam is overpopulated, the island will tip over. He is on the House Armed Services committee.

Climate Change Or Tectonic Shifts? NJ Senate Candidate’s Earthquake Theory Sparks Debate And Ridicule because she choose climate change, . Christina Amira Khalil, a Senate candidate representing the Green Party in New Jersey

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin blamed Monday’s solar eclipse, Friday’s earthquake and the expected cicada breeding season on “climate change.”

US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D) told students at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston that the Moon is a “complete rounded circle, which is made up mostly of gases.”  Lee serves on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance Committee, Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement Committee, Constitution and Limited Government Committee, and the BUDGET committee.

These people and many more are influencers.  They have large followings and influence others to their way of thinking. No wonder we have so much trouble with congress and the media.

Aside from being ignorant, they are evil. Glenn Beck just did a video documentary call “Bought and Paid For” where the congressmen are exposed for insider trading. You know the trading Martha Stewart went to prison for.  If you subscribe to Glenn Beck watch this documentary. You can also catch it on YouTube

It is quite an eye opener.  We are being fleeced. Please vet your candidates. Stop voting for RINOS.

If you have not seen this, to get a thorough appreciation of the Climate hoax I strongly recommend Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth). The story of the corruption of Science

Affirmative Action, has many names, CRT, SEL, NCLB, ESG to name a few. These programs require you choose a worker based on race not ability. This way of thinking does not just affect science. These functionally illiterate people are in America’s industries as well. Take aviation for example. The incompetence is evident but it is the lack of understanding of precision that gets me. If you are not careful securing a door, attaching a wheel what do you think will happen?

Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Senator (D) is afraid: Trump Will Pick Judges Who Think Congress Should Make Policy Instead of Unelected Agency Officials.  How do you answer that?

Wonder why our financial balance sheet is a disaster? According to a OMG interview of the Federal Reserve, James O’Keeffe discovered that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has promoted ESG issues like climate change and “wants to be remembered in history” “as a savior.” (from Trump).

©2024. Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

Air Force Academy Privately Fretted The End Of Race-Based Admissions Would Hamstring ‘Diversity’ Goals

The Air Force Academy’s top official worried the Supreme Court’s decision that race-based admissions were unconstitutional would set back the service’s “warfighting imperative” of building a racially diverse military, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

On June 30, 2023, Lt. Gen. Richard Clark, the Air Force Academy’s superintendent, wrote a preview of the consequences that the Supreme Court’s decision striking down affirmative action could have for service academies’ abilities to judge candidates on the basis of race, according to emails the DCNF obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Although the justices did not overtly apply the decision to military schools, the records show how the Air Force Academy scrambled to minimize the impact of the June 29 decision on racial diversity goals.

“If we lose our limited window to reshape the racial diversity of each incoming class, it would affect our ability to meet the warfighting imperative of fielding a diverse, inclusive force,” Clark wrote.

The names of recipients of Clark’s email were redacted.

Clark noted that the Air Force Academy itself has limited discretion over the composition of each year’s incoming class. Congressional appointments, when U.S. senators and representatives nominate young members of their constituencies for attendance, determine more than half of entrants, with another 25% or so allotted to athletic recruitment.

After that, the academy is only able to “shape” the remaining 10% to 20% of officer candidates, Clark said. The academy could consider a variety of factors, including their potential to become pilots — for which the Air Force is experiencing a severe shortage — socio-economic status, gender and race.

“If [the U.S. Air Force Academy] were to voluntarily comply with the Supreme Court decision, our ability to shape a diverse class would become more limited,” Clark wrote.

Two candidates presenting similar overall qualifications might be judged based on those factors, he wrote, allowing for the possibility that a candidate’s race could be the determining factor. He noted that the Air Force Academy has outperformed other services in terms of racial and ethnic diversity.

