Diversity and academic outcomes / First, Weisman relies on the claim that having a “diverse” student body promotes learning and racial understanding, quoting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). He writes that she “reasoned” in her opinion that having a diverse student body “promotes learning outcomes and better prepares students for an increasingly diverse work force, for society and for the legal profession.” But O’Connor’s statement was just an assertion, not an exercise of reasoning, much less a statement of fact.
Several years after the case, O’Connor admitted in an essay in the 2009 book The Next 25 Years: Affirmative Action in Higher Education that the Court actually did not have a sound basis for declaring that there are educational benefits from a racially diverse student body. She wrote that the Court should “reassess” its position and look for evidence to “clearly demonstrate” any educational benefits from diversity.
She and the other pro-preference justices got the idea that diversity leads to educational benefits from the University of Michigan’s brief. The university, trying to defend its admission practices, argued that its research proved that more diversity means better learning on campus. The validity of that research was never challenged, however, because plaintiffs took the position that the racial preferences were unconstitutional no matter what evidence there might be on its effects. Scholars who have looked at the research have found it unconvincing. For example, University of Michigan philosophy professor Carl Cohen called the university’s research “thin social science, tendentious and weakly argued,” nothing more than “reporting student answers to loaded questions” (“Bad Arguments Defending Racial Preference,” Academic Questions 21(3): 288–295, September 2008).
To this day, there is no proof that mixing in a quota amount (or, as diversity advocates put it, “critical mass”) of students from certain racial groups does anything to improve the level of education for any students, much less for all of them. There is, however, strong evidence that mismatching weaker students with more demanding schools harms their educational outcomes.
In their 2012 book Mismatch, Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. showed that many students admitted for “diversity” reasons to prestigious schools would have been better off had they enrolled at a school where they were not at a competitive disadvantage with academically stronger students. Similarly, when economists Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban Aucejo and Joseph Hotz studied the outcomes of University of California students who had been admitted with lower academic qualifications in order to increase diversity, they concluded that “lesser-prepared minority students at top-ranked campuses would have higher science graduation rates had they attended lower-ranked campuses” (“University Differences in the Graduation Minorities in STEM Fields: Evidence from California,” American Economic Review 106(3): 525–562, 2015).
So, there is evidence that admissions diversity efforts have negative educational outcomes rather than the positive ones imagined by O’Connor and others. However, we never hear college and university leaders express any doubt that racial preferences are beneficial. It seems as though this is an issue where merely having good intentions is all that matters.
Diversity and prestige / But even if racial preferences don’t lead to better education, maybe they lead to other good institutional outcomes. That’s Weisman’s next argument: that administrators could be acting to raise their school’s prestige level when they adopt admission preferences. “Harvard,” he writes, “would have no incentive to depart from an admissions standard that reinforces its reputation as one of the world’s foremost educational institutions.” But do the leaders of prestigious universities actually know that using racial preferences makes them more illustrious? Perhaps, but Weisman adduces no evidence to support that claim.
Instead, he relies on a baseball analogy to carry his point. He observes that no one objects if a team recruits a variety of players with different skills rather than just looking for those with the highest batting averages. It isn’t objectionable discrimination, he argues, when a team goes after a player who is an excellent defensive infielder but is just an average hitter. Since baseball teams take a “holistic” view of players, why shouldn’t universities like Harvard do the same thing and select students in a similar fashion? Baseball teams want to win the World Series and Harvard wants to win (or at least remain near the top) in the prestige rankings. That’s perfectly reasonable, Weisman contends.
The analogy, however, is poor. Of course, baseball teams want players with different skills to optimize their chances of winning, but baseball players are proven to have those skills. Scouts and managers can look at statistics and see players in action. When it comes to students who have applied to college, however, very few of them have proven much about themselves. Some appear to have stronger academic abilities than others based on their high school records and standardized test scores, but none of them have yet done anything that would allow colleges to say, “This student is apt to be a future Nobel Prize winner,” or “This student is a future political leader.”
When college officials turn away applicants with very strong academic backgrounds in favor of others with weaker backgrounds, it isn’t because the latter are thought more likely to do great things and enhance the school’s reputation. It’s simply because those officials want specific proportions of students that “represent” certain racial or ethnic groups. As several court cases have revealed, schools that employ racial preferences have almost the same percentages of students in the preferred groups year after year. Filling a quota appears to be the overriding concern rather than choosing particular students who might do the most to keep up the school’s reputation. Seeking to fill quotas from groups hardly seems consistent with a strategy of selecting students for their probable future success.
Contra Weisman, I don’t think that college leaders who insist on group preferences do so because they’re thinking about the long-run good of their schools. They do so because it’s personally satisfying for them.
To a considerable extent, college leaders get to run things as they like without noticeable adverse consequences. One of the things they like is the feeling that they’re doing their part to right some of the world’s wrongs and, to most of them, statistical imbalances are evidence of some underlying social wrong. If too few black and Latino students qualify for top schools (including elite high schools), then it’s up to school officials to adjust admission standards so the gap disappears. Failing to demand preferences for groups regarded as victims of historical oppression would be seen as a lack of commitment to fairness, something that no good “progressive” wants.
That, I submit, is the reason why nearly all college leaders insist that they need more diversity. Admission preferences for certain minority groups is a personal indulgence they can’t resist.
Finally, Weisman points out that many colleges and universities have preferences for athletes and “legacies” (that is, applicants with family ties to the school). But those preferences have also been criticized for undermining the academic integrity of higher education. Lowering admission standards in search of a better football team or in hopes of reeling in more cash for the endowment diverts a school from its educational mission. Two (or three) wrongs don’t make a right.
