Via Dylan at Handle The Truth, a fantastic article by one of my favorite writers, Michael Kimmel, regarding the so-called “Boy Crisis” in education.
After outlining the case for the Boy Crisis, Kimmel effectively goes over the reasons for doubting the “crisis” exists: That historically, panics over boys in crisis surface again and again (and women – whether in the form of female schoolteachers or of feminists – are always to blame); that wage gaps would lead us to expect boys to have less incentive to stay in school (someone who can earn $20,000 a year out of high school is a good deal more likely to drop out than someone who can earn $14,000); ((Actually, Kimmel barely touches on the point about the wage gap, but it’s a hobby horse of mine so I’m including it on this list.)) how “No Child Left Behind” has hurt boys who would benefit from gym and sports programs, and from counseling; and that far from being a universal among boys, the “boy crisis” is virtually all among boys from lower-income families and boys of color. Kimmell writes:
Why don’t the critics acknowledge these race and class differences? To many who now propose to “rescue” boys, such differences are incidental because, in their eyes, all boys are the same aggressive, competitive, rambunctious little devils. They operate from a facile, and inaccurate, essentialist dichotomy between males and females. Boys must be allowed to be boys—so that they grow up to be men.
This facile biologism leads the critics to propose some distasteful remedies to allow these testosterone-juiced boys to express themselves. Gurian, for example, celebrates all masculine rites of passage, “like military boot camp, fraternity hazings, graduation day, and bar mitzvah” as “essential parts of every boy’s life.” He also suggests reviving corporal punishment, both at home and at school…
I was one of the boys who failed all the “masculinity” tests; I was gentle, overly sensitive, and could no more catch a ball than I could catch a jumbo jet plane. I can’t imagine how I would have survived the kind of schooling Gurian wants to shove boys into. But because wimpy boys don’t fit into the biological-essentialist worldview, their needs are never considered by the boy-crisis mavens. Their allegedly “pro-boy” reforms are really only about helping the jocky boys; all other boys can go hang. ((And even the “help” offered jock boys is dubious; such “help” could be accurately termed “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”))
A crisis among lower-income and non-white boys is still a crisis, of course. ((Let’s not forget, however, that the same crisis exists among lower-income and non-white girls, whose academic achievement is considerably lower than that of their middle-class white counterparts. The real crisis owes much more to class and race inequalities than to sex.)) But to talk as if an inability to do well in contemporary schools comes with the Y chromosome is deceptive. There already are many schools in the USA, right now, in which boys do just as well as girls. Boy crisis mavens tend to talk about how boy brains can’t learn if they’re expected to sit still in class, to read novels, to do homework, and to follow rules; but in schools where boys excel, boys are expected to do all those things.
Nonetheless, it’s a fact that among some groups, boys are doing worse than girls. Why is this? Kimmel argues that a false and damaging conception of masculinity harms boys by dissuading them from putting as much effort as they should into their schoolwork, even as it encourages them to be overconfident about their abilities.
Kimmel has angry words for the anti-male ideology underlying the “boy crisis” panic:
It is not the school experience that “feminizes” boys, but rather the ideology of traditional masculinity that keeps boys from wanting to succeed. “The work you do here is girls’ work,” one boy commented to a researcher. “It’s not real work.”
“Real work” involves a confrontation — not with feminist women, whose sensible educational reforms have opened countless doors to women while closing off none to men — but with an anachronistic definition of masculinity that stresses many of its vices (anti-intellectualism, entitlement, arrogance, and aggression) but few of its virtues. When the self-appointed rescuers demand that we accept boys’ “hardwiring,” could they possibly have such a monochromatic and relentlessly negative view of male biology? Maybe they do. But simply shrugging our collective shoulders in resignation and saying “boys will be boys” sets the bar much too low. Boys can do better than that. They can be men.
Perhaps the real “male bashers” are those who promise to rescue boys from the clutches of feminists. Are males not also “hardwired” toward compassion, nurturing, and love? If not, would we allow males to be parents? It is never a biological question of whether we are “hardwired” for some behavior; it is, rather, a political question of which “hardwiring” we choose to respect and which we choose to challenge.
The antifeminist pundits have an unyielding view of men as irredeemably awful. We men, they tell us, are savage, lustful, violent, sexually omnivorous, rapacious, predatory animals, who will rape, murder, pillage, and leave towels on the bathroom floor—unless women fulfill their biological duty and constrain us. “Every society must be wary of the unattached male, for he is universally the cause of numerous ills,” writes David Popenoe. Young males, says Charles Murray, are “essentially barbarians for whom marriage . . . is an indispensable civilizing force.”
By contrast, feminists believe that men are better than that, that boys can be raised to be competent and compassionate, ambitious and attentive, and that men are fully capable of love, care, and nurturance. It’s feminists who are really “pro-boy” and “pro-father”—who want young boys and their fathers to expand the definition of masculinity and to become fully human.
I highly recommend reading the whole thing.
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The MIT numbers, and those of other science and engineering schools like Cal Tech, may be not readily compared to those of other schools because of the concentration in those schools on graduate study. Here’s MIT’s numbers in detail:
Student Body Profile (2005 – 2006)
Undergraduate 4,066
Graduate 6,140
Total 10,206 students
Undergraduate 43% female 57% male
Graduate 30% female 70% male
Overall, that’s 35% female and 65% male (they had 32 and 68 in the article).
And while we’re at it, I was thinking you all might be interested in this:
Profile of the Admitted Class of 2010
Who they are…
• 1,474 students out of 11,373 (13% admit rate)
• 52% men, 48% women
• 28% are Asian American
• 36% are Caucasian/White
• 22% are members of underrepresented minority groups (African-American, Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Native American, and other Hispanic groups)
• 1% Other
• 6% No response
• 7% are international students
Where they live…
• 50 States represented, DC and 2 territories
• 59 Foreign countries represented
Their achievements…
• 48% of those who are ranked are #1 in their high school class
• SAT mean scores – Math 759, Verbal 723
• SAT median scores – Math 780, Verbal 740
• 75% are Presidents/Captains/Leaders/Founders
•17% are academic stars (distinctions such as AIME score of 10+, National Science Fair finalists, International Olympiad medal winners, etc.)
•12% are non-academic stars (identified talent in art, music or athletics)
Asian Americans are minorities, but they are not considered “under-represented minorities”.
The Institute used to admit far fewer women, but they started to emphasize higher verbal scores (while not backing off on the math scores) and the communications and essay portions of the tests and admissions form, as well as the interview (which I have the honor of getting to conduct a few times a year with local kids).
Asian Americans are minorities, but they are not considered “under-represented minorities”.
In the 1930s anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic sentiment flourished in higher education. The Census distinguished southern and Eastern European immigrants from native, northwestern Europeans. Jews were the first of the European immigrant groups to enter colleges in significant numbers and faced the brunt of discrimination there. Harvard President Lawrence Lowell was openly opposed to Jews at Harvard. The Protestant elite complained Jews were unwashed, uncouth, unrefined, loud and pushy. The Seven Sisters schools had a reputation for flagrant discrimination. Today, Jews make up 2% of the population but an astonishing 30% of Ivy League college students. Asians make up 4% of the population and face what Jews went through in the 30s. There was a recent study that showed Asian Americans need 50 points more on the the SAT for the same spots of whites at Ivy League colleges. They make up about 15% of Ivy League college students. I read this study the other day and made this parallel.
So do you think Jews are “overrepresented” at Ivy League colleges, RonF?
Donna, it was the admission of Jews, their “overrepresentation” in high test scores that lead to the idea of the “well-rounded” student: by emphasizing sports it was possible to bring in students who’s scores weren’t up to par.
Damn those minority groups who test well and throw things off for the WASP boys.
“Underrepresented Minority” is not my term; it’s what MIT officially uses to help distinguish those minorities present in MIT’s student body at a percentage below that of the general population vs. minorities (e.g. Asian-Americans) who are present at percentages above those of the general population. Donna, if that statement about what Asians need to get into Ivy League schools is true it would appear that their admissions policies are markedly different from MIT’s. Which is no surprise to me.
As far as religious presence at MIT goes, here are some numbers from a 2004 survey of incoming freshmen:
42.2% Christian (11 sects + “Other Christian”)
41.2% None
4.8% Jewish
3.5% Hindu
2.5% Buddhist
2.5% Islamic
2.0% Other
0.9% Unitarian
0.5% LDS (Mormon)
10% of the people answering the survey said “Yes” to “Do you consider yourself a Born-Again Christian?” Given the breakdown of the Christian sects, I wonder about that. The survey is at http://web.mit.edu/ir/surveys/ug_2004_CIRP_freshman_survey.pdf
To answer the question specifically about the Jewish presence, the first survey I ran across on a Google search (taken in 2001) says that about 1.3% of the American population describes itself as Jewish, so I wouldn’t describe Jews as being underrepresented at MIT if these figures are representative of the Institute student body as a whole. I can’t answer for the validity or methodology of the study, so if you want to dispute that go right ahead.