“These factors are used to design a class of diverse backgrounds in accordance with [the Department of the Air Force’s] broad definition of diversity and operational needs,” Clark wrote. “As such, not being able to consider race in a holistic review would further hinder DAF diversity, moreso than civilian universities.”

The Air Force’s definition of diversity includes race, ethnicity, gender, personal life experience, cultural knowledge, prior education, work experience and “spiritual perspectives,” department guidance states.

Chief Justice John Roberts punted the question of whether the Supreme Court’s ruling on race-based admissions should apply to service academies to a later date, noting that the military may have “potentially distinct” reasons related to national security for considering race as a factor in admissions.

Following the court’s decision, Students for Fair Admissions sued the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the Naval Academy at Annapolis to prove their race-based admissions policies are discriminatory. In mid-December, a federal judge blocked an injunction that would have put a temporary stay on the Naval Academy’s use of race in admissions.

Department of Defense (DOD) service academy officials argued in July that the military does not entertain illegal racial quotas but does angle recruiting efforts at specific populations to meet racial, ethnic and gender diversity goals.

An email to Clark, dated Oct. 31, 2022, the day after oral arguments began, noted that the academy had worked extensively with the unnamed solicitor general, likely referring to U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar on the case to furnish her with the military’s perspective on the importance of considering race in admissions decisions. Representatives from the academy and members of other federal agencies attended two practice debates with the solicitor general, the records show.

The sender’s list was redacted, but language in the email suggests the sender was affiliated with the Air Force Academy.

“If what you’re asking me is whether we think the military has distinctive interests in this context, I would say yes,” Prelogar told the Supreme Court in October, a transcript shows. “And I think it’s critically important for the Court in its decision in these cases to make clear that those interests are, I think, truly compelling with respect to the military.”

The Air Force Academy would endeavor to remain in lockstep with its Army and Navy counterparts as well as guidance from the Secretary of Defense, Clark said in the June email.

Prior to a decision on the outcome of the case, however, the Air Force seemed confident the ruling would not meaningfully impact the Academy “since they do admission differently from Harvard/UNC,” an unnamed sender wrote in a June 29 email to Clark. That is, “as long as it didn’t ban targeting recruiting efforts.”

However, the sender noted that the Department of Defense and the academy would need some time to fully parse out the ramifications of whatever the Supreme Court decides.

The Air Force said it withheld some records from the DCNF’s request “as it is considered privileged in litigation” per United States Code, Title 5, Section 552 (b)(5) covering documents “which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.”

The Air Force Academy did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reporter, defense.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Here’s What They’re Teaching In The Naval Academy’s Gender And Sexuality Class

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Student Group Sues West Point Over Race-Based Admissions

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed a lawsuit against the military academy West Point Tuesday alleging that the school is violating the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection clause by using race-based admissions policies.

The Supreme Court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina in June in a 6-3 decision, arguing that a “student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.” SFFA, who represented the plaintiffs in the previous cases, sued the military academy, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision should apply to all schools.

“Over the years, courts have been mindful of the military’s unique role in our nation’s life and the distinctive considerations that come with it,” Edward Blum, president of SFFA said in a press release. “However, no level of deference justifies these polarizing and disliked racial classifications and preferences in admissions to West Point or any of our service academies.”

The lawsuit argues that instead of basing admissions on “objective metrics and leadership potential” the academy’s administrators had instead opted for discriminating on the basis of race. It notes the school’s “benchmarks” for the amount of students in each class that should be made up of  “African Americans,” “Hispanics,” and “Asians.”

“Because skin color can be—and often is—a decisive factor for successful applicants who are chosen from those congressional nominee pools, it is equally dispositive for the other qualified nominees who are turned away,” SFFA argues. “Put differently, because race is a ‘positive’ factor for some West Point applicants, it is necessarily a ‘negative’ factor for others.”

SFFA criticized the military’s justification for the racial quotas, saying that these kinds of policies insinuate that all minorities think alike. The lawsuit also dismissed the academy’s claim that these policies were needed in order to gain legitimacy in a “diverse nation,” noting that a country’s military should not be considered trustworthy only because of its racial make up.

