Unintended Consequences of Affirmative Action
Thursday, January 30, at 1 p.m., U.S. Eastern timeCan colleges do more to recruit minority faculty members? Has affirmative action contributed to the problem of faculties' lack of diversity?
A new book, Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High-Achieving Minority Students (Harvard University Press), is sparking considerable debate even before its official release date. The book argues that the reason that college faculties aren't more diverse has nothing to do with discrimination. Rather, the authors say, the pool of potential minority professors is too small -- in part because of affirmative action. The use of affirmative action in undergraduate admissions allows black, Hispanic, and American Indian students to enroll in colleges where they are not likely to excel, and most of these students do not earn the kinds of grades that could lead to earning Ph.D.'s at top universities. The book also questions conventional wisdom on the importance of role models. Many minority students say they depend on minority faculty members to be their mentors, and they cite this need in demanding that colleges hire more minority professors. But the book says that there is no correlation between a minority student's having a minority role model and his or her decision to continue on a path toward becoming a professor.
» The Unintended Consequences of Affirmative Action (1/31/2003)
 (Linda Harris for The Chronicle) |
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Piper Fogg (Moderator):
My name is Piper Fogg and I am a reporter in the faculty section. I'd like to welcome our guest, Stephen Cole, and thank him for joining us today.
Stephen Cole:
I would like to thank Robin Wilson and The Chronicle for giving such prominent coverage to my book Increasing Faculty Diversity: The Occupational Choices of High Achieving Minority Students. The article does, however, incorrectly give the reader the impression that affirmative action is the most important reason why minority students do not go into academia. This simply is not true. Affirmative action is one reason, for the reason Robin Wilson points out. But far more important than affirmative action is the lower level of academic importance of minority students at every level of school, causing the pool of students who are eligible to even make the decision to become an academic to become very small by the time they reach college. This is very clearly laid out in Chapter 9 (with Elizabeth Arias) on the Pipeline into Academia. The book also points out that African Americans are less likely to be interested in academia when they enter college, and career choice at entrance to college is one of the most important variables influencing final career choice.
Stephen Cole:
And one technical point: Robin Williams said that we interviewed only students who had GPAs of 2.8 or higher. This was only true at the state universities and the HBCUs, where there is great heterogeneity in academic ability. At the Ivy League schools and the liberal arts colleges we interviewed all students regardless of their GPAs. Of course, at these schools over 90 percent had GPAs of 2.8. When making cross school comparisons we controlled for GPA so that our results would not be effected by the GPA cut-off point. And finally when Robin Williams said that our book read like a paper produced by a conservative think tank, this may be misleading to the readers. This book is the result of five years of data collection and analysis and as Ronald Ehrenberg, economist at Cornell says on the jacket: "Readers interested in polemics should look elsewhere: here they will find an important social issue analyzed in a dispassionate way."
Question from Piper Fogg:
Professor Cole, before we go to questions from the audience, I'd like to ask one of my own: Were you surprised by some of the hostile reactions to your book that appeared in Robin Wilson's article?
Stephen Cole:
No. In general, I was quite pleased with Robin Wilson's article and the range of reactions to my book. If you write a book in which you report data which suggest that the low level of diversity among faculty members is not a result of discrimination upon the part of universities, that affirmative action has some negative impact on minority students becoming professors, and that same ethnicity role models are no more effective than white role models in influencing minority students to become academics, you would expect to get some negative reactions.
Question from Stephanie Stewart, Loyola University Chicago:
The encouragement I received from a professor during my undergraduate years served as a primary incentive to pursue a career in higher education. Does this type of encouragement need to come specifically from minority faculty members, or could ALL faculty members, regardless of race, identify and encourage the minority students in their classrooms who appear interested in college teaching?
Stephen Cole:
The data from our study suggest that all faculty members can act as effective role models and mentors in encouraging minority students to go into academia. Students who said they had minority role models were no more likely to go into academia than those who had white role models, other things held constant.
Question from Aris, small college:
Recruitment seems superficial. Many feel that recruiters use data about us to show the "pool" but they seem to really have hired already before they advertise in The Chronicle.
How about retention? When we are hired, we are promised certain loads to make our salaries at a level that we can live like professionals. But when assignments are doled out, we continue to receive the minimum load that does not allow us to live like our colleagues. We find ourselves finding substandard housing, etc. We are made to feel that we should really not stay and even try for tenure. When the tenure decision is made...denial of tenure is effected.
What do you think of a case in which a minority professor is retained all those years only to be denied tenure?
