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More Mismatch

On Friday the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a public briefing on affirmative action in the STEM fields ? science, technology, engineering , math. I attended, but rather than subject you to a report based on an attempt to make sense of my notes I will refer you instead to two summaries published this morning ? this one, by Peter Schmidt in the Chronicle of Higher Education, and this one, by Jack Stripling on InsideHigherEd.

Richard Sander, the UCLA law professor whose ?mismatch? theory has agitated defenders of race preferences, has begun gathering data on the performance of minorities in the STEM fields to see whether mismatch applies there as well. You will recall (if not, refresh your memory here and the posts linked there) that Sander has argued in a number of articles that racial preferences have actually tended to reduce the number of black lawyers by placing black law students in institutions where their qualifications are significantly lower than their non-preferentially admitted peers and where as a result they cluster at the bottom of their classes, fail to finish law school, and fail the bar exam in highly disproportionate numbers.

Although his research is still preliminary, Sander is finding similar patterns among minorities in STEM. Drawing on data regarding graduation rates at the University of Michigan, for example, Sander found (I?m quoting InsideHigherEd here)

that for black students who entered Michigan in 1999, 73 percent who were given ?no preference? graduated in four years compared with 70 percent of white students with the same credentials. But for black students who were given ?large preference,? just 21 percent graduated in four years....

Citing unpublished data from the [University of California] system, Sander noted that black and Latino students have far greater success rates in science when they enroll in the California?s less selective campuses. Minority students were about half as likely to earn bachelor?s degrees in science at Berkeley or UCLA, for instance, as they were to earn science degrees from five of the of the other six campuses in the system, according to Sander?s study of those entering between 1998 and 2000.

Michael Yaki, one of the two Democrats on the eight-member Civil Rights Commission, was so agitated by this and similar testimony that he literally couldn?t sit still, frequently getting up and wandering about the room. Although two of the five guest panelists supported affirmative action, Yaki (I?m quoting Chronicle of Higher Education)

argued that the expert list lacked balance. ?There are many people who are not part of this panel who would not agree that mismatch does occur,? Mr. Yaki said.

?Ultimately,? he said, ?what we are talking about here is the potentiality of human beings.? How well people will end up doing in a given field cannot be accurately measured just by the grades and test scores on their college applications, he argued.

Yaki did not, however, cite any evidence refuting Sander?s performance or graduation rate data. There is also, I think, a missing link in, or an unexamined assumption underlying, this common defense of racial and ethnic preferences. Even though it is no doubt true that grades and test scores are not perfect predictors of later performance (who says they are?), it does not follow that blacks and Hispanics with low test scores and grades should be given preference over whites or Asians with low grades and test scores.

Another common but, in my view, questionable assertion came from Robin Willner, vice president for Global Community Initiatives (and other high-sounding matters) at IBM.

In a blunt assessment, Willner said IBM would be headed for big trouble if colleges fail to produce a diverse pool of talent with knowledge of the needs and desires of a growing global consumer base.

?IBM would go into the toilet immediately,? she said, ?because we won?t be able to make products for our customers.? [Quoted from InsideHigherEd]

Whenever I hear this common defense of ?diversity? preferences I always wonder, as I did on Friday, exactly what products have been developed by minority scientists, technologists, engineers, or mathematicians for IBM (or anyone else) that would not have been developed by white, Asian, Indian, Pakistani, etc., STEM scientists.

Finally, let me note in passing (I?ll come back to it later) a new critique of Sander?s ?mismatch? theory. Prof. Jesse Rothstein of Princeton (last encountered here) and Albert Yoon of the University of Toronto argue, in a study I have not yet read, appears to support some of Sander?s findings and dispute others.

The new analysis ? with the sort of detail normally used by critics of affirmative action ? backs Sander?s claims on the substantially different qualifications, on average, between black and white law school applicants. And it also finds gaps in performance in law school.

But the new research ? using simulations of admissions without affirmative action ? finds that race-neutral policies wouldn?t send black students to law schools where they would do better. Rather there would be a huge falloff in black law enrollments ? far more than might be counteracted by some black students doing better on bar exams. The elimination of race-based admissions policies, the authors write, would lead to a 63 percent decline in black matriculants at all law schools and a 90 percent decline at elite law schools, the paper says. Even if some positive impact took place in the experience of black students who did enroll, there would be at least a 50 percent reduction in the production of black lawyers, they write.

I?m sure we?ll be hearing more from Prof. Sander about this critique (see this web page for some earlier criticisms and responses), and I?ll discuss that when it appears.

Full post as published by Discriminations on September 15, 2008 (boomark / email).