"Of the six conservative justices, not one was willing to bring up the research that suggests that students who receive an affirmative action leg up are actually made worse off by that supposed benefit. I think I know why: When Justice Scalia brought it up (very inartfully) at the 2015 oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas, he got clobbered for it in the media. The last thing they wanted was a media frenzy like the one Scalia had to endure."
Writes Gail Heriot (Instapundit).
I'm posting this for discussion. I haven't studied the very long transcript and can't say for sure that any given thing was not discussed. And I wouldn't assume I know the reason why something wasn't said.
Here's my contemporaneous discussion of Scalia's clumsy use of the "mismatch" idea. Scalia speculated that classes at the higher ranked schools might be "too fast" for some students who would be better off at "slower-track schools."
I said, "By pointing at the mismatch argument crudely, Scalia gave supporters of affirmative action a lavish gift."
Trump attacked him too: "I thought his remarks were very, very tough … to the African American community. I don’t like what he said. I was very surprised at Scalia’s comments.”
But, you might think, can't the Justices of today find better words than Scalia's "fast" and "slower"? I'm thinking no, that won't be enough. Here's what I said when I encountered it in 2012:
I remember discussions about affirmative action, back in the 1980s, in which any attempt to make this argument would provoke a sharp rebuke....
And by that, I mean, I tried to raise the question at my law school, and I got an intense reaction that clearly meant: This idea is forbidden. What I thought at the time and what I put in words in 2012 was:
It's a painful thought, that you are hurting the people you meant to help. The urge to repress ensues. It's much easier to justify imposing a disadvantage on the people you decided could bear the burden. That's something academics have long felt comfortable discussing openly.
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75 comments:
It's hard to have "the talk" or "conversations" when certain topics are off limits.
This is not news to anyone who'd see the incoming class of college students. Some are way out of their depth. Some fail every class. Sometimes they and others perceive themselves to be 'tokens.'
Forget testing, just put them in classes and watch them fail.
I don't see why it's the justice's job to bring it up. Why not the anti-AA legal counsel? In any case, it's not controversial that the best way to learn something is to challenge yourself a bit. And the surest way to waste your time is to challenge yourself a lot.
You'll become a better tennis player by playing the local pro, you'll never improve by playing Serena Williams. You'll never become a good chess player by playing Bobby Fisher or a physicist by studying under are Einstein. You'll never learn a foreign language by attending auctions in that country.
Think of it as the Goldilocks Principle. Some are too easy, some are too hard. The best school for you is the one that challenges you within the limits of your own ability.
Helping can hurt people in lots of ways. This is one. It's forbidden in many circles to talk about the consequences of help.
The fatal flaw of affirmative action is that it is tries to fix a problem at the wrong end. Racial and economic inequality starts essentially at conception and is probably set in stone by the age of six due to the way they human brain and central nervous system develops rapidly because high neuroplasticity.
I'm not too surprised but I don't think it's necessarily because of the Scalia firestorm. Mismatch is essentially a policy argument about determining whether AA helps or hurts the people given what is thought to be a 'boost'. The argument this time appears to be more centered on whether AA is Constitutionally valid regardless of the policy outcome.
Good points (in your 2012 note) about the psychology of those pushing for mismatch. They very much want and need to feel validated in their intervention. As you say the intervention breaks the old merit-based structure (A outscores B and wins the “prize”) and creates TWO wrongs: A is denied the “prize,” and B is awarded it. This is a double injustice but rather than address both wrongs the social engineers want to be seen as rectifying a preexisting evil (B morally “deserves” to win) but not as creating a new one (A will resent being screwed, and B will struggle —and often fail— to keep up).
Given this moral imbalance and the sophistry that it encourages, is it any wonder that “mismatch” is a taboo line of argument?
How would you describe the difference between the pace at STEM programs at colleges whose enrollments are 90% AP and 10% AP, respectively?
Qualifications are established during the grade school years. If affirmative action is still required after, then the system and student have failed, at ever progressive prices and returns through redistributive (i.e. trickle-down) economic models. That said, there is a not so fine line separating affirmative action and affirmative discrimination under diversity (e.g. racism) and inclusion bullshit.
>"By pointing at the mismatch argument crudely, Scalia gave supporters of affirmative action a lavish gift."<
Yes, indeed - the gift of handing the Left yet another truth that they can indignantly and raucously pretend isn't true.