When I went to grad school at a medical school, I don’t know what the exact proportion of Jews were there. But they closed for Jewish holidays, so you figure it out. Not too many other Episcopalian kids I know got Yom Kippur off.
Donna, it was the admission of Jews, their “overrepresentation” in high test scores that lead to the idea of the “well-rounded” student: by emphasizing sports it was possible to bring in students who’s scores weren’t up to par.
Kathe, I’d like to see you back that up with actual facts. Also: the influence of sports on college admissions differs greatly among Division I, II, and III schools. Only Division I schools grant tuition waivers (I refuse to use the word scholarship in this context) for athletes, and even then only athletes in a few sports get them – it’s a very low percentage of the total student body. In a school of any size, any preference for varsity athletes is going to have a minimal effect on the makeup of the student body.
As far as “anti-male” bias in education in general; I’m no expert in K – 12 education. And I am not an expert in the differences between how girls learn vs. how boys learn, as I have not been involved much with girls in an educational setting. But I do work with boys quite a bit in non-classroom education and have done so for 14 years now. What I find is that boys learn a lot faster if sit-down instruction is limited to about 30 minutes a dose. If you break such sessions up with some kind of hands-on activity (some recreational, some instructional), they learn better. Sitting boys down for 6 forty-five minute sessions in a day with only one meal break and no hands-on opportunities to learn and little physical activity is asking for trouble. I personally think that schools should bring back recess and let the kids run around the school grounds for about 15 minutes in the morning and the afternoon. I think the girls would like it, too, although I imagine they’d use the time differently than the boys would.
Oh, I forgot to note that about 24% of the incoming freshman didn’t respond to the survey; the percentages are all based on the total responses only.
One of the reasons Jews were so successful in the early 20th century in colleges is elite schools at the time still revered the gentleman’s C and disparaged intellectual pursuits. Colleges also changed from a gentleman’s bastion into a training ground for professionals in the industrial economy in fields such as business, engineering, accounting, pharmacy and scientific farming. The study about SAT scores was from the U of Michigan but it is similar to other elite schools because of the high number of Asian American applicants. I reckon MIT and CalTech would have even higher Asian populations given the same requirements as whites. MIT and CalTech may not be good examples of schools to disprove boys are shortchanged by our education system because it’s drilled into our heads early on that males than males at better at math and science.
So while Protestant elites pursued the gentleman’s C, Jews raced ahead and became professionals. We may see the same for Asians if elite schools still revere “well-roundedness”.
I reckon MIT and CalTech would have even higher Asian populations given the same requirements as whites.
And on what facts do you base this reckoning?
I had an educational experience this weekend, and I thought I’d ask for some input on how applicable you think it would be in classroom education.
We were teaching boys cooking. Food groups, menu planning, weights and measures, making a shopping list, portion planning, using store ads, etc. The idea is that the boys are required to be able to plan a breakfast, lunch and dinner menu for a campout, go out and buy the food within a budget, cook the food outdoors so that all the food is done at the right time and is served hot (or cold as appropriate), that everyone gets enough but there’s minimal waste, and be able to clean up afterwards so that all the pots and dishes are properly clean and sanitized and there’s no garbage around to attract insects and animals.
We actually ran all through this; the activity ran all day and ended up with the boys planning menus, going to the store, buying the food, cooking it, eating it and cleaning up.
There’s a certain amount of lecture here, and the kids’ attention wanders. So partway though we had “Food Jeopardy”. My wife had made up a board with 30 questions on it, 5 questions for each of 6 groups (“Weights and Measures” “All about Cheese” “Meat”, and I forget the other 3). The questions got progressively harder and you get more points as you go down the column (they don’t know what the question is until they choose it and I pull the cover off). The boys were in two teams, compete to answer the questions, and the winners got more cookies than the losers at the end (but everyone got some cookies).
The game gave the kids some active fun and a chance to yell and wave their hands and arms without running around, and they still learned something. But if this was a co-ed group, would it have worked? Or would the boys have dominated?
Oh, and there was this exchange as I ran the game:
“We’ll take ‘All about Cheese’ for 5 points, Mr. F.”
“‘The kind of cheese used in lasagna.'”
“Cottage Cheese!”
“Sorry, it’s Ricotta.”
“My Mom uses Cottage Cheese!”
“Then your Mom uses the wrong kind of cheese.”
Asians have to test higher than whites in elite schools including MIT and the Ivy League.
And? It hasn’t bothered you folks that whites in elite schools have to test higher than blacks.
I don’t think you can have it both ways — either oppose AA or support it, no unprincipled exceptions when AA works in the “wrong” direction.
AA exists, at least in part, to mitigate the effects of past and ongoing racism. I don’t think that anti-White racism in the USA is a significant problem requiring an AA mitigation.
That’s not the point.
The point of what?
It isn’t unprincipled to support AA that attempts to mitigate the effects of historical and ongoing discrimination but to oppose AA that attempts to ensure the continued dominance of the dominant group.
Must we, in your opinion, support AA for legacy kids if we support AA for blacks? Would we have to support AA for KKK members? Why? AA is a mechanism. Why on earth are we required to support all application of a mechanism, merely because we support that mechanism in support of a particular goal, even if a particular instance of the mechanism is one which supports an opposite goal.
If we view AA for black people as a small injustice to some which helps to correct a larger injustice to others, then why should we support AA when it is a small injustice to some, which helps to maintain the privileged position of others. If we view AA as a negligible injustice, but view supporting the entrenched power of the dominant group as a bad practice, why would we support AA that helps do exactly that?
Why on earth are we required to support all application of a mechanism…
Because we don’t trust the government with a morally-based filter for the application of the mechanism. If they are going to use this machine, they must use it in a way that can be applied equally to everyone.
Well, MIT and most of the Ivy League schools aren’t the government, and I think that is actually relevant. The government isn’t a monolith that we have to either trust or not trust. The government is a set of interlocking institutions that we have a great deal of power over. If we want the government (of the US or of MIT) to apply its power through a morally based filter (our morality based filter), then we have a duty to attempt to influence the government to apply our filter. Obviously, it is a bad idea to leave government institutions and individual employees with absolute carte blance to apply their power through their own moral filters (although it is also possibly a bad idea to leave them with no ability to temper rules with personal judgment), but there is no reason not to attempt to get the government to apply our own moral filter.
It is wrong for the state to take away some one’s freedom and lock them in a small room for years at a time, but we still allow the state to use this method on some people. Must we allow the state to lock absolutely anyone in a small room for any reason if we are willing to allow the state to ever use this method? Are we not allowed to dicker and advocate over exactly which people the state will use this method on, for how long, etc?
Legacy kids get AA if they belong to a correct race (granted, this is somewhat rare).
As for KKK, I’m unaware of ideology being a legitimate reason for “positive discrimination”.
I will definitely remember that line.
That’s one hell of a tortured analogy. I suppose one could say that no, you shouldn’t advocate for people to be locked on a small room for a year because of something the demographic group they belong to did in the past or is supposedly doing today.
For instance, you can remember it when you suggest that jus solis is bad policy, or when you try to get people to care more about the threat from Islam. Presumably, you have some policies that you’d like carried out on the basis of that care, or is it just that you want others to join you in your fear? What do you think is the basis for your policy preferences? Do you think that your policy preferences are unrelated to your morality filter?
Should I not campaign for an end to the death penalty, should Robert not campaign for its expansion, out of fear that we are simply trying to get the government of our country to be in accord with our personal morality? If you disagree with my position, either because you disagree with my morality or because you disagree that my position will be effective, you should try to prevent my position from becoming policy, but the “don’t legislate morality” position is either nonsense, or a very bad phrasing of “my morality and my beliefs about what makes a health happy society is that the laws should support a plurality of moral positions on some questions.” That, itself, is a demand that the law match your moral filter.
Oh, for the record, I also believe in the value of shaming, I just disagree with Robert on what should get shamed.
Stop rambling about all sorts of unrelated stuff.
Absolutely and definitely not.
I’m just going to wait for the time y’all start whining about someone “legislating morality”.
Oh, sorry, I edited my comment after I posted it, to fix the block quoting, and then I added some more material. Bad practice, and confusing.
That is to say, see above about “legislating morality.”
Oh, and I made “stop rambling” make even more sense.
Oh. You edited it.
Whatever.
I just smell hypocrisy here.
See, I’m not actually “y’all.” I’m actually a single individual and not some sort of expression of the collective left, so my acceptance of legislating morality is not anyone else’s acceptance of legislating morality.
Sure, but it’s going to be fun for unprincipled supporters of AA who use that as their battle cry against laws they don’t like.
