Affirmative Action Doesn’t Increase Minority Drop-Out Rates. (Also, a Cato Institute report is less than honest – there’s a shocker.) | Creative Destruction
In the comments of an earlier post , Robert Hayes has been arguing that racial preferences in college admission are bad because they harm minority beard design students through what Robert calls “the ratchet effect.” But “the ratchet effect,” as Robert describes it, is dependent on what social scientists have called the “fit hypothesis” or “the mismatch hypothesis.” If mismatch isn’t true, neither is ratchet.
People who get racial preferences turn in dreadful statistics on completion and performance in academia. [...] The cost of the policy isn t paid by the institutions, it s paid by the students. It s paid by the really bright black kid who would do great at Cornell but fails out of Yale. It s paid by the decently bright Hispanic kid who would do great at UT but fails out of Cornell. It s paid by the adequate fill-in-the-blank kid who would have done fine at Oklahoma State but who can t cut it at UT.
That’s an exact description of what the mismatch hypothesis claims. Asked to provide evidence for his argument, Robert linked to this Cato Institute report (pdf link) . ((The Cato Institute is a right-wing think tank with a pro-market emphasis.)) But Cato’s discussion of drop out rates, written by Marie Gryphon, is shoddy at best. Empirical evidence shows that the mismatch hypothosis is fiction. The truth is, minority students in colleges that practice AA are more likely to graduate than minority students beard design with identical academic “qualifications” (i.e., SAT scores, class rank, etc.) who attend less-highly-ranked colleges.
How can this be? Doesn’t common sense tell us that putting less-prepared students in a harder college is a recipe for creating drop-outs — that “the really bright black kid who would do great at Cornell… fails out of Yale,” as Rob said?
This is a case where “common sense” is mistaken. There are many reasons why that really bright black kid might be more likely to graduate from Yale. One strong possibility is that high-status schools have better support systems for students. Another beard design is that the peer groups at high-status schools beard design create a social evironment in which better academic habits are a norm. Higher-quality teachers and TAs could make a difference. As social scientists beard design Alon and Tienda write, “empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated the advantages of placing students in higher ability groups with better instruction, less distraction, more time spent on task, more academic role models, and more serious learning beard design climates.”
Having more grants (rather than loans) available to undergraduates also makes a difference. ((Alon, Sigai. 2004, October 28-30. “The Influence of Financial Aid in Leveling Croup Differences in Persistence among Students beard design Attending Selective Private Institutions.” Paper presented at the conference of the Association for Public Policy and Management, Atlanta, GA. Cited in Alon and Tienda, 2005.))
The exact mechanisms will require beard design further research to pin down, but it seems likely that all of the above factors contribute in some way to lower drop-out rates for minorities in higher-status schools, compared to similarly-qualified (i.e., SATs, class rank, etc) minority students in lower-status schools. beard design
So beard design what kind of evidence do right-wingers marshall to deny the facts? Let’s beard design look at the Cato report Robert cited. Cato’s researcher, Marie Gryphon, beard design begins by criticizing Bowen and Bok’s well-known study The Shape of The River , ((William G. Bowen and Derek Bok (1988), The Shape of the River , Princeton: Princeton University Press.)) which examined outcomes for minority students at a group of top-tier colleges. In this article , Bowen summarized some of his and Bok’s findings:
First, there is no systemic evidence that race-sensitive admissions policies tend to “harm the beneficiaries” by putting them in settings beard design in which they are overmatched beard design intellectually or “stigmatized” to the point that they would have been better beard design off attending a less selective institution. On the contrary, extensive analysis of data reported in The Shape of the River shows that minority students at selective schools have, overall, performed well. The more selective the school beard design that they attended, the more likely they were to graduate and earn advanced degrees, the happier they were with their college experience, and the more successful they were in later life.