Cruel neutrality doesn’t win elections
Thomas spoke of it multiple times in his dissents over the years.
But I’m with you, Professor, the writer can’t possibly know WHY is wasn’t brought up.
No one likes to admit that, rather than helping, their actions may in fact be harmful.
If your group is admitted with 300 fewer points on the SAT than the rest, then you spend all your time surrounded by people who are a lot smarter than you are. This is without average IQ differences.
This leads to self-segregation, with black events and black spaces, to escape being surrounded by always smarter people. If they don't dumb down classes or have special black classes, then you wind up worse off than attending a better-matched university. Even so, you wind up a social retard, thinking that whites are the enemy. And some dumbed-down classes, e.g. black studies, leave you worse off, being time consuming and worthless.
In a matched school, you're not surrounded by people smarter than you are - whites and blacks being actually equal. Courses are about what's useful and taught at an appropriate speed. Sounds ideal for everybody.
Reminds me of the street sign: Slow Children at Play...
Affirmative action makes sure that Black and Hispanic students are surrounded by white and Asian students that have performed better than them academically at every level of the education system.
This is guaranteed to cause resentment and perceptions of inferiority.
Supporters of Affirmative Action want to make sure they are only introduced to Black and Hispanic students they perform better than.
It is necessary for democrats to fuel their inherent racism against black people.
That is what their party is founded on.
I lurk at teachers' forums and they refer to their slower students as "low."
"My low students."
Strange considering their fine sensitivities regarding race or the "R" word.
But it's an accepted term of art in k12 doncha know.
In the intervening decade, how many black students matriculated at selective universities, only to drop out because they were not academically prepared for the level of work? Ever one of them should be on the conscience of the people pushing affirmative action. If any of them had consciences, that is.
Gail Heriot says that Scalia's explanation of the mismatch problem was "inartful." Althouse says it was "clumsy."
Note that neither of them offer a better alternative. In fact they don't try to explain the problem at all. They are reticent because there isn't a pleasant way to convey Scalia's meaning. Their criticism is cowardly.
If you don't have the guts and integrity to accurately describe a problem, then at least have the decency to say nothing. Don't attack Scalia for "clumsiness" when your real objection is that he describes a phenomenon that you would prefer to remain hidden.
Thomas Sowell has discussed this at length. His 1992 book, "Inside American Education" detailed the results of the failures of affirmative action back then. He has gone on to discuss this topic over decades now.
Again- the failure is not at the university level. It's at the K-12 level, particularly in the public schools, and of those, particularly in the inner cities. The obvious is so easily ignored. I've listened to Democrats talk about how they take care of the Black communities, when the results, as bad as they were in the 60s, have continued to get progressively (love using that word here) worse each succeeding decade. And Republicans act as if this is an unknown topic to them, a few of them lightly brushing against the topic of Charter Schools or School Choice, but taking no action on it, even when they had the majority. It seems like the Teachers Unions get the decide this for our kids.
If the Republicans ever wanted to actually take over the Black vote and raise the level of hope and prosperity for all Americans, they would make fixing our education system a number one national goal. And by 'fixing' I mean, opening it up. Believe me- if it was any of your kids stuck in some of those city schools, you would be screaming.
Let’s discuss drop out rates for AA beneficiaries then.
They have solved mismatch: everybody gets a passing grade. That’s why the O Chem guy at NYU had to be fired. He kept demanding actual learning take place.
Following up what Che Dolf said, it is a very unpleasant reality, and there may be no way to describe is artfully.
@Howard
The fatal flaw of affirmative action is that it is tries to fix a problem at the wrong end. Racial and economic inequality starts essentially at conception and is probably set in stone by the age of six due to the way they human brain and central nervous system develops rapidly because high neuroplasticity.
That is exactly right. But that is another third-rail topic you can't discuss.
Rather than improve educational outcomes for black and hispanic students in the public school system, democrats would rather let black and hispanic students they have already failed to help in the secondary schools into their universities.
The left doesn't want to help black and hispanic people.
They want to make them dependent on their patronage.
The democrats are also forcing them to grow up in crime and poverty.
Democrats are not acting in good faith.