Hypocrisy is always fun to smell on others.
It isn’t that they are unprincipled, it is that “stop legislating morality” is a horrible but recognized short hand for “my morality and my beliefs about what makes a healthy, happy society is that the laws should support a plurality of moral positions on some questions, stop legislating against my morality.”
Most Asian Americans support affirmative action. It’s different in universities. Like Ampersand said, white legacies get the most “affirmative action” at elite colleges. Actual non-legacy affirmative action hurts Asian Americans and helps Latinos and blacks. Not all races are the same. The environment at alot of elite schools alienates Latinos and blacks so they are not as eager to apply. Asians apply regardless.
How ’bout opposing legacy AA and non-legacy AA?
Tuomas, I guess I’m wondering what your stake on AA even is, considering that as a Finn, you are not living in a very racially mixed environment, and the legacy of slavery as practiced in the U.S. is not something you have to live with every day. Are you trying to say that American institutions of higher education should be pure meritocracies? Just asking.
I can’t see why that would be a bad thing.
I do have a stake in this, in a manner that hare-brained ideas such as AA can (and will) metastasize if/when similar differences in among immigrants vs. natives are seen. And there’s always gender quotas etc.
There would be alot less whites if elite schools were pure meritocracies. Interesting stuff today about affirmative action in the Harvard Crimson. Only well-off kids can afford SAT preparation courses. These tests don’t measure much except class privilege and useless test-taking knowledge.
“The editorial did not mean to suggest that Asian-American applicants are, either individually or on average, somehow lacking in admissions criteria that are difficult to quantify, such as “leadership qualities, extracurricular involvement, [and] achievement outside of the classroom.” Such a suggestion is patently false: one needs only to look around Harvard to see fellow students who exhibit these qualities.
Rather, the editorial attempted to argue that colleges are justified in looking favorably upon applicants from underrepresented minorities who exhibit these qualities. If you believe in using affirmative action in college admissions—for the sake of creating a diverse student body, or in order to account for challenges students may have faced before applying—then these are the sorts of criteria that make many minority applicants qualified for admissions, despite SAT scores well below those of Asian-Americans or whites.
First, the nature of affirmative action exaggerates the differences in measures of academic success for which it is trying to correct. For instance, students of color, who tend to be poorer, average lower SAT scores than wealthier students. Their lower SAT scores perhaps indicate a lack of opportunity to succeed academically, because of their financial circumstances, more than they suggest an academic deficiency.“
there is no reason not to attempt to get the government to apply our own moral filter
Absolutely. And you’ve done your best, and the population has resoundingly rejected that filter. The vast majority of Americans are opposed to “strong” affirmative action in university admissions (and like “weak” AA programs just fine).
RonF, I’m sorry to keep you witing so long for references. The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel is an excellant history of the admissions practices of elite US universities and The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates by Daniel Golden, is an exellant look at elite school admissions today. I’m sorry if I was unclear, but when referring to the “overrepresentation of Jews” I was talking about admissions to elite schools in the 1920s.
RonF, you’re making perfectly reasonable comments about how you don’t work with girls, but you do with boys, and how important it is to have breaks and time to run around and then you say ” I think the girls would like it, too, although I imagine they’d use the time differently than the boys would. ” Then I have to wonder why you’d say that? If you don’t have some kind of solid evidence that boys and girls are radically different about recess, why would you go out of your way to make an assumption about it?
For more on how Asian-Americans are the new Jews in admissions, that is, underepresented relative to their test scores, see Golden’s book.
Tuomas, I don’t know where you get the idea that “Legacy kids get AA if they belong to a correct race (granted, this is somewhat rare).” I’m not sure that you understand what affirmative action is. It isn’t one single thing that can be given to someone.
To speak of a meritocracy, especially as opposed to that decadent European aristocracy, of course it sounds like a good thing. The problem is that it is no more successful in application that communism was in the USSR. In a society that has active, ongoing problems with racism, large disparities in every stage of human life (guess who’s more likely to get prenatal care, guess who’s more likely to die in infancy, guess who’s more likely to grow up poor, to attend the nation’s worst schools, to be turned down for jobs and housing, etc.) The current US system, particularly in the elite colleges, isn’t meritocratic. It’s aristocratic, based on inherited wealth and influence trumping everything else.
To refer to Affirmative Action as a “hare-brained idea” would seem to indicate that you don’t have the foggiest idea what it is or how it works. What the hell are you talking about differences between “immigrants vs. natives”? Between WASPs, Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Latinos, who is it you think are supposed to be the natives? “There’s always gender quotas?” Oh, really, where? When? What are they? Seriously, you should explain what you think AA is, because nothing you’ve posted has reflected an understanding of it.
What the hell are you talking about? What decadent aristocracy in Europe? Where?
Don’t give me any of that “Communism is beautiful, USSR wasn’t communist enough” bullshit. Seriously.
Meaning differences between incoming immigrants of different ethnicity in, say, university admissions.
You can always make them, if you don’t have much diversity in the society.
Why should I write to the benefit to someone who can not read?
Why should explain anything to
I’m not sure where the last line came from… Scratch that.
Immigrants vs. natives in European countries, and gender quotas do exist in many Scandinavian countries.
The vast majority of Americans are opposed to “strong” affirmative action in university admissions (and like “weak” AA programs just fine).
The implicit affirmative action for affluent white male legacies should be abolished before regular affirmative action in university admissions. We’d be well on our way to meritocracy even though many are against that kind of affirmative action.
Well, private institutions can do what they like, whether it’s legacies or AA or whatever. It’s public institutions that are the issue, and as far as I know there are not generally legacy programs at public institutions.
Bush is the most infamous legacy. He would not have gotten anywhere without his Yale degree. There are hundreds of thousands of white males like this from schools that favor legacies. They in turn run everything (into the ground).
Jeb Bush for example would have been a better president (barf) because he’s smarter but he went to University of Texas Austin where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Latin American Studies. (Thank you, wikipedia.)
I suspect that as a son of a President and powerful governmental insider, as well as a man of his own complex talents and characteristics, that GW would have done OK regardless of whether Yale had legacy preferences or not. In assessing his career, it’s difficult to see where Yale had much to do with his successes or failures.
It’s also worth noting that graduate programs do not generally engage in legacy activities, that no Bush went to Harvard before W did, and that he earned admission and graduation from the Harvard MBA program on his own hook.
My impression of the Bush boys is that Jeb is certainly more articulate than W, but W has considerably more native intellect. Articulation is not intelligence.
Okay, a little history. Because America was formed as a republic in a direct reaction against the British aristocracy, which was viewed as decadent, the notion of meritocracy was that anyone (white, male, educated, and landowning) could rise based on his own merits and not that of inherited privilege.
I’m not suggesting any such thing as “communism was beautiful.” My point was that many ideology sound good in theory but prove to be rather less good in their actual implementation. Communism and meritocracy are both examples of this.
In talking about AA in the US, we are not discussing “differences between incoming immigrants of different ethnicity in, say, university admissions”. We are discussing differences in admissions between groups who’s ancestors have been here for hundreds of years.
More later.
This makes no sense. Slightly more than the world’s population is female, slightly less is male. There are perhaps some ambiguities, but if everyone were permitted to choose their preferred gender it is unlikely that the percentages of each would change much. Furthermore, to defend a statement such as “there are always gender quotas” by saying “you could make them” is pretty weak.
And you think I can’t read?
Now I cannot speak to immigrant issues in Europe, nor can I speak to Scandinavian gender quotas. But since the discussion started with the manufactured “boy crisis” in US education, and veered into US colleges and admissions policies, I can say that gender quotas aren’t relevant. Affirmative Action refers to a vast array of court-ordered remedies to discriminatory practices that have been proven in private or governmental organizations. In the US, gender quotas aren’t necessary, because wherever women have not been illegally kept out, they have entered in substantial numbers.
Robert, only private institutions that do not accept federal funding for research are free to do whatever they want. Harvard, for example, receives copious amounts of money for science and medical research that I know of, and no doubt, funding in every department. They are, therefor, bound by nondiscriminatory laws.
I suspect that as a son of a President and powerful governmental insider, as well as a man of his own complex talents and characteristics, that GW would have done OK regardless of whether Yale had legacy preferences or not. In assessing his career, it’s difficult to see where Yale had much to do with his successes or failures.
No, he had a C average at Andover and if he didn’t go to Yale he wouldn’t have been President and killed 1,000,000 Iraqis and 3,000 Americans, etc. and put this country in debt.
My impression of the Bush boys is that Jeb is certainly more articulate than W, but W has considerably more native intellect. Articulation is not intelligence.
Jeb is more articulate and intellectual. He had an A average (Phi Beta Kappa) and Bush had a C average. Their father wanted Jeb to be President but W ended up being the idiot President we have today.
