LOCAL COMMENT: Affirmative Action Myths LOCAL COMMENT: Affirmative Action Myths
U-M cannot validate its claims of success
Detroit Free Press
http://www.freep.com/voices/columnists/eshub7_20040907.htm
By Justin Shubow
Tue, Sep 7, 2004
After all of the energy and money the University of Michigan has spent defending its admissions policies in landmark Supreme Court cases and against the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, you would think the school would offer evidence to show that undergraduate affirmative action is a success.
You would be wrong.
Sure, administrators brag about the number of black faces on campus, and sing praise to the mystical powers of "diversity." But they have provided scant evidence that affirmative action at the college level goes beyond mere cosmetic results.
Indeed, the piece of evidence that could settle the whole debate over the policy -- a study comparing the academic performance of undergraduate recipients of affirmative action with that of minority students who would have been admitted without it -- is missing from U-M's pro-affirmative action arsenal.
It is hard to believe that such a study is not feasible. Under Michigan's now-retired points-based admissions policy, it would have been very easy to determine the students for which affirmative action was the decisive factor in admissions. Researchers would only have had to subtract the 20-point bonus from minority enrollees' application scores (taking into account whether they would get the 20 points anyway because of socioeconomic hardship), and see whether they still met the admissions threshold of 100 points.
When I asked whether the university ever attempted such a study, spokesperson Julie Peterson said it would have been impossible since "the undergraduate admissions office does not have a method for tracking precisely what factors students received the points for." If this is true, one can only wonder why otherwise meticulous bean counters did not collect such data, even if just for internal use.
U-M is all too typical in either not performing or not publicly releasing an investigation of the academic outcomes of its undergraduate affirmative action recipients. As far as I can determine, not a single American university has ever released such a study.
This gaping absence is highly suggestive. Either the universities are silent because of what they have found, or they never looked for fear of what they might find. This secrecy or willful ignorance cannot bode well for the policy. In any area of life -- whether business, medicine or politics -- if a policy or experiment is found to be successful, its backers will usually shout the news from the rooftops. In the case of affirmative action, no news is bad news.
Not just academic performance, but many other aspects of the policy remain in the shadows. Few universities, for instance, have ever willingly divulged the details of their admissions processes. The recent lawsuits against U-M were made possible only because of requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
Similarly, most elite universities claim not to inquire into the ethnic origins of their black students, even though researchers have found that a large percentage (and at Harvard a majority) are immigrants from the West Indies or Africa or the children of such immigrants. In fact, when the editors of Harvard's black student guide wanted to investigate the composition of the black student body, university officials discouraged them from doing so.
This don't-ask-don't-tell approach extends back to affirmative action's inception in the 1960s. It took nearly thirty years before any serious empirical study was launched, resulting in William G. Bowen and Derek Bok's 1998 book "The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions." As the authors, the former presidents of, respectively, Princeton and Harvard, admit in their preface, "Until now, the debate has proceeded without much empirical evidence as to the effects of such policies and their consequences for the students involved."
But perhaps it is naive to expect university officials to look closely at whether affirmative action works in practice. As Upton Sinclair put it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Fervent, uncritical support of affirmative action is a wise career move for any academic bureaucrat. Just ask Lee Bollinger, whose defense of affirmative action at U-M -- first as dean of the law school, then as university president -- was a major factor in his obtaining the presidency of Columbia University.
Such considerations help to explain, but do nothing to excuse, the current situation. Affirmative action is a giant social experiment, and administrators have an obligation to ensure that the policy is working as intended. I suspect it is not.
The issue may be sensitive, the truth unpleasant, but no self-respecting university has an ostrich as its mascot.
JUSTIN SHUBOW of Ann Arbor holds a masters degree in philosophy from the University of Michigan.Write to him in care of the Free Press Editorial Page, 600 W. Fort St., Detroit, MI 48226.
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