The stats for "mismatch" are pretty clear, as I recall. In the years after California passed Prop 187 banning racial preferences in schools, black enrollment in elite schools dropped, but so did their dropout rates in the schools they attended.
Of course, the Left is already deploying their fool-proof response to this an all matters racial: stats that show blacks failing at elite schools just mean those schools have to lower their racist standards and hire more diver$ity administrators.
There's a relationship between how people do in grade school and high school and how they will do in college which is an essential part of the affirmative action argument but which is completely neglected. In Milwaukee and other cities in the downtown public schools the numbers of African-Americans proficient in math and reading in fourth grade and eighth grade is usually some dread number like 7% and 13%. Most African Americans reside downtown and go to these schools. How then is it possible that any large number of African Americans are prepared to do college work on a high level? Yet affirmative action takes members of the group at age 18 de novo, as if they were just starting and asserts that colleges should admit and have in their classes a percentage of African-Americans equal to the percentage of that group in the country, to raw demography. There's many members of the black community who are equal to the challenge of a high level college because they got into suburban, charter, catholic or private schools as children. But their numbers would not enable a college to reflect the black community numerically but only the black community in terms of access to a good K-12 education. Affirmative action demands however that we ignore the bad preparation in K-12 in the big Dem cities and get college admission numbers in line with raw demography. And when colleges really try do so, we get "mismatch." We get the students who were far below proficient in 4th and 8th grade admitted to UW-Madison when it's a question whether they should be in college. But with this university admission policy, the Teacher's Union doesn't come under fire for the terrible public schools in Madison or for the Union's lack of interest in reform in K-12 schools. So it's all good.
Rhhardin has it exactly right. Well put.
Che Dolf,
+100000000
Here's the thing - it's not a racial problem so much as a socioeconomic one. Many (most) of those attending "elite" law schools come from elite families, so many of the concepts were in the background growing up. This isn't a new concept - it's long been a criticism of SAT test - Bread is to plate as cup is to A table B fork C saucer. I grew up in a house where the cup went on the table.
An excellent example of this can be found in J.D. Vance's discussion of his difficulties in law school.
I have every confidence that African-Americans can hold their own - I work with many black attorneys and they run rings around me (many of them appear to be brighter than the newest SCt. Justice, but she went to Harvard/HLS - and her father went to a "lower" tier law school). See also, Howard Law School under Charles Hamilton Houston - it was an excellent law school and demanded the very best of its students. I think Thurgood Marshall did far better having gone to Howard than he would have done if he'd gone to Harvard. (And I acknowledge that Houston went to Harvard, but not as an affirmative action baby.) Read James Rawn's Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation. (2010).
The reason that the US Women's soccer team played 14 year old boys was to be challenged and beaten but not blown out so that they could improve their skills by playing them.
They didn't pick men's college teams. They'd learn nothing except that they never get the ball.
I read some excerpts of the arguments and will listen to them when they become available at Oyez.org.
I thought I read some back and forth with Justice Thomas talking about his experience and lack of experience with AA that sort of addressed this. Not directly, though.
I can't remember exactly what he said, though.
The mismatch issue is a serious one. As is the cultural belief that blacks and women generally got to their positions via AA rather than merits.
There are plenty of highly visible examples of this including on the Supreme Court itself. Starting with Thomas, Jackson, Sotomayor, and others past and present.
Not to say that any/all of them are not competent. Thomas clearly is more than competent. But they were all picked because of their color/ethnicity/sex.
Harris was specifically chosen because she ticked 2 AA boxes: Black (sort of) and woman.
Was Professor Althouse originally hired because UW needed more female law professors or because she was good? Was she hired instead of a more qualified man?
I can't answer the last but 15 or so years of reading here leads me to believe that she was probably a very competent professor. But was that why she was originally hired? And how could she ever know that for sure. No matter what assurances they gave her.
My daughter has been very successful in her career. I knew she would be when after her first day on the job she drew a process diagram of the plant on a scratch pad (I have it framed). But how can she ever know that her success is because of competence and hard work and not just because she is a woman.
This tilting the playing field with AA REALLY, REALLY, pisses me off.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Head Start, 1965, has yielded what, exactly?
Right!
There is no sunset.
I believe that Justice Thomas discussed the mismatch problem in his book "My Grandfather's Son" specifically regarding his time at Yale.