An Inauspicious Start at School in Andover
Bush did not get off to an auspicious start when he arrived as at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., as a sophomore or “lower middler” in the school’s vernacular. His first English grade – for an essay on emotions – was zero.
“As I remember, the impression of the red marker was so intense that it stuck out of the back side of the blue book,” recalls Bush. With the help of a thesaurus his mother had given him, Bush had erroneously written about “lacerates” running down his cheek – instead of tears.
“And my math grades weren’t all that good either to begin with. So I was struggling,” said Bush.
Bush kept up with the work but was an average student who never made the honor roll, according to his year book. He was considered a solid athlete – he played varsity basketball and baseball his senior year – but he was never among the class stars.
“George and I were both witness to the fact that Andover has such an excellent academic system and even people at bottom tier – where I was and George was – can be okay and go to good colleges,” said Don Vermeil, a classmate friend who went to Stanford.
Bush would later tell friends he was terrified of flunking out of Andover, afraid that he would embarrass himself and his family. Despite Bush’s private fears and struggles, his classmates – all boys back then – saw him as a larger-than-life Texan – cocky and irrepressible. Within months of his arrival, Bush was seen as a campus mover, not on the strength his intellect or his athletic achievements, but by sheer force of personality. Bush was nicknamed “Lip” because he had an opinion on everything – and sometimes a tongue sharper than necessary.
Bush almost instinctively managed to always be in the center of the action, an ubiquitous, noisy presence at school events. He was the head football cheerleader his senior year, a member of his class rock-and-roll band, the Torqueys – not singing or playing an instrument but clapping – and organizer of the school’s stickball league.
“He was kind to the athletically challenged,” said Wofsey, now a Pennsylvania psychiatrist.
No one thought of him as a class leader in the traditional sense or had any inkling of the career he would ultimately choose.
“I would never have guessed he would go into public service. He never showed the slightest inclination toward it,” said Dan Cooper, the class president. “I would have bet money that he would have turned out to be an investment banker living in Greenwich and happily belonging to the country club.”
Cooper, now head of a Boston multimedia company, was voted Most Respected and Done Most for Andover. Bush came in second for Big Man on Campus.
In his senior year, Bush applied to only two colleges, the University of Texas and Yale. Barbara Bush said in an interview that her son was determined to go to his father’s alma mater, but knew it was not a sure thing that he would be admitted.
“George started hyping up the University of Texas, how he was going to love being a Longhorn,” said Doug Hannah, a Houston friend who talked to Bush over Christmas holidays of his senior year. “My recollection was that he was shocked that he got into Yale.”
Not smart, athletic or a leader but loud. And a legacy.
Your faith in the value of a high grade point average is touching. I had a 3.94 undergraduate GPA; I guess I must be the King Shit of all creation – bow before my institutionally-accredited intellectual might!. (And it would have been a 4.0 if it weren’t for oppression from the man.)
It’s public institutions that are the issue, and as far as I know there are not generally legacy programs at public institutions.
You are incorrect. Kaethe already addressed the ‘public/private’ split, but the University of Michigan (a public institution I think some people might have heard of) unapologetically gives ‘points’ for legacies as well as for students with an enrolled sibling.
Since you want to continue this discussion…
Bush went to Andover and was an average student. He got into Yale because he was a legacy, not because of his grades, athetic or leadership ability. He got into Harvard because of his continued loudness as a cheerleader on the football field and then his fraternity leadership skills. He wouldn’t have become President if he hadn’t gotten into Yale. He got into Yale just because he was a legacy. Loudness at Andover is not enough to get into Yale. He’s a textbook case of mediocre kids who climb their way to the top because they are legacies.
It’s public institutions that are the issue, and as far as I know there are not generally legacy programs at public institutions.
Right, Daniel Golden’s book on the subject says the top 100 private and public universities use the legacy model.
I stand corrected vis the public : private distinction. Thank you for the information.
I do not deny that George Bush was a legacy admit to Yale. And undoubtedly that was a helpful place for him to be. His other choice was the University of Texas – not Ivy League, but a fine system nonetheless. His brother went there and seems to have done pretty well, as you yourself keep throwing out there.
I don’t really understand the fixation with grades. Yes, his brother got As while got Cs. His brother was at an easier school. UT is an excellent institution – but it isn’t Yale.
He got into Harvard because of his continued loudness as a cheerleader on the football field and then his fraternity leadership skills.
This seems a rather odd assertion. Have you any evidence to support it?
He got into Harvard because Harvard likes to train men and women who are going to handle millions of dollars, and it was already pretty clear that Bush was the kind of lunatic businessman who certainly would be handling millions of dollars. MBA programs, to my recent knowledge, are not extensively concerned with cheerleading.
If by “fraternity leadership skills” you mean leadership skills acquired in a fraternity, then I would acknowledge that seems to be a supporting element of his successful candidacy to the program. I’m not quite sure why you think having leadership skills is a questionable characteristic.
Look, I will admit – as will he – that the man lived a privileged life and got the best that America had to offer. He was lucky in his choice of family. I really don’t see why that’s considered such a crime in some circles. Everybody’s gotta be born somewhere.
Kaethe:
Btw, I have not claimed that the current syste in US is meritocratic.
But are you seriously claiming that the concept of meritocracy is about as absurd and unworkable as communism — a system that has killed tens of millions of people — i.e it can never work?
I’m not sure how else am I supposed to read that absurd, outlandish comparison, I’d think that meritocracy would be a rather important concept and a worthy goal for a just society. No, it won’t lead to perfect equality of outcome. I think one of the arguments for AA is that it compensates for lesser opportunity, why not fix the root cause?
Original Lee asked me a question, I answered it. You can’t accuse me of a thread drift.
Back to US from Europe, then.
The current system claims to be meritocratic. It is not. The political system of the USSR claimed to be communism. It was not. Actually, communism does tend to work pretty well, as long as you limit it to a pretty tight – knit family. In the case of parents looking after children and elders you see a good example of “from each according to his means to each according to his needs.” The point of my “outlandish comparison” was that even good ideas do not necessarily result in good outcomes. Legacy admissions, for example, have turned elite universities into a system for maintaining an aristocracy.
It may be that “one of the arguments for AA is that it compensates for lesser opportunity”, but I find that a bad argument. It is an emotional argument, and it contains within it the suggestion that anyone aided by AA needed that help because he or she was not otherwise good enough. The reality is that AA, like desegregation plans, are not some sort of hopeful goal, there are specific remedies to specific discrimination. Therefor, colleges who excluded women, or African – Americans, or whomever, people who were fully qualified, who were inarguably, demonstrably qualified according to the findings of a court, must now prove that they are not discriminating. I mentioned that gender quotas aren’t relevant, because in the discussion of US college admissions they aren’t. Although, come to think of it, I suppose they will be, because before too long, someone is going to be demanding that there be quotas to raise the numbers of those boys in crisis.
communism:
(my emphasis)
Sounds like USSR.
I know there are plenty of apologists (Chomsky etc.) who claim that USSR (and Communist China, Cambodia, North Korea…) are all some “perversions” of communism, but
Um, how can anyone claim that legacy admissions are meritocratic?
By definition, they are not.
Meritocracy:
(my emphasis)
Now, you may say that “but there are no quotas!”, but, in fact, the system of AA strives toward certain “balance” in outcome by manipulating admission on basis of legacy, socioeconomic factors, race and whatever else.
I oppose both legacy AA and racial AA.
Of course, this is all theory, but anyway.
the sentence ends.
Should read
I know there are plenty of apologists (Chomsky etc.) who claim that USSR (and Communist China, Cambodia, North Korea…) are all some “perversions” of communism, but they actually all represent communism, thus all the oppression is a design feature rather than a mistake or a bug.
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Kaethe:
Hmm.
Affirmative action:
RonF, you’re making perfectly reasonable comments about how you don’t work with girls, but you do with boys, and how important it is to have breaks and time to run around and then you say ” I think the girls would like it, too, although I imagine they’d use the time differently than the boys would. ” Then I have to wonder why you’d say that?
I said that because when I was a kid in K – 8 we had recess and I noted that the boys tended to race around and play games that generally included contact and near-contact (football or “Kill the Guy With the Can”, whereas the girls engaged in more sedate activity – hopscotch and jump rope and the like. When the hill iced up in the winter, the kids sliding down the cement ramp on pieces of corrugated cardboard were all boys. That was a while ago, of course, when girls didn’t get the opportunity to play the same kinds of sports and other physical activities like they do now. But I still think that their social interactions might be different than a group of boys the same age. I could be wrong, though.
Asians have to test higher than whites in elite schools including MIT and the Ivy League.
Any time you want to back up assertions about MIT’s admissions practices with facts, go right ahead. That doesn’t include talking about Ivy League schools and then inferring that MIT’s admissions policies are the same.