Stephen Cole:
My study did not study minorities who had already entered the professoriate. So I am unable to answer this question based upon my data. I believe a study of minority professors with a matched sample of white profesors is needed and would be happy to conduct it if funding could be arranged. In the case you mention of a minority profesor being denied tenure after a long stint as an assistant professor, before we can conclude that his represents unfair treatment we would have to know what type of college the professor was employed at, what the criteria for tenure were, whether the profesor met those criteria, and how similar white profesors were treated.
Question from verona iriarte, independent scholar:
Colleges can do more to recruit so-called minority faculty. Some of us are qualified without the terminal degrees due to practical experience. What can we do about that?
Stephen Cole:
My study did not deal with the hiring practices of various institutions. There are, however, many instituions of higher education in the United States, particulaly two year colleges, which do not require Ph.D.s as a requirement for employment. And although I do not know the statistics, I would not be surprised if there were many four year colleges who also hired faculty without Ph.D.s if they had the experience necessary to teach specific courses.
Question from Holly, eastern university:
Bandura and other authors suggest that self-efficacy (the belief that you can perform a specific task) affects performance (in conjunction with goals) such that higher self-efficacy leads to higher self-set goals which is positively related to higher performance. One source of self-efficacy is vicarious experience modeled by persons that are similar to you. This is a quote from Bandura's website: "Through their [models]behavior and expressed ways of thinking, competent models transmit knowledge and teach observers effective skills and strategies for managing environmental demands. " According to Bandura, the more similar the model, the more persuasive the experiences. What's your opinion on the self-efficacy research applied to this issue? Did you seek to measure this in your study?
Stephen Cole:
We did not explicity measure Bandura's concept in our study. It may, however, be quite correct. We only measured two aspects of the role models: their gender and ethnicity. On these dimensions we found that similarity to the respondent made no difference in their decision to become a professor. However, the role models may have been similar to the students in many other important ways; such as research interest.
Question from Thomas Adams Upchurch, East Georgia College:
Is our ultimate goal to create a colorblind society in which all people have the same opportunities for success? Or is it to make recompense for the abuses of the past? Don't you think we need to reach some type of consensus about which one of these goals we're really striving for before we go any further? Thank you.
Stephen Cole:
This question involves a value judgement and as such can not be answered by data collected by my study. My personal belief is that we have to do both. But the way in which we recomense for the past should not be through the use of reverse discrimination, quotes, and "set-a-sides": all of which mitigate against achieving a colorblind society.
Question from Gerald Martin, St. Augustine's College:
When I was in my doctoral program, I submitted the same paper in separate classes as a test of consistency. I received a "C" in the first class and an "A" in the second. Which makes me asked the question, how much of the poor grades of minority students at selective institutions is the student's lack of preparedness versus the faculty's employing self-fulfilling hypotheses?
Stephen Cole:
You do not give enough information in your question for me to give a meaningful answer. Was the first grade given by an African American faculty member and the second by a white faculty member? Even if this were the case, it would represent only an anecdote rather than the systematic evidence which would be needed to proved that white professors discriminate against minority students in grading. Also, it is well known that the reliability of grading papers is very low.
Question from Paul, liberal arts college:
Robin Wilson, in her article, writes that Cole's findings "directly contradict" the Bok study. Based on the information provided in the article, this is a distortion.
Bok demonstrated that minority students with similar standardized test scores who attended elite universities earned higher incomes post graduation than comparable students who attended lower ranked schools.
Cole demonstrates that minority students who entered elite universities received lower grades than students with comparable standardized scores who entered lower tiered institutions, and that these lower grades translated into lower confidence, desire, and ability to pursue PhD's.
These results are wholly compatible. In fact, how can any academic not jokingly point out that discouraging the best and brightest minorities from entering the professorate has probably *increased* their average wages!?
Stephen Cole:
Paul is correct in pointing out that my study and that of Bowen and Bok (The Shape of the River) deal with different dependent variables. I would like to take this opportunity, however, to point out that some recent work by Stacy Berg Dale and Alan B. Krueger (1999 NBER Working Paper 7322- available on the NBER website) raises some very serious questions about the validity of one of the main findings of Bowen and Bok. These authors argue that as a result of affirmative action minorities who attend the most selective schools end up earning more money. Dale and Krueger argue that these findings are due to "uncontrolled selectivity". They develop an ingenious method to control for this selectivity and when they do so find that it does not matter whether a minority student attends the most highly selective school or a less selective school. This paper is a must read for anyone who is a fan of Bowen and Bok.
Question from Marques Bolden, U. of Notre Dame:
Would you agree, then with the charge that affirmative action should be thrown out of the college admissions process?
Stephen Cole:
My study points out one negative consequence of affirmative action for minority students. There may be other positive consequences. I believe that all of these must be weighed in making this very difficult decision.
Question from Jim Prohs, Black Hawk College:
I have a compound question:
Q1: Is there a correlation between the success of a minority student and faculty mentors at the bachelor's level?