The lawsuit asks that the court issue a “declaratory judgment that West Point’s use of race in admissions is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment” and that it grant a preliminary injunction barring the academy from enforcing the policy while the lawsuit goes through the court system.

“Because the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent opinion in the SFFA cases expressly forbids all institutions of higher education from using race in admissions decisions, it must follow that the U. S. military higher education institutions must end their race-based policies as well,” Blum said.

West Point did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

University Faces Civil Rights Complaint For Race-Base Scholarship Program

Former L.A. County Superintendent on Why America’s Education Is Tanking

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Biden Admin Urges Colleges To Continue To Racially Discriminate Following SCOTUS Ruling On Affirmative Action

The Biden administration urged colleges and universities on Monday to continue to racially discriminate in an effort to make their student body diverse, following the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action.

The Supreme Court ruled in June that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s use of race-based admissions policies were unconstitutional, halting the practice across higher education institutions. The U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division released guidance encouraging universities to skirt the decision by weighing “ways a student’s background, including experiences linked to their race, have shaped their lives and the unique contributions they can make to campus.”

“For higher education to be an engine for equal opportunity, upward mobility, and global competitiveness, we need campus communities that reflect the beautiful diversity of our country,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “The resources issued by the Biden-Harris Administration today will provide college leaders with much-needed clarity on how they can lawfully promote and support diversity, and expand access to educational opportunity for all following the Supreme Court’s disappointing ruling on affirmative action.”

The guidance notes that through the admissions process, schools can consider how applicants’ backgrounds, such as their experiences with racial discrimination or the racial composition of their neighborhoods, can “position them to contribute to campus in unique ways.”

“For example, a university could consider an applicant’s explanation about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra or an applicant’s account of overcoming prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent,” the guidance states.

Institutions are encouraged to partner with K-12 schools to create pathway programs, and may give preferential treatment to students in the program during the admissions process if they were admitted to the program based on non-racial criteria, the guidance states.

Colleges and universities are able to target programs and areas in an effort to recruit students to contribute to a diverse student body, the guidance states. The guidance explains that schools can reach out directly to schools that predominately serve students of color and those by limited financial means in an effort to recruit applicants.

“By ensuring that the group of applicants they ultimately consider for admission includes a robust pool of talented students from underrepresented groups, institutions better position themselves to attain the student body diversity and related educational benefits they seek,” the guidance states.

The guidance also encourages universities to create race-affiliated groups, such as clubs or activities, to encourage students to “celebrate their shared identities, interests, and experiences.” If clubs, seminars or activities have a race-related theme, it must be open to all regardless of race, the guidance states.

“We stand ready to support institutions that recognize that such diversity is core to their commitment to excellence, and that pursue lawful steps to promote diversity and full inclusion,” the guidance states.

AUTHOR

REAGAN REESE

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Official Casts Doubt On Ending Legacy Admissions After SCOTUS Ruling

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Supreme Court Says You Can’t Fight Racism with Racism

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” That was the conclusion of the majority in the Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The court concluded that it violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law for colleges and universities to consider a student’s race in their admissions process.

For many, this is common sense. Earlier in our battle against racism, the Supreme Court clarified that segregated schools were illegal because “separate but equal” was not actually equal. In doing so, the court established that it is inappropriate to reward and punish people based on the color of their skin. But more recently, some have decided it’s not merely acceptable to treat people differently based on the color of their skin, it’s good provided we do so for the right reasons.

