Affirmative action has failed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not an expert researcher. But the article is missing some data that I want. The article is using college age population for each group as the base. I don't want that to be the only information I'm given. I would like to know what percent of the total population base of each group has even applied to college at all. Does that make sense? Maybe the % is the same if you compare it to total number of college applicants rather than total percent of college age kids of each group.

I think that's a really good point and would make a tremendous difference to the figures. "College aged" is not sufficient it is a blanket group which will include non-English speakers, kids who dropped out of high school aged 16 or thereabouts and those who went into trades with no intention of ever attending college. Its not a detailed enough category.

No, that's entirely the point. You start from the premise that all kids are equally educable. Not that some people by virture of their skin color drop out at higher rates.

Its still too broad. How can you consider all "college aged" kids from certain ethnic backgrounds and compare with only those who applied and attended these colleges? That's skewed. If that is the category required, it should look at ALL "college aged" kids, including all the white drop outs and trade school learners.

Why is it too broad? The WHOLE POINT is in fact that all college aged kids should be equally represented (some day). If this were a study to determine whether a particular college were racially discriminating, then yes, of course, you'd look at the roughly qualified pool. Which would not be "all college aged kids," but those with the relevant preparation. But this article is about the US as a whole.

(But anyway, if what you're interested in is comparing white drop-outs to blacks, there's research on that too. It shows that white HS dropouts do better than black college grads. We still have a LONG way to go. http://www.demos.org/blog/9/23/14/white-high-school-dropouts-have-more-wealth-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP I think that's kind of a minor detail. I don't think you're going to see a huge number of AA and Hispanic students even applying to the top schools because for many the type of education they've received up to high school would not make them competitive in the first place.

The really sad data point was some of the data from state flagship schools, especially in states that have a significant AA population. I don't understand what is going on there.

We really need minority populations to go to college and graduate because otherwise we are writing off the portion of our population that needs to be working and productive to keep our country going. I am somewhat concerned about this as a 50 year old and I think we sometimes miss the forest for the trees in this discussion.

I agree with you, but I disagree that PP's point about statistics it is a minor detail in terms of OP's misleading title. That data set actually doesn't show anything about affirmative action in admissions because it isn't limited to the pool of applicants. Since the data is compared to the entire US population, it shows that relative to the population, fewer black and hispanic kids are going to college. The reason for this does not begin and end at the college admission officer's desk, and to suggest so (as OP's title does) fails to focus on the bigger issues of what is preventing these kids from getting into the applicant pool in the first place. You can't hold colleges accountable for failing to admit people who can't or didn't apply for whatever reasons (didn't graduate high school, incarceration, already working in field that doesn't require a degree, etc.). You can't fix a problem if you don't focus on it properly. Use the right data to make the right points.

In fact, the cited article isn't really about affirmative action and whether it has "failed":

"Affirmative action increases the numbers of black and Hispanic students at many colleges and universities, but experts say that persistent underrepresentation often stems from equity issues that begin earlier."

To evaluate the effectiveness of affirmative action, you need to use the applicant pool. To determine why various populations are underrepresented in the college applicant pool generally, you need to look way back, earlier in life than a child's 18th year.

The title of the thread, comes directly from the NYTimes article.

No, it doesn't. The article does NOT say that affirmative action in admissions has failed. The article is entitled "Even with Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics are More Under-represented." It CLEARLY says that affirmative action at the college admissions level HELPS, but is not enough:

"Affirmative action increases the numbers of black and Hispanic students at many colleges and universities, but experts say that persistent underrepresentation often stems from equity issues that begin earlier."

The details of the article do however, show that it has in fact failed without specifically using that word. Its not detailing the success of affirmative action by any means whatsoever.

it's only "failed" because you're setting up the strawman argument: affirmative action only works if it completely ameliorates race discrimination. that's a fake definition. the article clearly says that but-for affirmative action in admissions, the situation would be WORSE. How is that a failure?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Since the data is compared to the entire US population, it shows that relative to the population, fewer black and hispanic kids are going to college. The reason for this does not begin and end at the college admission officer's desk, and to suggest so (as OP's title does) fails to focus on the bigger issues of what is preventing these kids from getting into the applicant pool in the first place. You can't hold colleges accountable for failing to admit people who can't or didn't apply for whatever reasons (didn't graduate high school, incarceration, already working in field that doesn't require a degree, etc.). You can't fix a problem if you don't focus on it properly. Use the right data to make the right points.

