New "Affirmative Action" nonsense

[Metaphor]

Yeah, you make some good points up until you ride your favorite hobby horse off a cliff. And that point might be a valid one if test scores and GPAs were perfect or even the best predictor of who would make a good physician. The medical community has come to the conclusion that they do not. I've given you lots of links on the other board so I won't bother with it now.

Of course they're not perfect. No one ever claimed they were. But you're wrong about the conclusion the 'medical community' has come to. 95% of people in the highest GPA/MCAT grouping are accepted into medical school. This demonstrates that indeed, medical schools value achievement and aptitude scores very, very highly.

And I, of course, have never, not ever, claimed or even believe other factors are not relevant or discoverable or should not be used. What I have claimed is that if you are going to use that factor to influence entry, it should have demonstrated predictive validity with success in medicine.

And if certain communities are underserved, it is proper for the Government to offer bonded scholarships for medicine students. You get a free ride through medical school, you promise to serve at a particular posting after you graduate.

 

[Jokodo]

Is being in the top 5% of the population at large enough to get into MIT? No. Thus why would you think the top 5% from any given school is good enough?

It's just a way to discriminate without calling it discrimination.

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No. I'm saying the money brought in by the donors does more good than the legacy admissions does bad.

And exactly how is that different from saying that the diversity brought in by minority students under an affirmative action regime the way you claim it works does more good than their admission does bad even if they are underqualified?

 

[Derec]

Here is a link to the University's demographics: http://ro.umich.edu/enrollment/ethnicity.php

It's a pretty white place.

Here is a link to Clark Atlanta University Demographics. http://www.forbes.com/colleges/clark-atlanta-university/
It's a pretty black place. So that that mean that Clark should discriminate against their black applicants?

Given that U of Michigan is a state university (of national and even international prominence, of course), I would think that there would be a greater diversity.

Only 57% are white, so there is diversity.

Since the 1960's, the U has promised that it was committed to achieving a student body that more closely reflected the state demographics, with a minimum of 10% black students. So far, they haven't hit half that.

Setting aside 10% for blacks is an overt quota and declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS long since. Even a more covert points system (that valued race 2/3 more than SAT scores) was outlawed by a constitutional amendment. They have no choice but not to discriminate by race regardless of their demographics and that's a good thing!

Please note: I am not suggesting that this particular student should have been admitted--or should have been denied admission. I don't have enough information. Her grades and ACT scores were below the average for U of MI, but by definition, some students will have below average metrics.

Well her ACT scores are not only below average for UM, they are only in 68th percentile nationwide. That is just not nearly good enough for a school like UM.

Her other achievements are notable and typically, showing leadership on a team which is nationally ranked will get you some leeway.

Except you'd need a lot of leeway for her ACT scores and most applicants to a school like UM will show a number of extracurricular activities as well.

Also worth noting is that this particular student's test scores and GPA were very, very close to that of Jennifer Gratz,

According to this:

Jennifer Gratz applied for admission to the University of Michigan in 1995 with a grade point average of 3.8 and an ACT score of 25.

So both her GPA and ACT scores were better. Also this was two decades ago and there's been quite a bit of grade inflation since.
Furthermore,

For the class entering in 1995, for example, 100 percent of the minority students were admitted with scores and GPA’s comparable to those of Jennifer Gratz, while 32 percent of non-minority students were admitted.

Which is overt and blatant racial discrimination on its face. Maybe Gratz should not have been admitted but then again 68% of the blacks with similar grades/scores should not have been admitted either!

who was successful in her lawsuit (which was specious: she was wait listed and the year she applied ALL wait listed candidates were offered admission. She wasn't because she claimed her application to be on the wait list was 'lost.' The University claimed it never saw it. I don't know what happened but I do know that a) 18 year olds often claim they mailed something in when they did not and b) large universities do indeed sometimes lose paperwork and documentation.

Well since the university's point system was blatantly unconstitutional the merits of her case were hardly specious; at most her standing might have been. But luckily she was granted standing and the courts ruled on the merits.

What we don't know, unless I have missed it entirely, is what the distribution of students admitted looks like: how many applicants with scores similar to Kimbroughs were admitted, how many with lower scores, etc.