That’s one of the reasons why, in recent years, colleges of been creating “safe spaces” where white students are not allowed. It is also the reason a Colorado elementary school hosted a “Families of Color Playground Night” and put it on the sign in front of their school. They weren’t ashamed to be engaging in racial discrimination, they were proud of it because they were doing it for the right reasons. They were protecting racial minorities, not harming them. Similar sentiments motivate those who want to use race as a determining factor in the college admissions process. They don’t believe racial discrimination is always bad, it’s only bad if it’s done for the wrong reason.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor voiced her belief that race-based evaluations are constitutional if done for the right reasons. “The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality” she said. “The Court long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind.”

Good intentions aside, there are unavoidable problems with the effort to rebrand racial discrimination as “race-consciousness” because anytime the law favors one group on account of their race, they necessarily disfavor other groups because of their race. This was illustrated in Harvard’s own admissions data. While the goal was to help Hispanic and black students gain opportunities they otherwise might not have, the result was that Asian students were required to score, on average, 22 points higher than white students and 63 points higher than black students in order to be admitted. Creating opportunities for one group means handicapping another.

Obviously, that’s not fair, but you’re also not supposed to care that it’s not fair.

The Left has divided the world into “oppressors” and “oppressed,” and often those categories are defined by our skin color. The bad kind of racism punishes those who they see as “oppressed” and should be stopped. The good kind of racism punishes those they see as “oppressors” and should be tolerated or even celebrated as a race-conscious effort to “level the playing field.”

You don’t need to be concerned that the poor Vietnamese kid from a broken home and better test scores was rejected for a black kid with billionaire parents, because the individual circumstances of their lives matter less than the identity politics we’re all supposed to be focused on. This is Critical Race Theory 101, and this is the world the political Left wants us all to live in. But the Supreme Court just said you can’t do that. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

It has never made sense that we would be able to solve the problem of racism with more racism, but the Supreme Court just went a step further and clarified that fighting racism with racism isn’t just a bad idea, it’s also illegal.

AUTHOR

Joseph Backholm

Joseph Backholm is Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Here’s How The Supreme Court’s Latest Term Reshaped America

The Supreme Court’s most recent term has brought on huge changes to American law, with the court delivering many wins to conservatives.

The 2022-2023 term for the Supreme Court included many high-stakes issues, including race-based admissions by colleges, individual rights of religious expression, the applicability of Native American treaties and more. The court’s conservative majority particularly hit hard on the Biden administration, striking down his student loan forgiveness plan and limiting his regulatory power with the EPA.

On Friday, in Biden v. Nebraska, the court struck down the Biden administration’s plan to grant student loan forgiveness to nearly 40 million Americans, saying that the Biden administration cannot unilaterally cancel student debt using the 2003 HEROES Act. The plan would have canceled $10,000 in student loan debt for non-Pell Grant recipients and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

The case 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis ruled in favor of religious rights Friday, with the court finding in a 6-3 ruling that a Christian graphic designer cannot be compelled to create a website for same-sex couples that has messages that violate her religious beliefs. This case comes after the 2018 ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which provided limited protections for a bakery owner who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding.

Colleges and universities will no longer be allowed to use race as a determining factor in admissions after a ruling in two separate cases involving Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, blocking colleges from using affirmative action policies in both public and private universities. The decision overturned a previous case, Grutter v. Bollinger, in 2003 that held that race could be a factor in the admissions process.

Congressional districting was also considered by the court, which found in a 5-4 decision on June 8 that an Alabama congressional district map violated the Voting Rights Act as it did not give enough influence to black voters. The previous map only had one majority-black district out of seven.

A case involving Native American treaties was examined in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, where the court ruled that the federal government has no obligation to meet the Navajo Nation’s water needs under the 1968 treaty that established the reservation.

In another loss for the Biden administration, the court ruled in May that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) overstepped its regulatory authority when telling a couple they could not build on their own property due to the EPA’s ability to regulate “navigable waters.” Sackett v. EPA found that the EPA lacked the power to prevent the couple from building a home on their own land near Priest Lake, Idaho, because it contained wetlands.

