In a recent article in The Chronicle Review, I outlined some forthcoming research which suggests that affirmative action programs should be primarily about addressing socioeconomic disadvantage rather than race. The researchers, Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl of Georgetown University, find that there is a 399 point predicted difference in the combined math and verbal SAT scores between the most socioeconomically advantaged students and the least advantaged but only a 56 point difference based on race (being black rather than white.) These data raise questions about current university practices, which provide large preferences to under-represented minorities, but virtually no consideration of economic disadvantage. I noted that the U.S. Supreme Court may soon significantly cut back on affirmative action by race, effectively driving universities to a greater consideration of economic status.
In the comments section, readers attacked the article from both the right and the left. I will briefly respond here.
From the Right
* One reader wrote that any system of affirmative action, whether race or class-based “is designed to let lesser qualified individuals circumvent a merit based system. End of story.”
To the contrary, a system of rewarding “strivers,” who have overcome odds, seeks to provide a better approximation of merit than simply looking at raw test scores. Intuitively, most people understand that a disadvantaged student – who has parents who dropped out of high school and who attends a high poverty public school and the like – who still manages to do fairly well academically has greater long-run potential than a student who scores somewhat higher having enjoyed myriad advantages in life. Carnevale and Strohl provide the data to back up that hunch and quantify the weights of various disadvantages as never before.
* Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity questioned whether there are sufficient numbers of “students willing and able to do the work at the university level” from low-income families.
In fact, in earlier research, Carnevale and coauthor Stephen J. Rose found that a pure meritocratic system that also counted socioeconomic status could almost quadruple the number of economically disadvantaged students at selective institutions and just as many students would graduate as currently do. Likewise, research from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation and Civic Enterprises identified 3.4 million K-12 students who come from families below the national median income and who score in the top academic quartile.
From the Left
* One reader suggested that universities already give a leg up to low-income applicants. Institutions like the University of Michigan – the subject of litigation challenging the use of race – provided affirmative action on the basis of both race and socioeconomic status.
While universities claim to already consider socioeconomic status as a factor in admissions, the research suggests that’s not true. William Bowen and colleagues, for example, found that within a given SAT range, being an under-represented minority increases the chances of admissions at selective institutions by 28 percentage points, while being low-income has virtually no effect. Only after a voter initiative banned the University of Michigan from using race did the institution begin to aggressively consider socioeconomic status in admissions.
* Another reader argued that the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grutter v. Bollinger affirming race-sensitive admissions is not in danger because the case was cited favorably in 2007 even as the Supreme Court was striking down racial integration plans in Louisville and Seattle.
The Supreme Court did favorably cite Grutter in the 2007 school integration cases, but the Court can seriously undermine affirmative action without overturning Grutter. In the 2003 Grutter decision, the Supreme Court said that universities could only use race if race-neutral means (like preferences for socioeconomic status) couldn’t produce sufficient racial diversity. Conservatives on the court can use that language to force universities to significantly curtail the use of race, without technically overturning Grutter.
* Once commentator asked, with all the talk about affirmative action as a departure from merit, where is the outrage about legacy preferences for children of advantaged alumni?
The point is well taken, and this fall, The Century Foundation will try to remedy some of that imbalance by publishing a book entitled: Affirmative Action for the Rich: Legacy Preferences in College Admissions. The volume includes chapters by leading academics, legal practitioners, and journalists questioning the legitimacy of preferences for the children of alumni, which advantage the already advantaged and don’t, in fact, increase university fundraising.
3 Responses to A Response to the Critics of Class-Based Affirmative Action
22261984 - June 14, 2010 at 8:29 am
From Roger Clegg, Center for Equal Opportunity: Richard, I think your characterization of what I wrote misses the mark, but we can let the readers decide. Here’s what I wrote: “Well, I’m all for anything that decreases the amount of racial and ethnic discrimination in which universities are currently engaged. And I’m all for improving our ability to identify diamonds in the rough, of whatever color. One cautionary note, though: While not as divisive (or legally problematic) as racial quotas, socioeconomic quotas ought to be avoided, too, because some of their costs are similar, if less pronounced. And I suspect that there will be a higher proportion of students willing and able to do work at the university level among those students whose parents were willing and able to do work at the university level — and, alas, those students (and their parents) are likely to have more money.”
11122741 - June 14, 2010 at 2:05 pm
as one of those economically disadvantage students from a dead mill town who managed through mostly the luck of encountering some folks who were interested in gems of various kinds in the rough, I managed to get into and graduate from Columbia then then several other good universities and am now a full professor at a similar place. I was support throughout by scholarship money in one form or another and people interested inseeing me advanced and succeed as I succeded at each step and I was the wrong profile on every variable you can think of in the current preference lists. I can tell you many stories of the resentment and discrimination I encountered along the way and in grad school and most particularly moving through the academic ranks where I always had to have 3 times the productivity of my competitors to receive the same rewards (even to this day). I was a striver long before there was that term and I knew starting in my sophmore year in high school that there was some hope there of getting a shot and support if I did the job even if I was a poor kid from a dead mill town who profiled wrong on all things except performance with a dash of originality and leadership. That’s what kept me going and going in the same way that my dream of playing pro baseball did; namely, that there was a chance if I did my end and got a few breaks: but that was the 1950′s. Kahlenberg is so on and dead center. In fact I once did a series of studies for the Navy in 1970 that showed that whatever findings their analysts found in their databases about minorities the same findings found be found for poor whites; that the function word in all the constructions used for analysis was “poor” and where it was present or absent in the construction and apples were being compared to apples and the constructs were not confounded on and with socioeconomic status. That study got the Navy to focus on its poor sailors rather than their politically constructed sailors. The problem with focusing on the poor and using socioeconomic status is that you don’t know which way these people/students will vote if you help them to advance and that is the core and real nub of the problem and while Kahlenberg is being attacked by both the right and the left in particular. I must tell you that I am not happy when I see things done for advantaged people whatever their race, gender or other factors at the expense of and as a goal and preference over poor people/students who are basically ignored and invisible …and done usually by advantaged people. The quantitative historian Frtiz Ringer was right in his 400 year findings that academia (the country club)doesn’t want poor students and particularly poor graduate students and its not about what they cost; its about who advances to different levels of club membership. Wealth is class to a great degree in this country and class is real, alive and well here and probably more so than 50 years ago. Socioeconomic status needs to be the trump card and particularly for strivers.
princeton67 - June 14, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Of course, for elite high-school athletes, especially in football or basketball, an “affirmative admission” program already exists: It’s called “Coach’s Recruit.” As a thirty-year teacher of SAT prep in a Georgia high school, I taught Parade and McDonald All-Americans, as well as many all-state or -conference athletes. If a coach wanted an athlete, and that athlete had the minimum SAT – GPA combination required by the NCAA, he was admitted on an athletic scholarship – even if the SAT’s were 200 – 300 points, and the GPA 1.5 points, below those of the “average” freshman. One positive note: absolutely no attention paid to “socioeconomic status” or “race” – or single parent, first generation to go to college. Solely athletic ability.