The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
Page 52
The underlying source of tension remains: Asians are an ethnic minority, many of whom, or whose parents, came to the United States under circumstances of extreme deprivation. Many suffered from racial prejudice. Whether or not they are treated differently from whites by elite universities, Asians are indisputably treated differently from every other nonwhite ethnic minority. University officials everywhere have been reluctant to confront this issue forthrightly.
The Law of Supply and Demand in Minority Recruiting
Affirmative action has produced intense competition for the top black and Latino students. In the spring of 1992, Harvard reported that its “yield” of black students abruptly declined from the year before. The Harvard report suggested that the decline was due at least in part to the large financial incentives being offered to blacks by other colleges. One such black student, it was reported, received a straight grant of $85,000, plus $10,000 in annual travel budgets, from one of Harvard’s competitors in minority recruiting.14 An article in the New York Times provided more instances of a practice that increasingly includes the kind of enticements—full scholarships even for families with ample financial resources, free trips to visit the campus, recruiting visits, and promotional activities—that used to be reserved for star high school athletes. “As a result, a number of college officials privately accuse each other of ‘stealing’ black students,” the Times reporter noted.15
The differences do not seem to have changed a great deal between the 1970s and the 1990s. The best longitudinal data from Berkeley illustrate a perverse effect of a strong affirmative action policy: The more aggressive the recruitment of minorities, the higher the average ability of the nonminority students. From 1978 to 1988, the combined SATs of blacks at Berkeley rose by 101 points, a major improvement in the academic quality of black students at Berkeley. But the competition for the allotment of white slots became ever more intense. The result was that the SAT scores for Berkeley whites rose too, and the gap between black and white students at Berkeley did not close but widened.16 Meanwhile, the unprotected minority, Asians, also were competing for a restricted allotment of slots. Their mean scores rose more than any other group’s, and by a large margin, going from far below the white mean to slightly above it. In just eleven years, the Asian mean at Berkeley soared by 189 points.
The summary statement about affirmative action in undergraduate institutions is that being either a black or a Latino is worth a great deal in the admissions process at every undergraduate school for which we have data. Even the smallest known black-white difference (95 points at Harvard) represents close to a standard deviation for Harvard undergraduates. The gap in most colleges is so large that the black and white student bodies have little overlap. The situation is less extreme for Latino students but still severe. Asian students appear to suffer a penalty for being Asian, albeit a small one on the average. We have seen no data that would dispute this picture. If such data exist, perhaps this presentation will encourage their publication.
The Magnitude of the Edge in Graduate Schools
LAW SCHOOLS. Timothy Maguire’s findings about the Georgetown Law Center were consistent with more systematic evidence. The table below shows the national Law School Aptitude Test (LSAT) results for 1992 for registered first-year law students. For blacks, overlap with the white incoming law students was small; only 7 percent had scores above the white mean. The overall Latino-white difference was 1 standard deviation. It was markedly larger for Puerto Ricans (−2.0 SDs) than for Mexican-Americans (−.8) or “other” Latinos (−.7). The overall Asian mean corresponds to the 38th percentile on the white distribution, evidence of modest affirmative action on behalf of Asian applicants in the law schools.
Affirmative Action Weights: The Law School Aptitude Test
Ethnic Group Difference from White Mean, in SDs
Source: Barnes and Carr 1993.
Asian/Pacific −.32
Blacks −1.49
Latinos −1.01
The table above is for the national population of first-year law students. To assess the effects of affirmative action, it would be preferable to have data from individual law schools. At upper reaches of the LSAT distribution, from which the elite law schools drew most of their students, there was even less overlap between whites and blacks than in the SAT pool. More than 1,100 registered white law students had scores of 170 or higher on a scale going from 120 to 180, compared to three blacks. At ten highly selective law schools for which individual data were reported in a 1977 report by the Law School Admissions Council, the smallest black-white difference in LSAT scores (expressed in terms of the white distribution) at any of the ten schools was 2.4 standard deviations, the largest was 3.6 standard deviations, and the average difference for the ten schools was 2.9 standard deviations, meaning that the average black was in the bottom 1 percent of the white distribution.17
MEDICAL SCHOOLS. Medical students repeat the familiar pattern, as shown for the national population of matriculated first-year students in 1992 in the table below. In the national pool, the black-white gap is about the same as in the law schools, with the average entering black medical student at the 8th to 10th percentile of the white distribution, depending on which subtest of the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) we consider. The gap between whites and “other underrepresented minorities” is a bit smaller than the Latino-white gap in law school, with the average student in this group standing at the 20th to 23d percentile of the white distribution. The “other” category—mostly Asian—had higher scores than whites on the physical sciences and (fractionally) on biological sciences, standing, respectively, at the 56th and 52d percentiles of the white distribution, while scoring lower in verbal reasoning (32d percentile).