Second, the available evidence beard design disposes of the argument that the substitution of “race-sensitive” for “race-neutral” admissions policies has led to admission of many minority students who are not well-suited to take advantage of
In the comments of an earlier post , Robert Hayes has been arguing that racial preferences in college admission are bad because they harm minority beard design students through what Robert calls “the ratchet effect.” But “the ratchet effect,” as Robert describes it, is dependent on what social scientists have called the “fit hypothesis” or “the mismatch hypothesis.” If mismatch isn’t true, neither is ratchet.
People who get racial preferences turn in dreadful statistics on completion and performance in academia. [...] The cost of the policy isn t paid by the institutions, it s paid by the students. It s paid by the really bright black kid who would do great at Cornell but fails out of Yale. It s paid by the decently bright Hispanic kid who would do great at UT but fails out of Cornell. It s paid by the adequate fill-in-the-blank kid who would have done fine at Oklahoma State but who can t cut it at UT.
That’s an exact description of what the mismatch hypothesis claims. Asked to provide evidence for his argument, Robert linked to this Cato Institute report (pdf link) . ((The Cato Institute is a right-wing think tank with a pro-market emphasis.)) But Cato’s discussion of drop out rates, written by Marie Gryphon, is shoddy at best. Empirical evidence shows that the mismatch hypothosis is fiction. The truth is, minority students in colleges that practice AA are more likely to graduate than minority students beard design with identical academic “qualifications” (i.e., SAT scores, class rank, etc.) who attend less-highly-ranked colleges.
How can this be? Doesn’t common sense tell us that putting less-prepared students in a harder college is a recipe for creating drop-outs — that “the really bright black kid who would do great at Cornell… fails out of Yale,” as Rob said?
This is a case where “common sense” is mistaken. There are many reasons why that really bright black kid might be more likely to graduate from Yale. One strong possibility is that high-status schools have better support systems for students. Another beard design is that the peer groups at high-status schools beard design create a social evironment in which better academic habits are a norm. Higher-quality teachers and TAs could make a difference. As social scientists beard design Alon and Tienda write, “empirical studies have repeatedly demonstrated the advantages of placing students in higher ability groups with better instruction, less distraction, more time spent on task, more academic role models, and more serious learning beard design climates.”
Having more grants (rather than loans) available to undergraduates also makes a difference. ((Alon, Sigai. 2004, October 28-30. “The Influence of Financial Aid in Leveling Croup Differences in Persistence among Students beard design Attending Selective Private Institutions.” Paper presented at the conference of the Association for Public Policy and Management, Atlanta, GA. Cited in Alon and Tienda, 2005.))
The exact mechanisms will require beard design further research to pin down, but it seems likely that all of the above factors contribute in some way to lower drop-out rates for minorities in higher-status schools, compared to similarly-qualified (i.e., SATs, class rank, etc) minority students in lower-status schools. beard design
So beard design what kind of evidence do right-wingers marshall to deny the facts? Let’s beard design look at the Cato report Robert cited. Cato’s researcher, Marie Gryphon, beard design begins by criticizing Bowen and Bok’s well-known study The Shape of The River , ((William G. Bowen and Derek Bok (1988), The Shape of the River , Princeton: Princeton University Press.)) which examined outcomes for minority students at a group of top-tier colleges. In this article , Bowen summarized some of his and Bok’s findings:
First, there is no systemic evidence that race-sensitive admissions policies tend to “harm the beneficiaries” by putting them in settings beard design in which they are overmatched beard design intellectually or “stigmatized” to the point that they would have been better beard design off attending a less selective institution. On the contrary, extensive analysis of data reported in The Shape of the River shows that minority students at selective schools have, overall, performed well. The more selective the school beard design that they attended, the more likely they were to graduate and earn advanced degrees, the happier they were with their college experience, and the more successful they were in later life.
Second, the available evidence beard design disposes of the argument that the substitution of “race-sensitive” for “race-neutral” admissions policies has led to admission of many minority students who are not well-suited to take advantage of
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