First, the nature of affirmative action exaggerates the differences in measures of academic success for which it is trying to correct. For instance, students of color, who tend to be poorer, average lower SAT scores than wealthier students. Their lower SAT scores perhaps indicate a lack of opportunity to succeed academically, because of their financial circumstances, more than they suggest an academic deficiency.“
Hm. Define academic deficiency. If by that you mean “lack of achievement”, then I might go along with this statement due to a lack of opportunity noted above. But if it means “lack of ability”, then I’d contest the statement.
The proper weight to give standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, etc.) is a continuing debate. Colleges look at them, but they also look at class rank, what high school you graduated from, what extra curricular activities you engaged in, what community activities you engaged in, what organizations you were active in, how well you can express yourself in a written essay, and whether or not you just were a member of an organization or whether you actually did something.
This is one reason why MIT and other schools try to have their alumni actually interview applicants; it gives you an idea as to the levels of leadership and committment and passion (yes, that is specifically called out in the guide I’m given) that the applicant shows. Say the kid is an Eagle Scout or a Gold Award holder. That looks good on a college application, but in an interview you can gauge for yourself whether or not the kid actually ran their project, or if they were a placeholder while Mom and/or Dad actually did the work.
It’s interesting to see the discussions of “legacies” here. Is there any documentation on what level of influence having a parent or grandparent as an alumni has on college admissions?
Robert, only private institutions that do not accept federal funding for research are free to do whatever they want. Harvard, for example, receives copious amounts of money for science and medical research that I know of, and no doubt, funding in every department. They are, therefor, bound by nondiscriminatory laws.
Among others; that’s why Harvard was threatened with the loss of Federal funding when they tried to keep military recruiters off campus (for the Law School, specifically) on the basis that the military discriminates against homosexuals.
Donna, you said that Golden’s book discussed the influence of being a legacy in college admissions. Can you expand on that?
One thing about AA in college admissions is whether or not admitting an underrepresented minority (if we’re in agreement on that term) whose academic preparation is lower than that of other students is doing them any favor. If their education up to that point has been substandard, then they’re going to have to do some make-up work to get up to speed to meet the standard of that school. When you’re talking about MIT or Cal Tech, you have to figure that there’s only so much make-up work that the incoming AA freshman is going to be able to add to the usual freshman studies at that school if they expect to keep up. The Institute does have programs for this; e.g., there are summer sessions for incoming freshman, tutoring, etc. But you can only do so much before it might be more advisable for many incoming students to go to a school where the course of study is not as demanding, but where they have a better chance of catching up. In the long run, it seems to me that an incoming student should go to a school where they would have a good chance of graduating in 4 or 5 years rather than one where they would end up being more likely to flunk out in a year.
RonF, either we care about grades as a marker of ‘academic preparation’, or we don’t. If we do, then ANY factor that might make it easier for lower-achieving students to get in is wrong–we’re doing legacies no favors by ushering them into a school over their heads.
Is there any documentation on what level of influence having a parent or grandparent as an alumni has on college admissions?
Universities are notoriously close-mouthed about the details of their admissions process, much less how they whore out the admissions process in the hopes of sucking up to alumni, aka, legacy admissions. They don’t seem to mind publicizing legacies as a marketing tool, mind you.
The Economist has an article touching on the issue (amazingly, as you’d expect them to be all for it), and a recent book discusses exclusionist policies at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
I do not deny that George Bush was a legacy admit to Yale. And undoubtedly that was a helpful place for him to be. I don’t really understand the fixation with grades. He got into Harvard because of his continued loudness as a cheerleader on the football field and then his fraternity leadership skills. This seems a rather odd assertion. Have you any evidence to support it?
I’m not fixated with grades, you are. He had a C average at Andover so being a legacy is what got him into Yale. He had a C average at Yale and his loudness on the football field sidelines was a lead-in to his being head of the fraternity council at Yale. He was not only President of DKE but of the entire council. Being a legacy gave him the opportunity to become some kind of leader at Yale. Not the typical kind like a debate or political leader and a dubious kind of leadership got him into Harvard. Of course being a legacy not only of his father but other relatives that went to Yale got him into Skull and Bones. These were stepping stones to his Presidency.
He got into Harvard because Harvard likes to train men and women who are going to handle millions of dollars, and it was already pretty clear that Bush was the kind of lunatic businessman who certainly would be handling millions of dollars. MBA programs, to my recent knowledge, are not extensively concerned with cheerleading.
You didn’t read the article, did you? Like I already said, the loudness on the football field sidelines got attention and he became head of DKE and the fraternity leadership council.
If by “fraternity leadership skills” you mean leadership skills acquired in a fraternity, then I would acknowledge that seems to be a supporting element of his successful candidacy to the program. I’m not quite sure why you think having leadership skills is a questionable characteristic.
Like I said, he got there by being loud in general and as a cheerleader on the football field and being head of a fraternity is a social and leadership skill mostly useful in business. I don’t think it’s a questionable characteristic for an MBA. I only bring it up as one of the stepping stones resulting from being a legacy. Being head of the fraternity council is not sufficient leadership training for a US President nowadays which requires a more complex, curious and cosmopolitan mind. Bill Clinton who was a debate champion comes to mind. Hillary Clinton who was head of Yale Law Review also comes to mind.
Look, I will admit – as will he – that the man lived a privileged life and got the best that America had to offer. He was lucky in his choice of family. I really don’t see why that’s considered such a crime in some circles. Everybody’s gotta be born somewhere.
It’s not a crime but there are thousands upon thousands of white men like this who run Wall Street, newspapers, politics, etc. and Bush of course almost ran this country into the ground.
RonF, I think CalTech is one of the three schools that doesn’t have the legacy system. Check out the interview with Daniel Golden at Racialicious.
http://www.racialicious.com/2006/11/21/brand-new-addicted-to-race-episode-out-now-48/
I looked through that page but I couldn’t find that particular reference. MIT is on record as saying that they don’t give legacies any special preference in admissions. I wonder if Golden names them or not.
It’s a podcast. Click the arrow at the bottom to listen to it. Fascinating.
Amazon review of Daniel Golden’s book:
A heavy-hitting, name-naming exposé by Wall Street Journal deputy bureau chief Golden concludes that Ivy League admissions offices do not practice meritocracy. Instead, top-drawer schools reward donor-happy alums and the “legacy establishment,” which Golden defines as “elites mastering the art of perpetuating themselves.” Moreover, the “preference of privilege” enables wealthy candidates to nose out more deserving working- and middle-class students, especially new immigrants and Asian-Americans. Golden backs his assertions with examples comparing the academic records of entering students: e.g., Al Gore’s son was admitted to Harvard despite his shabby record, although a better prepared Asian-American was rejected at all Ivy Leagues because he was “unhooked” (in admission parlance, not well connected or moneyed). Asian-Americans, notes Golden, are the “new Jews,” for whom a higher bar is set. Golden tracks shameful admissions policies at Duke, where the enrollment of privileged but underqualified applicants has helped elevate the school’s endowment ranking from 25th in 1980 to 16th in 2005; Brown is skewered for courting the offspring of entertainment industry notables. Golden suggests reasonable, workable tactics for resurrecting the antilegacy campaign in Congress (led by Senator Kennedy) and devotes a laudatory chapter to the equitable admissions practices at Caltech, Berea College (Kentucky) and Cooper Union (New York City).
Tuomas, Wikipedia can be helpful, but it is hardly definitive. NOW gives a nice, brief timeline. Any discussion of AA is problematic, because the thing itself is poorly understood. Because, really, it isn’t any one thing. There are federal laws governing hiringby anyone who accepts federal funding and there are judicial orders covering remedies in discrimination suits against private employers or other entities, and there are non-binding guidelines implemented by others entities to correct real past deficiencies, current inequities, or to achieve other goals.
RonF, a little searching will bring up innumerable studies that drive home the point that AA is pretty much never about letting in unqualified candidates, whether for jobs or education. Reams of documentation.
RonF, a little searching will bring up innumerable studies that drive home the point that AA is pretty much never about letting in unqualified candidates, whether for jobs or education.
It isn’t a question of unqualified candidates, it’s a question of marginally less qualified candidates. Racial preferences in university admissions presents a distinctive and statistically inevitable profile: people of the preferred race are able to get into a modestly better school than they could have gotten into without the preference. Yale instead of Oberlin; Oberlin instead of Cornell; Cornell instead of UT-Austin; UT-Austin instead of University of Wherever; University of Wherever instead of Franktown Community College.
But the problem is, the racially preferred student is now enrolled in a program aimed at students a bit smarter than he is, and surrounded by students who are a bit better prepared. That has obvious consequences. Those consequences are vividly clear in the statistics for dropouts and lengthy completion times for racial groups which receive preferences in admission.