Given what we know almost certainly less than a third of all applicants with scores like hers get admitted. Probably more like 1/4 but we can't say for sure. Of course, what she really wants is return to the bad old days where 100% of black applicants with marginal grades/scores got admitted.

Silly Tom. Harvard did away with the custom of having butlers live in student housing ages ago.

Silly Toni. Butlers are servants in charge of a large households. Individual manservants are valets, like Jeeves. </nitpick>

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And exactly how is that different from saying that the diversity brought in by minority students under an affirmative action regime the way you claim it works does more good than their admission does bad even if they are underqualified?

Minorities will get in anyway. Adding more has very little benefit.

 

[Jokodo]

Minorities will get in anyway. Adding more has very little benefit.

How did you quantify that?

 

[arkirk]

Another miserable thread...based on Fox News. We need to be the education society, not the skimmer society. If we want our society to function in a coherent way, we need to be educating everybody as completely as possible. The notion of places of "higher education" excluding people has the tendency to isolate the institution from the realities of the world in which it operates...So the "higher education" institution really becomes one that continues stratifying and discriminating against portions of society. This isolates the institution from the needs of common people and creates class distinctions that militate against fair social policies. These institutions license the decision makers of society and they have gained their knowledge in a sequestered atmosphere.

Affirmative action is only wrong because it is not affirmative enough and it never considers that these institutions, not our military, needs to expand their educating functions to all of society.

 

[Toni]

Here is a link to Clark Atlanta University Demographics. http://www.forbes.com/colleges/clark-atlanta-university/
It's a pretty black place. So that that mean that Clark should discriminate against their black applicants?


Only 57% are white, so there is diversity.

Setting aside 10% for blacks is an overt quota and declared unconstitutional by SCOTUS long since. Even a more covert points system (that valued race 2/3 more than SAT scores) was outlawed by a constitutional amendment. They have no choice but not to discriminate by race regardless of their demographics and that's a good thing!


Well her ACT scores are not only below average for UM, they are only in 68th percentile nationwide. That is just not nearly good enough for a school like UM.


Except you'd need a lot of leeway for her ACT scores and most applicants to a school like UM will show a number of extracurricular activities as well.


According to this:

So both her GPA and ACT scores were better. Also this was two decades ago and there's been quite a bit of grade inflation since.
Furthermore,

Which is overt and blatant racial discrimination on its face. Maybe Gratz should not have been admitted but then again 68% of the blacks with similar grades/scores should not have been admitted either!


Well since the university's point system was blatantly unconstitutional the merits of her case were hardly specious; at most her standing might have been. But luckily she was granted standing and the courts ruled on the merits.


Given what we know almost certainly less than a third of all applicants with scores like hers get admitted. Probably more like 1/4 but we can't say for sure. Of course, what she really wants is return to the bad old days where 100% of black applicants with marginal grades/scores got admitted.


Silly Toni. Butlers are servants in charge of a large households. Individual manservants are valets, like Jeeves. </nitpick>

Silly Derec: Tom wrote of butlers and that is why I responded with that word choice.

 

[Derec]

Silly Derec: Tom wrote of butlers and that is why I responded with that word choice.

You have no comment on anything else I wrote?

 

[Derec]

Another miserable thread...based on Fox News.

How is it based on Fox News? I posted links from a local CBS and a local Fox affiliate; none from Fox News.

We need to be the education society, not the skimmer society. If we want our society to function in a coherent way, we need to be educating everybody as completely as possible.

Not everybody belongs in a traditional college/university, so we need to see this "education" thing more broadly - learning a trade is also education.
Furthermore, most people don't belong in elite universities. These two girls are not being denied college education, they were merely not accepted by one of them. Plenty of other universities in Michigan alone. If they were dumb enough to only apply to UM, oh well, they missed the application deadlines, but that's on them. They can go to a community college (since their application deadlines are much closer to start of academic year) and transfer next year. Or just take a year off.

The notion of places of "higher education" excluding people has the tendency to isolate the institution from the realities of the world in which it operates...

There are standards in higher education. There are also differing standards among different universities. Universities want students that will hack their academic program first and foremost. What is your alternative - admit all comers?