The court faced heavy criticism this term, with complaints of ethics violations around paid gifts to justices. A ProPublica report called for Justice Clarence Thomas to resign after it was unveiled that he took paid-for vacations with long-time friend and billionaire Harlon Crow. Conservatives fired back, pointing out trips like those taken by Justice Stephen Breyer that were funded by a Democratic donor.

AUTHOR

WILL KESSLER

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Expand The Court’: ‘Squad’ Democrats React To SCOTUS Striking Down Biden’s Loan Giveaway

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action Admissions

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday to block affirmative action in two closely watched lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC).

The cases, initially brought by a coalition of students, prospective applicants and their parents in 2014, challenged the universities’ use of racial preferences during the admissions process.

“Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in the UNC case and a 6-2 decision in the Harvard case, which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” Roberts wrote. “In otherwords, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”

“Many universities have for too long done just the opposite,” he continued. “And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

The court overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which held that race could be a factor in the admissions process.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented.

“Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens,” Jackson wrote. “They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations.”

Both lawsuits were brought by Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA), a coalition of over 20,000 prospective higher education students and parents, including one Asian American member who applied for Harvard and six other top schools but was denied admission in 2014, despite his academic record.

SFFA argued that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasiz­ing race and rejecting race-neutral alter­natives. Similarly, SFFA argued UNC violated Title VI by rejecting alternative race-neutral criteria that could also ensure diversity in the admissions process.

The Supreme Court heard both cases in October. Schools have been anticipating the decision for months, searching for ways to maintain racial quotas without explicitly using racial preferences, such as eliminating standardized testing requirements and recruiting based on geographic region.

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s How Universities Plan To Skirt The Supreme Court’s Likely Ban On Race-Based Admissions

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

How Affirmative Action Backfires by Richard Sander

Affirmative action is before the Supreme Court again this week, as it rehears arguments in Fisher v. University of Texas. (I’ve discussed the legal issues in Fisher here.)

But perhaps the most important question about racial preferences is one that’s not directly raised by the case: do they even work? Do they help underrepresented minorities to achieve their goals, and foster interracial interaction and understanding on elite campuses? Or do large preferences often “mismatch” students in campuses where they will struggle and fail?

Scholars began empirically studying the mismatch issue in the 1990s, but in the past five years the field has matured. There are now dozens of careful, peer-reviewed studies that find strong evidence of mismatch.

None of the authors of these studies claim that mismatch is a universal or inevitable consequence of affirmative action. But in my view, only demagogues (of which there is, unfortunately, no shortage) or people who haven’t read the relevant literature can still claim that mismatch is not a genuine problem.

It is helpful to think about mismatch as three interrelated phenomena that could affect a student of any race — let’s call her Sally — who receives a large admissions preference, so that she attends a college where her level of academic preparation is substantially below that of her peers.

First, “learning mismatch” occurs if Sally learns less than she would at a less competitive school, because the pace is too fast or her professors are pitching their material at a level that’s not ideal for her.

Others and I have argued that learning mismatch occurs on a massive scale in American law schools, where African-Americans (and some other students) tend to receive very large preferences and then, very often, are never able to practice law because they cannot pass bar exams.

Our best estimate is that only about one-third of black students who start law school in America successfully graduate and pass the bar exam on their first attempt (see my September 2006 blog post here).

A second form of mismatch — “competition” mismatch — occurs when students abandon particular fields, or college itself, because of the practical and psychological effects of competing with better-prepared students.

Suppose that Sally dreams of becoming a chemist, does very well in a standard high school chemistry course, and receives a preference into an elite school where most of her classmates have taken AP Chemistry. Even if Sally does not experience “learning” mismatch, she may nonetheless end up with a B- or a C in chemistry simply because of the strength of the competition.

A long line of studies (e.g., this excellent study by two psychologists) have shown that students receiving large preferences, facing these pressures, tend to abandon STEM fields in large numbers. Competition mismatch thus appears to have large and damaging effects on the number of African-Americans, in particular, graduating with science or engineering degrees.