(Racial preferences in hiring have their own problematic areas, but for a variety of reasons aren’t nearly as destructive to the ambitions of the individuals being “helped”.)
“But the problem is, the racially preferred student is now enrolled in a program aimed at students a bit smarter than he is, and surrounded by students who are a bit better prepared. ”
I’ll go with “better prepared” but not smarter.
I’ll go with “better prepared” but not smarter.
Do you think that the typical student at Harvard is smarter than the typical student at Frankstown Community College?
Richer, certainly, and socio-economic status correlates with academic achievement, no?
But in your own example, you said the leap wasn’t from Frankstown to Harvard. You said it was from Oberlin to Harvard (or Yale).
Leading me to say two things:
1) No, I don’t think the average student at Harvard is smarter than the average student at Oberlin. (I was at Sarah Lawrence for a year. We saw lots o’ Yalies. The freshman class was not fully replete with shining examples of brilliant humanity.)
2) By “smarter,” I assume you refer to the idea of an intelligence quotient not in practice but in concept — an innate potential for absorbing new information. If people are less well prepared, i.e. given less opportunity to absorb new information, this would have no effect on their innate potential. So, then, we know they are less well prepared. This can account for all the difference. Why do you also assume they are less smart?
(2a: SATs are a poor measure of ability, but a good measure of preparation.)
Why do you also assume they are less smart?
Sense.
Wealth is a factor. Social class is a factor. The intellectual capital possessed by a family (and thus available free to the family’s youngest generation) is a factor. Preparation and quality of the pre-collegiate education is a factor.
The biological spectrum of innate cognitive talent is also a factor, and a major one.
If for ideological, personal, emotional, or whatever other reason, it isn’t possible to discuss this talent differential or to acknowledge its impact, then it’s pointless to have a policy discussion. Intelligence matters.
Wealth is a factor. Social class is a factor. The intellectual capital possessed by a family (and thus available free to the family’s youngest generation) is a factor. Preparation and quality of the pre-collegiate education is a factor.
Cultural capital matters more than innate intelligence in the game of college admission.
“Matters more than” != “makes irrelevant”.
It only takes one factor to make a particular school a bad fit for a particular student. The disservice that racial preferences do to people placed outside their range of capability is real.
Cultural capital is something wealthy, well-connected people have. It’s what you said in your post:
Wealth is a factor. Social class is a factor. The intellectual capital possessed by a family (and thus available free to the family’s youngest generation) is a factor. Preparation and quality of the pre-collegiate education is a factor.
Cultural capital is a sociological concept that has gained widespread popularity since it was first articulated by Pierre Bourdieu. Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron first used the term in Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction (1973). In this work he attempted to explain differences in educational outcomes in France during the 1960s. Cultural capital: forms of knowledge; skill; education; any advantages a person has which give them a higher status in society, including high expectations. Parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and knowledge that makes the educational system a comfortable familiar place in which they can succeed easily.
“The biological spectrum of innate cognitive talent is also a factor, and a major one”
Fuck you.
Donna: Yes, I know what cultural capital is, thanks. And it is indeed important – and yet, there are plenty of instances where people who don’t have much have succeeded in life because of other attributes (such as a large quantity of raw cognitive talent, or amazing persistence, or excellent planning), and plenty of instances where people with cultural capital dripping out their bottoms have ended in a ditch somewhere. It isn’t dispositive, in other words; just one factor (albeit an important one) among many.
Mandolin: Well, you certainly discredited my argument there. Boy, is my face red.
“But the problem is, the racially preferred student is now enrolled in a program aimed at students a bit smarter than he is, and surrounded by students who are a bit better prepared. ” –Robert
“The biological spectrum of innate cognitive talent is also a factor, and a major one” –Robert
“I’ll go with “better prepared” but not smarter.” –mandolin
Robert, the problem is cultural capital and better preparation not innate intelligence. This doesn’t even include the fact standardized tests are biased towards upper classes. To continuously emphasize innate intelligence is to be like the racist assholes who wrote The Bell Curve. You are therefore behaving like an racist asshole.
“The biological spectrum of innate cognitive talent is also a factor, and a major one” –Robert
“Fuck you.” –mandolin
Do I hear a ban? All say aye.
To continuously emphasize innate intelligence is to be like the racist assholes…
Why? Or rather, wherein?
I discuss innate intelligence because (unlike human capital in all its glorious varieties) we can semi-objectively test intelligence to a decent first approximation. (Your opinion to the contrary is noted, commonly held, and demonstrably false to fact.) We can also correlate intelligence, reasonably broadly, to the class of school a person attends. Yeah, there are some dumb Yalies and genius community college kids to fuzz up the curves, but the trend is bleeding obvious. Some schools are “smarter” than others.
In addition, intelligence and human capital are different things, even though they work as factors in some of the same equations. There are situations where it doesn’t matter how smart you are, only your human capital is going to help. Other times, it’s quite the reverse. In terms of academic performance, quite often the physical intelligence is the necessary prerequisite to being able to deploy the human capital at all. Your HC may teach you how to most effectively persuade the professor to take you on as a protege – but that will never happen if the professor discovers you’re too dumb to do the basic work of the discipline as she teaches it.
I find intelligence more useful in discussing academic performance, in other words. But if you’d like, we can pretend that intelligence differences between individuals don’t exist. We can put everything on human capital. And if we do that, then the point still stands: putting people in situations they are not equipped for is a disservice to those people. Racial preferences in educational admissions systemically put people in situations they are not equipped for. The reasons for that are structural, not motivational or personal.
In a work environment, those deleterious effects are much alleviated, or even eliminated, because performance is often fuzzily defined and because the workplace is often willing to make a much larger investment in remedial education and human capital infusion than a school can afford to be. In school, the problems are enhanced and made much more evident, which compounds the situation because it creates discouragement in the preferred students – in the workplace, they don’t give out tests with a number grade on it. They do in school, and if you pull an 85 while everyone else pulls a 95, you cannot help but think there’s something wrong with you. When in fact, there is nothing wrong with you, and you’d be getting a 95 if you had the same match between your available human capital and your educational environment as the majority of the non-preferred students, whose institutional decision was not distorted by bonus points, have. (Note that the exact same thing happens to legacy students.)
Please indulge me if I use myself as an example. I got into a very decent liberal arts school – not Harvard, but a damn fine school. My admission was a narrow squeak – I didn’t really have the grades for it, but my SATs were high and I wrote a killer essay. I also got into some other schools, but the school I chose to attend was the best school I could get into. Obviously there are exceptions, but generally speaking, the academic reputation and attainment of a school are primary factors in student decisions. We go to the best place we can get into, even when other considerations loom; I turned down a full-ride scholarship at a less prestigious school. I also applied to a school even better than the one I attended – let’s call it Stanford – but didn’t get in there. If I had gotten into Stanford, I would definitely have attended.
At the school where I barely got in, I earned a C+/B- average, in not particularly challenging coursework, relative to the institution’s offerings, over the two years that I attended before dropping out – despite a high intelligence and a pretty good dollop of human capital, too. I did have a good time, though, and learned a fair amount of things while just getting by. I had a suboptimal match with my institution, but it was (barely) within my capabilities to perform acceptably. (I left for other reasons, and later attended a school which was a better match for my intellectual capacity, and did very well there.)
If I was a member of one of the racial groups which typically receive preferential admission, the odds are very good that I would have gotten into Stanford, too. And I would have gone. And I would have failed egregiously, instead of scraping by for a couple of years and at least learning some stuff, because I was not smart enough (oops, I mean, I didn’t have enough social capital) to go to Stanford. My BEST match was probably the school that offered the scholarship. If I’d attended there, odds are good I would have gotten a 3.6 and graduated in four years.
To broaden it into a “racial” group, consider the spectrum of ability and capital possessed by any arbitrary group of 18-year old college prospects. Some dummies on one end, some geniuses at the other end, a bunch of people lumped in the middle of that awful racist bell curve – a standard distribution, in other words, of the sort that we see all the time.
The kids at the right-hand edge of the curve are going to Yale and MIT and Stanford. They have the brains and the preparation, so off they go. Well done. The folks a little bit further left didn’t quite make the MIT cut, but they’re off to Cornell and Oberlin. A bit further left and we find people hitting the medium quality liberal arts schools. We keep going and the quality of the school that people are going to attend tends downwards as we continue leftward on the curve. There are obviously some exceptions; some of the MIT guys end up at Cornell because they get a scholarship or want to study with a particular prof. Some of the State U-bound gals actually end up at Oberlin because they got great test scores. And so forth – but basically, people sort themselves according to their own knowledge, and the schools sort them based on their knowledge, and a mishmash of outcomes results wherein most folks are going to a more or less appropriate educational institution.