Affirmative Action Weights: The Medical College Admissions Test
Difference from the White Mean, in SDs
Source: Division of Educational Research and Assessment 1993, pp. 59-63.
aOther under-represented minorities” consists of American Indian/Alaskan natives, Mexican-American/Chicanos, and mainland Puerto Ricans.
bAsian/Pacific, commonwealth Puerto Ricans, and Latinos not otherwise classified.
Ethnic Biological Physical Verbal
Group Sciences Sciences Reasoning
Blacks −1.36 −1.26 −1.40
“Other under-represented minorities”a −.75 −.84 −.84
“Other”b +.04 +.15 −.45
As in the case of law schools, the black medical student pool is even more severely depleted at the top end of the range than it is in undergraduate schools, with important implications for the gap in the elite schools. In none of the three subtests did more than 19 blacks score in the 12 to 15 range (on a scale that goes from 1 to 15), compared to 1,146, 1,469, and 853 whites (for the biological sciences, physical sciences, and verbal reasoning tests, respectively).18 In practical terms, several of the elite schools can fill their entire class with white students in the top range, but only the one or two most elite schools can hope to have a significant number of black students without producing extremely large black-white differences, comparable to those reported for elite law schools.
Other studies have published data on medical school admissions, expressed in terms of the odds of being accepted to medical school for different minorities. All tell similar stories to ours.19
GRADUATE SCHOOLS IN THE ARTS AND SCIENCES. Applicants to graduate schools other than law and medicine typically take the Graduate Record Examination (GRE), comprising verbal, quantitative, and analytical subtests. The reports of GRE scores do not distinguish between persons who take the test and persons who actually register in a graduate school, so they are less useful than the LSAT or MCAT in trying to understand the scope and magnitude of affirmative action in those schools. Nonetheless, the results, in the table below, look familiar. The magnitudes of the ethnic differences on the individual subtests of the GRE (in 1987-1988, the most recent year for which we were given data) were somewhat smaller than for
the professional schools, putting blacks at the 10th to percentile of the white distribution, depending on the subtest. Asians were (as usual) higher than whites on the quantitative and lower on the verbal. Adding up all three subtest means, Asians were a few points higher than whites.
Applicants to Graduate Schools
Difference from the White Mean, in SDs
Source: Wah and Robinson, 1990, Table 2.2
Ethnic Group Verbal Quantitative Analytical
Asian/Pacific −.37 +.52 −.15
Black −1.20 −1.19 −1.29
Latino −.74 −.46 −.54
The summary statement is that the ethnic gaps in objective test scores observed in undergraduate institutions are matched, and perhaps exceeded, in graduate and professional schools. If data become available from individual schools, this question can be answered definitively.
AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AS PART OF THE ADMISSIONS PROCESS
The data we have just summarized should restrain casual assertions that the differences among the blacks, Latinos, Asians, and whites who go to college are not worth worrying about. The differences we have described are large by any definition. But do these data give us any leverage on the question of whether affirmative action as it is currently practiced is good or bad? For an answer, we begin by inquiring into the logic of affirmative action and then examine whether the patterns of racial and socioeconomic differences observed in the NLSY make sense in terms of that logic.
The Logic of College Admissions
On the campus, affirmative action is not at odds with the normal admissions process. College admission is not, has never been, nor is there reason to think it should be, a competition based purely on academic merit. The nonacademic ends can be legitimate and important. No admissions policy can serve all good ends equally, because the ends are often inconsistent with one another. The admissions process is a juggling act, and affirmative action fits squarely in a long tradition. Our understanding of the legitimate role of affirmative action, which owes much to Robert Klitgaard’s discussion of the same topic, will be categorized under the headings of “institutional benefit,” “social utility,” and “just deserts.”20
INSTITUTIONAL BENEFIT. One of the goals of any admissions process is to serve the institution’s own interests. Why do many colleges give some preference to students from faraway states? To children of alumni?21 To all-state linebackers or concert pianists? Some of the answers involve the good of the institution as a whole. A student from Montana can add diversity to a college in Connecticut; a good football team can strengthen a college’s sense of community and perhaps encourage alumni generosity. Black and Latino students admitted under affirmative action can enrich a campus by adding to its diversity.
The institution also has interests beyond daily campus life. Admitting the children of its faculty and of its most generous alumni may add little that is distinctive to the student body, for example, but their parents make a big difference to the health and quality of the institution, and keeping them happy is important. Beyond the college gates is society at large. Universities cannot disregard what the broader community thinks of them, and so they must be sensitive to the currents of their time. The political pressure (let alone the legal requirement) for some level of affirmative action in the universities has been irresistible.