So the "higher education" institution really becomes one that continues stratifying and discriminating against portions of society.

People have differing abilities, which leads to stratification quite naturally. I do not see what kind of problem you have with that.

This isolates the institution from the needs of common people and creates class distinctions that militate against fair social policies.

There is nothing in having strict admission standards that precludes admitting so-called "common people" if they fulfill the academic standards. It's merit, not class. There is also nothing precluding from the university engaging with others parts of society.

These institutions license the decision makers of society and they have gained their knowledge in a sequestered atmosphere.

Yes, they are learning with other individuals who are also there to learn. Within the university the learning experience is further sequestered by field of study, individual courses and even sections. The horror! What's your alternative? Have theoretical physicists, lawyers, surgeons, plumbers and big rig drivers all learn in one big room?

Affirmative action is only wrong because it is not affirmative enough and it never considers that these institutions, not our military, needs to expand their educating functions to all of society.

If you mean outreach toward the public, like open courses, public lectures and seminars etc. that's one thing and universities already engage in all that.
If you mean admissions without standards and "sequestration" than that's insanity.

 

[angelo]

Whose interest would it serve to admit someone with an IQ of say.........60-80 in to higher education? Wouldn't it be money wasted?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

Whose interest would it serve to admit someone with an IQ of say.........60-80 in to higher education? Wouldn't it be money wasted?

does the student in question have an IQ of 60-80?

 

[doubtingt]

This graph plots the HSGPA and ACT scores of U of M admittees.

The blue and green dots are those admitted, while the red and orange were rejected or wait listed. At least 90% of those admitted had a higher ACT, and 90% had a higher HSGPA. Probably more than 95% had either a higher GPA or higher ACT. Also, her ACT score of 23 was more than 1.5 standard deviations below the median ACT of 31, and studies have shown that a 1 SD lower ACT makes a student half as likely to graduate, so students with her ACT have about 1/3 the chance to graduate that a mere average student at U of M does. In fact, an ACT score of 28 is at the 25th percentile at U of M, so she is half as likely to graduate as the students at the 25th percentile who are already at high risk of not graduating. She is in the bottom 5-10% of applicants on both measures that predict retention, thus has a strong likelihood of being among the UofM admittees that fail to graduate.
Someone with her scores is far more likely to graduate from another university that is less competitive (both to get into and to get passing grades in). For example, at Michigan State University her ACT scores would be at the 25th percentile but her GPA closer to the 50th percentile. She'd be below the median there, but far more likely to graduate. Is graduating from MSU not infinitely better than failing out of U of M? How is it a bad thing to have variable standards across universities that increase the overall % of students who enter college and see it through to graduation?

People who actually care about these students and their futures, and sincerely want to improve the education prospects of minority communities in the long run would support using admission criteria like ACT and HSGPA that vary across institutions in a manner that increases the odds of graduation. Those that care only about vapid ideology and symbolic gestures of historical restitution no matter how harmful or ineffective, want AA to force all institutions to have a more diverse color of faces in what relatively amounts to "overnight".

What is especially amusing but sad and dangerous is when the very AA proponents whose policies are directly responsible for the high drop-out rates of minority college students, then try to blame those drop out rates on the students suffering racism once admitted. Those drop out rates are due to racism, but it is the racism of AA admission policies that ensure that minority students are admitted despite strong objective indicators of being underprepared for that college, but white students with such indicators are not admitted. This is guaranteed to result in higher drop out rates (and the damaging consequences of such) among minority students.

 

[dismal]

Of course, Affirmative Action is racial discrimination. Opponents of Affirmative Action are stuck on stating the obvious.

Not sure what planet you've been on.

We have a Constitution and laws and stuff that ban the government from engaging in racial discrimiation.

Ergo, if the goverment is engaging in Affirmative Action it must not be racial dicrimination.

 

[J842P]

Not sure what planet you've been on.

We have a Constitution and laws and stuff that ban the government from engaging in racial discrimiation.

Ergo, if the goverment is engaging in Affirmative Action it must not be racial dicrimination.