Now imagine that we take this arbitrary group, and in addition to the schools that they have gained admission to, we say “oh, and by the way, you also got admitted to school X” – where school X is a school in the next tier up. That’s the effect that any preference generally has – it opens an opportunity at a level you didn’t quite make on your own. Not all of the students will take their new opportunity. Most will.
And many if not most of that group will fail.
We know that many if not most of them will fail because that is what happens. People who get racial preferences turn in dreadful statistics on completion and performance in academia. So much so that the schools themselves hate to talk about it – it makes them look incompetent or dishonest (which, largely, they are being). (“Why did you admit that person if you didn’t think they could cut it?” “We thought they could cut it.” “How did other people in the same boat do in the past?” “They failed out too.” “Then why do you think that another generation will do any better?” “Because it would be racist not to think that!”)
The tragic irony is this: racial preferences are not necessary to get members of minority groups into elite institutions, or quality institutions, or adequate institutions. Members of minority groups have earned admissions to colleges and universities at all levels ever since the racist restrictions on their attendance were lifted. Racial preferences are the tool that institutions use to increase their own racial minority presence – to look good on paper, as a progressive and non-racist institution. Which is well and good – but the cost of the policy isn’t paid by the institutions, it’s paid by the students. It’s paid by the really bright black kid who would do great at Cornell but fails out of Yale. It’s paid by the decently bright Hispanic kid who would do great at UT but fails out of Cornell. It’s paid by the adequate fill-in-the-blank kid who would have done fine at Oklahoma State but who can’t cut it at UT. (The genius kid who would have been at Yale anyway is largely unaffected, other than whatever psychic cost there is to having people think he or she is there because of preferences instead of raw merit. Which I don’t know the magnitude of, but which I assume is nonzero.)
Please notice that this effect occurs regardless of whether the racial group being preferred has higher or lower intelligence or social capital or ANYTHING than the majority population. Give racial preferences to rich white kids, and rich white kids will start flunking out of college in higher numbers. So please feel free to decide that I am personally a ‘orible racist bigot – but please also be aware that doesn’t make a sparrow’s fart worth of difference in whether or not the effect occurs. Racist society or non-racist society, dumb minorities or genius minorities or average minorities – group preferences that encourage selection of mismatched performance-based institutions will fuck up group outcomes and performance, guaranteed. It doesn’t really matter too much if Whitey McRichfuck fails out of Harvard; he’s going to go work for Daddy at the investment bank anyway. It matters a great deal when someone who’s the first in the family to go to college gets the shaft.
Racial preferences in education in essence make white-run institutions look progressive and racially sensitive, and do so by fucking over the career prospects and life paths of their minority students. I don’t believe this to be the best way of raising the level of minority academic performance. If that makes me racist, I’ve been called worse things for worse causes.
If I was a member of one of the racial groups which typically receive preferential admission, the odds are very good that I would have gotten into Stanford, too. And I would have gone. And I would have failed egregiously, instead of scraping by for a couple of years and at least learning some stuff, because I was not smart enough (oops, I mean, I didn’t have enough social capital) to go to Stanford. My BEST match was probably the school that offered the scholarship. If I’d attended there, odds are good I would have gotten a 3.6 and graduated in four years.
To broaden it into a “racial” group, consider the spectrum of ability and capital possessed by any arbitrary group of 18-year old college prospects. Some dummies on one end, some geniuses at the other end, a bunch of people lumped in the middle of that awful racist bell curve – a standard distribution, in other words, of the sort that we see all the time.
You’re not a person of color. You would not have had the same life up to the age of eighteen if you had been a person of color. Like someone said earlier, it’s a fallacy that people of color who get spots at elite schools take the place of a white person.
The tragic irony is this: racial preferences are not necessary to get members of minority groups into elite institutions, or quality institutions, or adequate institutions. Members of minority groups have earned admissions to colleges and universities at all levels ever since the racist restrictions on their attendance were lifted.
Again, the cultural capital (not “social capital” or “human capital” as you called it) factor is very important in admissions. Elite schools are also inhospitable places for many people of color so they actively recruit them. Many of the brightest black students go to HBCUs because they know elite white schools are inhospitable to people of color. So some people of color are admitted whether or not there are preferences but there need to be alot more people of color at elite universities.
You’re behaving in a racist manner whether you realize/acknowledge it or not.
It’s much more likely you were replaced by a less-deserving white male legacy.
there need to be alot more people of color at elite universities.
As far as I can see, the direct, obvious, and systemically positive way to achieve that goal is to do two things:
* raise the median academic attainment and cultural capital (I welcome your term as being inclusive) of youthful people of color to the level where the natural race-blind outcome of admissions decisions permits it – basically, the 50th-65th percentile range. At that level, there are lots and lots of really high-CC kids and they have great prospects, and absolute hordes of reasonably high-CC kids who can do very well. Broadly speaking I know how to do that but it requires a cultural change of seemingly unlikely vastness.
* ensure that the material resources are made available as needed to ensure that sufficient aid money to students is available so that nobody is settling for State solely because they can’t afford Harvard. (Note: to students, not to institutions. The current policy of giving money straight to the schools is fostering an absolutely awful inflationary policy for college education. For complex but uncontroversially existential economic reasons, it just works far better to put the money straight into the student’s hands, even if it’s a voucher rather than cash.) This one is easy: we tax people and give the money to other people. If we do this intelligently, people won’t mind too much, particularly if the money comes from some other part of the education leviathan.
* ensure that elite institutions, like all institutions, generally have a policy of warmly welcoming members of all social groups qua groups. I honestly have no idea at all how to do that.
That’s my two (three) cents.
All you’ve done on this thread is talk out of your ass due to a racist belief that it was nonwhite not an affluent white legacy that kept you out of a college. The best way to solve the lack of diversity problem is funding public schools equally. Quality of public schools depends mostly on property taxes. So New Trier in suburban Illinois is always in the top and schools in poor areas are the worst. All the property taxes or taxes for public schools should be pooled into one public school fund. Suburban schools should not be better than schools in poor areas. You can’t raise peoples’ cultural capital without radically changing this country so that all races are equal. Cultural capital is forms of knowledge, skill, education, any advantages a person has which give them a higher status in society, including high expectations. Parents provide children with cultural capital, the attitudes and knowledge that makes the educational system a comfortable familiar place in which they can succeed easily. It would take generations before nonwhites have the same cultural capital as whites.
ensure that the material resources are made available as needed to ensure that sufficient aid money to students is available so that nobody is settling for State solely because they can’t afford Harvard. (Note: to students, not to institutions. The current policy of giving money straight to the schools is fostering an absolutely awful inflationary policy for college education. For complex but uncontroversially existential economic reasons, it just works far better to put the money straight into the student’s hands, even if it’s a voucher rather than cash.) This one is easy: we tax people and give the money to other people. If we do this intelligently, people won’t mind too much, particularly if the money comes from some other part of the education leviathan.
You’re constantly talking out of your ass about a subject you know very little about except from your own bitter, racist belief that nonwhites “kept you down”. From what you’ve written, it’s much more likely a less-qualified white male legacy kept you down. The following elite schools have a “need-blind” policy meaning anyone can apply and be admitted without revealing their financial situation. Elite schools pay for this democratic model from their considerable endowments.
* Amherst College
* Brown University
* California Institute of Technology
* Columbia University
* Cornell University
* Dartmouth College
* Duke University
* Georgetown University
* Harvard University
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology
* Middlebury College
* Pomona College
* Princeton University
* Rice University
* Stanford University
* Swarthmore College
* University of Chicago
* University of Pennsylvania
* Wellesley College
* Wesleyan University
* Williams College
* Yale University
*ensure that elite institutions, like all institutions, generally have a policy of warmly welcoming members of all social groups qua groups. I honestly have no idea at all how to do that.
The best way to increase diversity is to equally fund public schools and make our society truly inclusive and anti-racist. Of course, you’ve made this all about you. White men always have to re-center themselves in feminist or poc spaces. You haven’t given any thought about race while at the same time you blame nonwhites for your situation. Of course, you never blamed the most likely culprit, the white legacy who took your place.
Any student admitted through the need-blind model at any of the aforementioned elite schools have their tuition and room and board paid by these schools’ endowments.
Donna,
Your description of Robert’s participation in this thread:
seems way off target. While it is conceivable that Robert feels this way, I don’t see anything in this thread that suggests that. Robert talked about getting into and going to a school where he was beyond his abilities, where he did badly and eventually dropped out. Robert didn’t get bumped out of any college that he thinks he could have done well in, instead he thinks he got accepted to a college that shouldn’t have accepted him. He used this as an example of why it is bad for schools to systematically accept a group of students based on any criteria other than expected ability to perform academically.