Q2: Is there a correlation between someone who has obtained a Ph.D. and having at least one parent who has a bachelor's degree.
If so, then maybe we are expecting too much too quickly. Many of my students are the first in their families to achieve post-scondary education. It was not even thought a possibily years ago. I know that the miority faculty here plays a great role in encouraging this success. For our minority student to think Ph.D., I think they must first realize the possibility of BA. It may take more than one or two generations. What do you think?
Stephen Cole:
There is no correlation between the success of a minority student and the ethnicity of the mentor. There also is no correlation between aspiring to obtain a Ph.D. and having at least one parent who has a BA degree. We have no data on whether the students in our sample actually obtained a Ph.D degree. As far as taking more than one generation goes, there are many immigrant Asian and Latinos who aspire to obtain a Ph.D. With the right eductation and the right type of faculty mentoring first generation college students can go on to earn Ph.D.s.
Question from Dave, state university:
What role do parents and family play in this issue?
Stephen Cole:
A very important one, which is discussed at length in my book but which was not discussed in the Chronicle article. (Obviously they could not discuss all aspects of the book.) We found that the parents, particularly of African Americans and Asians, had negative attitudes towards their children going into academia. Parents saw academia as a low paying, low prestige occupation. Essentially, they do not understand this occupation and would prefer to see their children go into medicine, law, or business. In the policy chapter, we suggest ways to make both parents and students more familiar with the advanages of an academic career vis-a-vis the other main competing careers.
Comment from Kenneth Lennon, Notre Dame College of Ohio:
I don't see why that is even a question! Of course colleges can do more. The problem is minorities, such as myself, are very seldom given the opportunity. Some claim that affirmative action is not fair, but it also isn't fair when someone's uncle or kin went to a certain school and they get special treatment. If colleges and universities want to make things completely fair, they shouldn't use names or ss#, because both or something can and will hint at color.
Question from Wayne, USF:
There are many Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that are overlooked during the faculty recruitment process. Why aren't the graduates from HBCUs considered more during the recruitment process? Are the graduates looked upon as having an inferior education? Do recruiters know the valuable educational lessons learned at HBCUs?
Stephen Cole:
I did not study the faculty recruitment process. I would like to do so however. I think that when we consider the HBCUs we must face up to reality. Many of them are not of the same calibre as the big research universities where most white and Asian students receive their degrees. Nonetheless I don't think that good graduates from these schools will be overlooked simply because they graduate from an HBCU. In order to get a good academic job, whether one is black or white, one must publish-- preferably while in graduate shool. All advisors know this. If one publishes good work and one is a minority, that person will have doors wide open to them, as universites are doing everything in their power to diversify their faculties.
Question from Greg, Illinois State University:
If affirmative action hinders the hiring of minority faculty, what then would be the most effective way to diversify the faculty? (And by diversity, I'll include gender, socioeconomic status and other factors in addition to race/ethnicity.)
Stephen Cole:
The Chronicle article over-emphasized the importance of affirmative action as a reason for low levels of faculty diversity. More important is the lower levels of academic performance of African Americans and Latinos at every level of the educational system. If you want to ethnically diversity the professoriate in a serious way, we must improve the academic performance of minorities at every level in the school system. For example, today whites are substantially more likely to graduate from college than African Americans and Latinos. In college, the grades of whites are substantially higher than those of African Americans and Latinos, and this is only to a small extent and at a relatively small number of colleges due to affirmative action. It is primarily due to the poor level of academic preparation of minority students. I'll leave the issues of gender and socio-economic status for another time.
Question from Jennifer Dowd, Mercer County Community College, NJ:
Have you considered the possibility that high achieving minority students now have many more opportunities for professional employment in careers that have salaries far higher than those typically available in academe and which do not require the years of study and the high debt load to gain entry?
Stephen Cole:
Of course. As I point out in Chapter 1 of the book we do not consider "demand side" factors. But it would be easy to exaggerate the great rewards of other careers. How many minorities will go to Harvard law and then to Cravath, Swaine... and make $200,000 for working 100 hours a week? Most lawyers are more likely to make about the same as starting assistant professors. Of all minorities applying to medical school (a highly self-selected group) only about 45 percent get into any. Yes, if they get in they are guaranteed a middle class life. Business is not without its risk. Academia has certain advantages that these other competing careers can not match. It is our job to make minority students aware of these advantages. (Currently they are not.) And convince them what a wonderful life working in academe offers. As far as debt goes, most minority students have fellowships available and we found that worry about debt was not a factor deterring students from entering academia.