Good point. Which is why it's also unfair to condemn companies for not having diversity numbers that represent the US population. I worked at a software company and we had very few women and non-Asian minorities on our software development team. The reason is the universities simply weren't graduating enough of them with computer science degrees. We were happy to hire them, but we just couldnt' find them.

[Anonymous]

Imo things would be better if we went to a full transparent quota system.

Ivy League should be 20% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, 10% Jewish, 30% gentile white.

Would be a acceptable compromise based on population mixture

It would make for a happier campus as well. Blacks and hispanics have a lot less rates of suicide and a lot more fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested to see enrollment trends for Jewish students and Italian-American students

How would you find that? Both are white and not tracked.

You are naive if internally this data isn't tracked

How would schools track it, though? As far as I know, demographic surveys on applications don't get that detailed, so schools wouldn't know unless a kid specified it voluntarily. Membership in Jewish or Italian student organizations obviously would only capture those kids who choose to join those organizations, and there might be kids who are members of those organizations who don't fall into those categories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not an expert researcher. But the article is missing some data that I want. The article is using college age population for each group as the base. I don't want that to be the only information I'm given. I would like to know what percent of the total population base of each group has even applied to college at all. Does that make sense? Maybe the % is the same if you compare it to total number of college applicants rather than total percent of college age kids of each group.

I think that's a really good point and would make a tremendous difference to the figures. "College aged" is not sufficient it is a blanket group which will include non-English speakers, kids who dropped out of high school aged 16 or thereabouts and those who went into trades with no intention of ever attending college. Its not a detailed enough category.

No, that's entirely the point. You start from the premise that all kids are equally educable. Not that some people by virture of their skin color drop out at higher rates.

Its still too broad. How can you consider all "college aged" kids from certain ethnic backgrounds and compare with only those who applied and attended these colleges? That's skewed. If that is the category required, it should look at ALL "college aged" kids, including all the white drop outs and trade school learners.

Why is it too broad? The WHOLE POINT is in fact that all college aged kids should be equally represented (some day). If this were a study to determine whether a particular college were racially discriminating, then yes, of course, you'd look at the roughly qualified pool. Which would not be "all college aged kids," but those with the relevant preparation. But this article is about the US as a whole.

(But anyway, if what you're interested in is comparing white drop-outs to blacks, there's research on that too. It shows that white HS dropouts do better than black college grads. We still have a LONG way to go. http://www.demos.org/blog/9/23/14/white-high-school-dropouts-have-more-wealth-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates)

Thanks for the link, despite it being the most depressing thing I've seen all week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested to see enrollment trends for Jewish students and Italian-American students

How would you find that? Both are white and not tracked.

You are naive if internally this data isn't tracked

How would schools track it, though? As far as I know, demographic surveys on applications don't get that detailed, so schools wouldn't know unless a kid specified it voluntarily. Membership in Jewish or Italian student organizations obviously would only capture those kids who choose to join those organizations, and there might be kids who are members of those organizations who don't fall into those categories.

This seems like an obvious thing to say, but you can be both Italian and Jewish. At the same time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested to see enrollment trends for Jewish students and Italian-American students

How would you find that? Both are white and not tracked.

You are naive if internally this data isn't tracked

How would schools track it, though? As far as I know, demographic surveys on applications don't get that detailed, so schools wouldn't know unless a kid specified it voluntarily. Membership in Jewish or Italian student organizations obviously would only capture those kids who choose to join those organizations, and there might be kids who are members of those organizations who don't fall into those categories.

This seems like an obvious thing to say, but you can be both Italian and Jewish. At the same time.

Haha, right. And you can also be Jewish in multiple ways -- ethnically, religiously, or both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not an expert researcher. But the article is missing some data that I want. The article is using college age population for each group as the base. I don't want that to be the only information I'm given. I would like to know what percent of the total population base of each group has even applied to college at all. Does that make sense? Maybe the % is the same if you compare it to total number of college applicants rather than total percent of college age kids of each group.