If anything, by Robert’s argument, Robert was kept down by a societal preference for white men like himself (not just a societal preference for richer and more powerful white men e.g legacy admissions). If white men hadn’t been viewed so favorably in his high school, he might well have gotten worse recommendations, he might well have gotten worse grades, he might have had it suggested that he take less difficult classes, he might have gotten less personal attention from individual teachers, etc, and he might well have been rejected by Oberlin and gone to a school a tier lower and done far better. Of course, were white men a hated racial group, he might well have gotten a worse education and have been less prepared for a college where, again, he would have been part of a hated racial group.
Umm, things seem to have gone decidedly anti white male here, as one of the afforementioned group I would like to have an input.
I went to a comprehensive school (UK based, public means a private school), in a deprived area. Myself and others in my year worked our asses off to get top grades (We have tests in our 4th year of high school, our 5th and 6th, normally 8,5,3 split as courses get harder / more specialised). I then applied to univeristies and was accepted by essentially any university I applied to due to grades. I even managed to acquire both univeristy scholarship and company sponsorship for my education again from grades and interviews. Now the interesting thing is that had I been female and or non-white I could have received an extra £2000/£1500 a year (I currently receive around £2500 a year in scholarhsip, so ~ $4000, $3000 and $5000 in USD).
Now I am sure that someone here will jump on me, I am a privelaged white male, I got good grades in a poor school, I got sponsored by universities and companies to do it, however there were 3 factors in this, 1) innate ability (I stopped studying after the 4th year exams realising it made no difference to my results), 2)I worked my butt off during the year, 3) Parental support for my education (parental encouragement rather than monetary).
Now I am sure that I would have gotten the same education had I been female / black / a strange alien from outer space since everyone in my area had the chance to go to the same school, we got the same course choices (and before someone says women would be stopped from going into xyz my teachers, guidance personnel and headteachers all tried to stop me doing the courses I picked and indeed the number I picked in my 6th year. I decided to do them and they fit the curriculum and timetable so I did them, end of story). Innate ability is something that cannot really be adjusted for, there are people who are naturally gifted at things, I can’t keep a rhythm and suck generally at drawing. Parental encouragement I will say I had better than average support, my parents really did encourage me to work and try.
I am sure there is some discrimination in acceptance policy, most hard science courses will take women in preference to men, my university has a tacit foreign students before domestic (they pay more) etc… However the key point I want to make is that if you try hard, achieve and apply then you won’t be discriminated against, they will accept you regardless of your skin tone, ethnicity or gender.
I am also expecting to be jumped on, poor white male complains about AA, SD, yadda yadda, well quite frankly why should I be put down so that someone who is supposedly my equal can be elevated. I have read the male, white etc privelage lists, and to be honest I have not experienced these benefits. When I go out I do worry about being mugged, I remain vigelant and when in areas where these events are common I am prepared. Social standing does have benefits and flaws, that doesn’t mean that someone at the bottom of the ladder can’t reach the top. Though to be honest if I was in one of these “minority” groups I would be offended (and mercenary enough to take it) that someone thought that the “majority” was better than me and that I needed a hand up. I hate it when someone assumes that I need help because I am young, I hate it when people assume I won’t beat them senseless if they attack me because I am overweight, I hate it when people try and cast me in a mold, people are individual, a meritocracy is the way to go, of course MONEY / FAVOURS will buy you bonuses however the rest of us are on an even footing struggling through the public system and trying to make the best of it.
Thank you for reading this far,
“Privelaged” “White” Male
What Charles said. Thank you, Charles.
As far as I know, I’ve never been the un-beneficiary of any racially oriented program. (In fact, the contrary, as I got ethnic scholarships.) My interest is purely impersonal.
If amp wishes to ban me, that’s certainly his perrogative. I’m aware of the moderation rules.
I’m also aware that some people hide under civility to make noxious arguments — such as that it’s only “sense” to assume that people of color are less smart than white people and that therefore “innate biological capacity is a major factor” in the (supposed lack) of people of color’s intelligence.
Since I’ve seen the concept well addressed here and elsewhere in threads in which Robert has participated or that were posted during a time in which he was an active member of the boards, the problem is not that Robert is unaware of the fact his opinion is scientifically and sociologically unsupportable. Nor is he unaware of the fact that he is posting a deeply offensive sentiment — again, baldly, that he believes people of color are less smart than whites.
Profanity alone has not constituted banning in the past – for instance, the thread in which greenconsciousness posted her anti-arab rant was treated as an instance where the breach of civility was posed through outwardly civil words.
And I do not feel that my post lacks content. I think it explains precisely the level of argumentative engagement required by the statement that “innnate biological capacity is a major factor” in determining why people of color are “out of their depth” in academic institutions they’ve been able to gain entrance to in part because of affirmative action.
If the moderator deems this statement of Robert’s is less offensive than an unequivocal and profane dismissal, so be it, but I disagree.
And I will not be posting in this thread again, so feel free to retort.
Mandolin, I’m not going to rephrase it for you, but your interpretation of what I’m saying isn’t anything like what I’m saying. The phenomenon I decry operates independently of whether there are any racial differences in intelligence. Innate biological capacity is an individual variable, not a group one.
That said, I don’t think Donna was calling for you to be banned, I think she was calling for me to be banned.
Robert, there’s a few unsupported statements I’d like to address.
This is bunk. Because, when it comes to higher education, there really is no good way for a prospective student to compare them. US News & World Report rankings suggest some schools might be better in some ways, but the colleges have been gaming those rankings for years. There simply is no objective assessment of college education. The collective conviction that Harvard is the pinnacle can’t really be supported by anything. The best publicity for Harvard is that many more students apply than could possibly be accepted every year. There is tremendous prestige to attending Harvard, but there is nothing to support the widely held idea that it is “best.” Contra conventional wisdom, it may be that the best educated graduates come from small and unrespected colleges, rather than from universities. In the latter, students are more likely to take large survey courses taught by graduate students who are overworked and poorly paid, whereas in small colleges the faculty are more likely to be teaching their subjects. But again, there is no objective standard. What makes a school best?
Not true. Recent years have seen a large upswing in college completion rates among whites entering, which creates a gap, even though black completion rates are also increasing, just not as much. (Actually, it’s the “boy crisis” again, where black males are least likely to complete, well-off white boys quite likely, girls of any race most likely) There’s no research to support your assertion.
As to income factors in freshpeople that might determine their ability to thrive in a given college setting: admissions officers don’t have a clue. There is some research showing that family wealth is a factor, as far as affording not just tuition and board and books and activity fees, but also the variables of clothing and transportation and entertainment. Dogged persistence appears to be way out in front of intelligence as far as determining completion, by the way. Despite a widespread love for the “idea” of natural talent, studies across a broad spectrum of disciplines make it clear that actual time spent doing X is a greater factor than any supposed talent.
Your elaborate bell curve of IQ as it relates to admissions is interesting, but unsupported. Of all possible factors relating to college admission/completion that have been studied, I think there is less support for IQ than anything else.
Kaethe, I don’t think it matters that there aren’t good objective standards for ranking schools; people do it regardless. Despite the lack of objectivity, there does nonetheless appear to be a broad correlation between reputation and academic rigor. Brownsville Community College is not secretly a bastion of high-powered research and education; Harvard is not full of idiots.
The ratchet effect is well supported in the research literature, as are the problematic collegiate performances recorded by members of preferred groups. I have seen reports that completion rates are upticking across all groups; since those rates are up for all groups, the strong implication is that something systemic is making college easier to complete for everyone. That could be something positive (more effective counseling and advising) or something negative (colleges just making things less rigorous across the board) or a combination of things. I welcome your theory as to how a systemwide improvement indicates the lack of a ratchet effect.
I quite agree that dogged persistence is probably the largest single factor in college completion.
Can you not see that these three statements together are nonesence? What broad correlation between reputation and academic rigor? Find me a reference to anything that can demonstrate this broad correlation that also accounts for expectations. High-powered research is largely a function of funding at the graduate and post-graduate level. Universities with substantial enowments and/or sufficient reputations can attract the researchers and graduate students who have already attracted funding. No community college is even in the running. Likewise education != research. Particularly if you are expecting research to have a direct positive effect on undergraduate education. Finally, on the basis of Summers’ tenure, I would need to see some very convincing evidence to change my mind that Harvard is in fact full of idiots.
I don’t have the foggiest idea what “the ratchet effect” means in the context we’re talking about. For data on the not at all problematic collegiate performances by preferred groups at elite universities, I suggest you look at The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions a longitudinal study (1976 and 1989) by William Bowen and Derek Bok. A JAMA article from Oct 1997 of a longitudinal study of med students admitted with special consideration, including race, concluded:
Until I see documentation to the contrary, I will go with the research I have seen on AA, which shows that it works very well at ameliorating discrimination without ill effects, and without decreasing standards.