To add, opponents of practices that fall under the umbrella of Affirmative Action keep repeating it because one would expect that it being discriminatory would be enough of a problem. Perhaps if one explicitly points out that racial minorities are being negatively affected by the practice then the normal disapproval of discriminatory practices will kick in? As someone who is considered Hispanic, I certainly benefited from affirmative action. As soon as colleges got wind that I was a Hispanic kid who wasn't failing and indeed was excelling at academics, they were falling over themselves offering me all sorts of incentives to attend their school. Of course, equally competent Indian and Asian kids did not receive similar treatment, and of course, had a harder time getting into equivalent schools to the ones I received acceptance letters from even with similar grades and test scores and course-loads. Of course, it was an utter tragedy that my Korean friend, whose father barely graduated from high school and installs windows for a living, and probably could never afford to send his kid to college, had to be held to higher standards of admission. He, of course, was never actively courted by colleges, because he is Asian , and even though I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and my father was a professional with a graduate degree who could afford to pay any exorbitant tuition out-of-pocket, because I was Hispanic, I was offered all sorts of money to attend different schools.

Absolutely nuts.

Oh, and I'm the brown kind of Hispanic, not the white kind.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

To add, opponents of practices that fall under the umbrella of Affirmative Action keep repeating it because one would expect that it being discriminatory would be enough of a problem. Perhaps if one explicitly points out that racial minorities are being negatively affected by the practice then the normal disapproval of discriminatory practices will kick in? As someone who is considered Hispanic, I certainly benefited from affirmative action. As soon as colleges got wind that I was a Hispanic kid who wasn't failing and indeed was excelling at academics, they were falling over themselves offering me all sorts of incentives to attend their school. Of course, equally competent Indian and Asian kids did not receive similar treatment, and of course, had a harder time getting into equivalent schools to the ones I received acceptance letters from even with similar grades and test scores and course-loads. Of course, it was an utter tragedy that my Korean friend, whose father barely graduated from high school and installs windows for a living, and probably could never afford to send his kid to college, had to be held to higher standards of admission. He, of course, was never actively courted by colleges, because he is Asian , and even though I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and my father was a professional with a graduate degree who could afford to pay any exorbitant tuition out-of-pocket, because I was Hispanic, I was offered all sorts of money to attend different schools.

Absolutely nuts.

Oh, and I'm the brown kind of Hispanic, not the white kind.

how many Hispanic students do you think apply for higher education in a given year?
How indicative of their stories is your story?

 

[doubtingt]

Ooops, Wrong thread

 

[J842P]

how many Hispanic students do you think apply for higher education in a given year?
How indicative of their stories is your story?

Well, doing some quick googling I've found that, to my surprise, the rates of Hispanics applying to and attending college have almost caught up to the rates for white students, given that a student has graduated from high school. In fact, if you have graduated from high school and you are Hispanic, for 2012, you were more likely to apply to and attend college than if you were white. Now, there is still a problem with high-school graduation rates among Hispanic youths, but they too have been improving dramatically in the last decade.

I assume I am not a representative case for a Hispanic kid. I'm not sure what point you are getting at, though.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/05/09/pew-hispanic-center-students-college/2146697/

 

[dismal]

I assume I am not a representative case for a Hispanic kid. I'm not sure what point you are getting at, though.

I believe the point is that it's more efficient/convenient to base admissions on race than forcing admissions officers to go through the hassle of evaluating students based on whatever desirable individual attributes the school might be seeking.

So if a privileged and pampered underachieving Hispanic gets admission over an impoverished and hard-working Korean with a much better overall record of achievement, it's for the best.

It's part of the price Koreans must pay for their historical repression of Hispanics.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I believe the point is that it's more efficient/convenient to base admissions on race than forcing admissions officers to go through the hassle of evaluating students based on whatever desirable individual attributes the school might be seeking.

So if a privileged and pampered underachieving Hispanic gets admission over an impoverished and hard-working Korean with a much better overall record of achievement, it's for the best.

It's part of the price Koreans must pay for their historical repression of Hispanics.

Yup Yup. Fighting racism with more racism is sure to solve racism

 

[fromderinside]

I believe the point is that it's more efficient/convenient to base admissions on race than forcing admissions officers to go through the hassle of evaluating students based on whatever desirable individual attributes the school might be seeking.

...

Lazy is no reason to use stereotypes.