Question from Kathy Goodman, AAC&U:
In “Achieving Faculty Diversity: Debunking the Myths,” Daryl Smith’s research concludes that the idea that there is a lack of faculty of color in the pipeline is a myth, and the real problem is that not enough colleges and universities make an effort to find the right candidates. Did you gather statistics for the number of minority Ph.D.’s without tenure-track positions? This number might provide an indication that there is a problem with recruitment efforts vs. the size of the pool.
Stephen Cole:
I advise Daryl Smith and anyone else who holds her views to read Chapter 9 of my book, "The Pipeline into Academia" (with Elizabeth Arias). Using census data, data from the National Center for Education Statistics, and several other sources including my survey, we show conclusively and beyond any doubt that the pool of minority Ph.D.s is shockingly small. Unless someone can show errors in this analysis, the argument that there are many minority Ph.D.s in the pipeline but universities are not making adequate efforts to find them is dead.
Question from David Cannon, Grand Valley State University:
The description of Professor Cole's book on The Chronicle's website states "that there is no correlation between a minority student's having a minority role model and his or her decision to continue on a path toward becoming a professor." Did Professor Cole ask his subjects whether the LACK of a minority role model was a factor in his or her decision to NOT continue on the path toward becoming a professor? Oftentimes a lack of correlation can result from asking the wrong question.
Stephen Cole:
This question can be answered by comparing those students who reported having a minority role model with those who did not report having a role model. As I pointed out above, those who did not report having a minority role model ("LACKED a minority role model) were no less likely to go into academia than those who did.
Question from Jen Stevenson, Meadville/Lombard Theological School:
Given the widespread (anecdotal) evidence of grade inflation, do you conclude that African American students are less likely to receive inflated grades? And thus have more "accurate" grades than their Caucasian classmates? Also, have you found that African American students who went to more "appropriate" colleges (based on their test scores) went into graduate school in higher numbers?
Stephen Cole:
There is no way for me to tell whether African Americans are more or less likely to be the beneficiaries of grade inflation. If as you suggest their grades are more "accurate", this would mean they were being discriminated against in grading. We found no evidence to support this hypothesis.
In answer to your second question, the answer is definitely yes. In fact, these data are at the heart of our conclusion that affirmative action may be harmful in getting african americans to enter the professoriate. We found, for example, that among african americans who expressed an initial freshman interest in academia as a career, those who went to state universities and HBCUs were twice as likely as those who went to the "elite" schools (where affirmative action surely played a role in the admission of many)-- the Ivies and the highly selective liberal arts schools--to carry through with their initial interest and actually select academia as their first choice career as seniors.
Question from Deidre Gibson, Hampton U.:
What evidence do you have to support the statement that minority students did not need minority role models to continue their education and obtain a PhD?
Stephen Cole:
We asked the students if they had each of eight different types of role model (african american male; african american female; latino male; latina female, etc.). We then aggregated the responses so that we could compare all African American students who told us that they had an african american role model with those who said they they did not have an african american role model. By looking at the percentage of each group who selected academia as their first choice career as senior, we were able to make this determination. The actual methodology was somewhat more complicated; but this is the gist of it.
Question from P. Atkinson, Frostburg State U.:
Of the factors you point out (3, I think) that negatively affect minority entrance into a profession in higher education, which do you see as most significant and which can best be changed to increase entrance into the profession?
Stephen Cole:
I've answered so many questions and I don't have them all here in front of me that I'm not exactly what 3 factors you are referring to. The most important factor is to improve the academic performance of minority students at all levels; but this is something which universities may not be able to do much about and which may take many decades to accomplish. What we can do is work with the minority students who are already in college and try to increase the proportion of them who do well and who want to become college professors to a level above that of white students. I really believe that if universities were to follow the policy suggestions which I lay out in chapter 10 of my book that we could significantly increase the number of minority students who decided to become professors. My real question is how serious are the universites about wanting to do this. They say they are and where they can steal away a minority faculty from some other univeristy ( a policy which does nothing to increse the amount of diversity in the system as a whole) they will. But how many if any will introduce the type of program (not a very expensive one) which I recommend in my book? This will be a test of real commitment to the goal. Or let them introduce another program which will accomplish the same goal.
Piper Fogg (Moderator):
It looks like we are out of time. Thanks to our guest, Professor Cole, for answering our questions today. We got a bunch of questions, so we're sorry we couldn't get to them all.
Stephen Cole:
I would like to thank The Chronicle for giving me the opportunity to talk with readers about my book and I would particularly like to thank the readers who took the time to send in questions. Although many of you may not agree with some of the views expressed in this book, I urge you to read it. I think you will find it to be non-polemical and even if you disagree with some of the views I hope you will find them of interest and of value in the current debate going on about the role of race/ethnicity in the university. Thanks again, Steve Cole
Copyright © 2009 by The Chronicle of Higher Education