These institutional interests are valid and significant but unsatisfactory as the entire rationale for affirmative action, for there are too many ways in which affirmative action has self-evident drawbacks. If it is admissible to augment the presence of some racial or ethnic minorities solely because they serve the interests of the university, is it not also appropriate to limit the presence of minorities for the same reason? It is a relevant question, for, while limits for Jews may be largely behind us, limits for Asians may be upon us. Furthermore, one cannot avoid the problem by arguing that it is appropriate to have floors for certain groups but inappropriate to have ceilings for others. Making more room for one group must reduce the room for others. Instinctively, one wishes for morally stronger justifications for affirmative action than institutional interests. Two are available.
SOCIAL UTILITY. Consider the case of the crown prince of a large kingdom who also happens to be a young man of pedestrian intelligence and indifferent character. He applies to a competitive American university—Princeton, we shall say. Should Princeton admit him in preference to the many brighter and more virtuous students whose applications flood the admissions office? The social utility criterion may say yes, for this young man is eventually going to influence the lives of the millions of people in his own country. He may be drawn into issues that could affect international peace and prosperity. Princeton makes a contribution to human happiness if it can help the crown prince develop into a thoughtful and humane adult.
The same kind of calculation bedevils professional schools in choosing among men and women. For example, if it is empirically true that women are more likely than men to leave a profession, there is an authentic question of resources to be considered when selecting who shall be trained in that profession. Given that the good called a medical education is severely limited, howr important is the ethical nudge in the direction of using scarce resources efficiently? Conversely, how important is it to get women into these professions so that, in the future, it will be easier for more of them to pursue such careers?
Suppose now that it is again Princeton choosing between two candidates, one black and one white. Both are from affluent professional families, so socioeconomic disadvantage is not an issue. The white has higher test scores and (just to make the case still plainer) more glowing references than the black candidate. Both plan to become attorneys. In some sense, the white candidate “deserves” admission more. But who is going to provide more social “value-added”? Adding one more white attorney to the ranks of prominent attorneys, or adding one more black one? Princeton could reasonably choose the black candidate on grounds that only by expanding the size of the next generation of minority lawyers, physicians, businessmen, and professors can society attain racial equality at the higher socioeconomic and professional levels. Only when equality is reached at those higher levels will minority youths routinely aspire to such careers. And, the argument continues, only when the aspirations for success and their fulfillment are thus equalized will we reach the kind of real racial equality that will eventually show up in test scores as well as everything else.
For now, let us ignore whether affirmative action will in fact have these good effects and concentrate instead on the logic of the argument. The same logic can justify not only choosing a member of a minority over a white, it can justify choosing a member of one minority over another. For example, a case may be made for systematically favoring blacks over Asians on the social utility criterion—based not on calculations that African slaves faced greater oppression in the past than the Chinese brought to build the railroads but on the proposition that the opportunities for a degree may be more valuably distributed to African Americans instead of Asian Americans, given the contemporary state of affairs in American society. Indeed, early in this century, when colleges were discriminating against Jews, the reasons given, when they were given at all, were a mixture of institutional self-interest and social utility.22
Once again, however, the rationale for affirmative action is not fully satisfactory. Looking back to the time when the numbers of Jews or women on a campus were strictly limited, most people feel uncomfortable with the rationales, however dispassionately accurate they might have seemed at the time. They are uncomfortable partly because of the injustice, which brings us to the final criterion that should be part of the admissions process.
JUST DESERTS. Beyond institutional benefit and social utility, college admissions may recognize what might be called “just deserts.” As the director of admissions to Columbia College expressed it, One has to take into account how well one has done with the environment [an applicant has] been handed.”23 The applicant who overcame pov
erty, cultural disadvantages, an unsettled home life, a prolonged illness, or a chronic disability to do as well as he did in high school will get a tip from most admissions committees, even if he is not doing as well academically as the applicants usually accepted. This tip for the disadvantaged does not seem unfair.
This is the intuitive rationale of affirmative action for blacks, who were demonstrably the victims of legal oppression, enforced by the state, from the founding of the colonies through the middle of this century, and of pervasive social discrimination that still persists to some degree. To give blacks an edge because they are black accords with this sense of justice. At an elaborated level, there is a widespread impression that the underrepresentation of blacks and Latinos (and perhaps other groups, such as American Indians) in elite schools is an effect of racial or ethnic injustice, properly corrected by affirmative action in university admissions. If it were not for the racism in our society, the groups would be proportionally represented, some believe. A still more elaborated version of the argument is that the very approach to learning, reasoning, and argumentation in universities is itself racist, so that the predictors of university performance, such as SAT or IQ scores, are therefore racist too. Affirmative action redresses the built-in racism in the admissions process and the curriculum.24