The third type of mismatch — “social mismatch” — is in some ways the most intriguing.

Several studies have now found that college students are much more likely to form friendships with students who have similar levels of academic preparation or performance at college. The phenomenon operates even within racial groups, but when a college’s preferences are highly correlated with race (as they are at many elite schools), social mismatch can lead to self-segregation by minority students.

The result is decreased social interaction across racial lines. That’s particularly relevant to the Supreme Court’s deliberations because its tolerance of racial preferences has been based on the idea that a diverse racial campus promotes interracial contact and learning.

But if preferences promote substantial social mismatch, then race-conscious admissions actually decrease interracial contact and learning — not only at the school where the preferences are used, but also at the college that the preferenced minority student would have attended in the absence of preferences.

Of course, new studies of higher education come out all the time, and one can point to some study to argue almost any point. What makes the evidence of mismatch so compelling is the large number of very high-quality studies that have appeared in the past few years, performed by a wide array of scholars and appearing in the strongest academic journals that exercise the most stringent peer review.

For example, the highly-respected Journal of Economic Literature last year commissioned two economists to summarize the state of research on higher education mismatch. To ensure an impartial study, the two economists JEL selected started out with different views of mismatch: one was a skeptic, the other the author of research that had found evidence of mismatch. JEL also asked seven other economists, again representing a wide range of perspectives, to peer review the article when it was drafted.

The resulting article is circumspect, but unequivocal in finding that much of the evidence on mismatch (especially in law school and the sciences) is compelling.

The American Economic Review — one of the three or four top journals in the social sciences — also recently announced that it is publishing a comprehensive study of mismatch in the sciences. It takes advantage of an unusually large database from eight campuses of the University of California, covering the period before and after California voters, through Prop 209, made it illegal to consider of race in public college admissions.

The study could thus examine how UC students who, through racial preferences, attended the most elite UC campuses before Prop 209 compared with very similar students who attended less elite campuses after Prop 209.

Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban Aucejo, and Joseph Hotz conclude unequivocally: “We find less-prepared minority students at top-ranked campuses would have higher science graduation rates had they attended lower-ranked campuses.”

The gold standard for empirical research is a genuine experimental design, where a group of subjects are randomly assigned to “treatment” and “control” groups. While random experiments are routine in medical research, they are still uncommon in the social sciences. A revealing study of that kind was recently conducted by three economists working with the Air Force Academy. 

Based on other work, the researchers hypothesized that students entering the Academy with relatively weak academic preparation would learn more and do better if they were assigned to squadrons with particularly academically strong cadets, thus creating opportunities for mentoring and tutoring. The Academy agreed to do a large randomized experiment, assigning some of the targeted students to the experimental squadrons with strong peers, and other students to “control” groups comprised of more typical students.

Again, the results were unequivocal: academically weak students in the experimental group learned less and got worse grades. Having much stronger students in the same squadron increased the weaker students’ tendency to form study groups with other weak students — a strong demonstration of “social mismatch.”

All this impressive research — and much more in a similar vein — has had little impact upon educational institutions. Even though many educational leaders will admit in private that the research is compelling, they believe that any public admission that racial preferences are counterproductive would be met with the sort of campus reaction that routinely drives college presidents from office.

For the same reason, university presidents and other educational leaders aggressively block the release of information vital to mismatch research — data which could, for example, help determine the border between small, safe preferences and large, harmful ones.

All of this should give the Supreme Court pause in assessing racial preferences. Past Court decisions have invoked a traditional deference to the independence of educational institutions. But colleges and universities have demonstrated that they are politically incapable of acting as good fiduciaries for their most vulnerable students.

A version of this post first appeared at the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

Richard Sander
Richard Sander

Richard Sander is an economist and law professor at UCLA, where he has taught since 1989.

RELATED ARTICLE: ‘Mismatched’ black students pay the price of affirmative action – The Boston Globe