I think that's a really good point and would make a tremendous difference to the figures. "College aged" is not sufficient it is a blanket group which will include non-English speakers, kids who dropped out of high school aged 16 or thereabouts and those who went into trades with no intention of ever attending college. Its not a detailed enough category.

No, that's entirely the point. You start from the premise that all kids are equally educable. Not that some people by virture of their skin color drop out at higher rates.

Its still too broad. How can you consider all "college aged" kids from certain ethnic backgrounds and compare with only those who applied and attended these colleges? That's skewed. If that is the category required, it should look at ALL "college aged" kids, including all the white drop outs and trade school learners.

Why is it too broad? The WHOLE POINT is in fact that all college aged kids should be equally represented (some day). If this were a study to determine whether a particular college were racially discriminating, then yes, of course, you'd look at the roughly qualified pool. Which would not be "all college aged kids," but those with the relevant preparation. But this article is about the US as a whole.

(But anyway, if what you're interested in is comparing white drop-outs to blacks, there's research on that too. It shows that white HS dropouts do better than black college grads. We still have a LONG way to go. http://www.demos.org/blog/9/23/14/white-high-school-dropouts-have-more-wealth-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates)

Thanks for the link, despite it being the most depressing thing I've seen all week.

Yeah, no kidding about it being depressing. I heard the lead researcher do a presentation on that paper a few years ago when it first came out, and it was like the entire room just deflated and went uuuuggh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Since the data is compared to the entire US population, it shows that relative to the population, fewer black and hispanic kids are going to college. The reason for this does not begin and end at the college admission officer's desk, and to suggest so (as OP's title does) fails to focus on the bigger issues of what is preventing these kids from getting into the applicant pool in the first place. You can't hold colleges accountable for failing to admit people who can't or didn't apply for whatever reasons (didn't graduate high school, incarceration, already working in field that doesn't require a degree, etc.). You can't fix a problem if you don't focus on it properly. Use the right data to make the right points.

Good point. Which is why it's also unfair to condemn companies for not having diversity numbers that represent the US population. I worked at a software company and we had very few women and non-Asian minorities on our software development team. The reason is the universities simply weren't graduating enough of them with computer science degrees. We were happy to hire them, but we just couldnt' find them.

So you see how the problem compounds itself. Underrepresentation in higher education leads to the same in the workforce.

As an aside, employment is different from college admissions (different laws), so this is off topic. But generally on the employment side and in very broad strokes: that is why legally permissible affirmative action is about taking affirmative steps to broaden your applicant pool. If the candidate aren't there, they aren't there; but you can't actively or passively limit your applicate pool either. So whether it is fair or unfair to condemn a given company really depends on their recruiting practices as much as their hiring, compensation, and promotion practices.

[Anonymous]

More likely, the school-to-prison pipeline has been a resounding success.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imo things would be better if we went to a full transparent quota system.

Ivy League should be 20% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, 10% Jewish, 30% gentile white.

Would be a acceptable compromise based on population mixture

It would make for a happier campus as well. Blacks and hispanics have a lot less rates of suicide and a lot more fun.

Jewish are mostly white. How about 15 percent Hispanic, 15 Asian, 15 black. 5 "other" and 50 percent white?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole idea is so "un-american." Let kids compete. Let the best win.

Yes, that would be fair if they were all starting from the same 'starting line'. Best and brightest are usually the rich and whitest, just because of the early educational advantages these kids have. You have a lot better chance of going to college if you school is located in a wealthy community.

The kids that get into college are not the smartest, they are the most privileged = FACT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imo things would be better if we went to a full transparent quota system.

Ivy League should be 20% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, 10% Jewish, 30% gentile white.

Would be a acceptable compromise based on population mixture

It would make for a happier campus as well. Blacks and hispanics have a lot less rates of suicide and a lot more fun.

Troll score 1/10

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Imo things would be better if we went to a full transparent quota system.

Ivy League should be 20% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, 10% Jewish, 30% gentile white.

Would be a acceptable compromise based on population mixture

It would make for a happier campus as well. Blacks and hispanics have a lot less rates of suicide and a lot more fun.

Troll score 1/10

Not troll - totally serious. An explicit quota would solve a lot of headaches.