It's been a long time since I read the book so don't remember details now.
Maybe someone else does? (Or maybe I am misremembering completely)
I do remember it as an excellent book overall.
John stop fascism vote repubblican Henry
If Affirmative Action is needed to ameliorate past racial discrimination, won't there be a need for Affirmative Action for White and Asian men to ameliorate the racial discrimination they are facing today?
Howard said...Racial and economic inequality starts essentially at conception and is probably set in stone by the age of six due to the way they human brain and central nervous system develops rapidly because high neuroplasticity.
I'm sure you've heard of the Malcolm Gladwell piece about how the NHL has far more players who were born January-March than October-December. It happens because, in the pee wee leagues, children are grouped by birth year. On average, the children born at the beginning of the year are better players than children born at the need simply because they are older. That's it, no other reason but accident of birth month. And because they are better players (because they are older), they get more attention from coaches and more playing time. That greater attention and exposure makes them better players for the rest of their careers regardless of their raw god-given talent and own personal hard work.
This same dynamic plays out academically. Children from well educated families, families that talk to and read to their children, will, by the time they start first grade, have heard about a million more words than children who grow up in an academically impoverished environment. They enter school already having a strong advantage in vocabulary and communication skills that will get them noticed by teachers so that the advantage of educated, motivated parents becomes an advantage throughout the system.
Try to find the remedial class schedules for the school district in the large urban areas. Tells a tale right there. A coworker described her soon to be retiring school teacher mother
lamenting that there was no budget sor remedial. Everyone passes was the policy. Functional Illiteracy is no accident.
Blaming the standards has not lent itself to truly understanding the failures.
The mismatch doesn't matter to colleges and universities. They don't care if there is a negative effect.
Let a kid in that has a 50/50 chance to make it past sophomore year. Any bank will loan him/her the money since the debt never goes away.
Kid drops our flunks out after two years and goes home $50K to $75K in dept.
University got their money, Liz Warren get her $750K, bank collects it's interest, kid is screwed.
But of course the Universities think this is all about diversity and their benevolent altruism.
I don't buy the mismatch idea. Yes, in some cases, if an underqualified AA student enters a very demanding STEM program he could get left behind, but in most cases, just by showing up, that student eases through with a B or better GPA and a gaudy diploma on the wall that he would not have had otherwise.
On average, he'll continue to ease through life with a higher status and a better income and career because of his admission to a more highly rated school. And if that diploma is from an Ivy, he's golden, regardless of his knowledge, intelligence or performance.
That's reality as I have experienced it.
I was a manager at a large engineering company, where we had to hire URM at a certain rate or lose the ability to hire altogether. The hired URM would often ask “why was I hired?” to satisfy themselves it was due to their abilities and future positive impact on the products we built. Even in some large team mtgs this question would come up, so it weighed heavily on their psyches. No one wants to think or believe that they are a token hire. Well, except maybe Kamala.
Let's not just unquestionably accept the very flawed premise that the "elite schools" offer a better and higher quality education and thus are more difficult for that reason.
How many times must it be pointed out that the dumbest people in the room are usually the "smart" grads from Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, etc.?
"Note that neither of them offer a better alternative. In fact they don't try to explain the problem at all. They are reticent because there isn't a pleasant way to convey Scalia's meaning. Their criticism is cowardly. If you don't have the guts and integrity to accurately describe a problem, then at least have the decency to say nothing."
We're not cowardly. You're just being an idiot. We are blogging, not writing long exposition. The "mismatch" theory is well-known, and my old posts discuss it and link to it. So it's not just forthright, it's preferable to use the standard term to refer to it. It's like the way we can say "Grutter" without writing a discourse on the case.
You're a troll, I suspect. Maybe apologize or you can expect to be deleted in the future.
"Was Professor Althouse originally hired because UW needed more female law professors or because she was good? Was she hired instead of a more qualified man?"
It's funny. I used to look around at the roomful of men who were hired mostly before any women were hired, and I would think that half of them didn't deserve to be there, because if the whole population had had a chance to compete — a level playing field the whole time — the hiring would have been 50/50 and instead it was 100/0. So I would speculate about which half would not be there. I used to look at the staff, which was close to 100% women, and think which of these would have been the law professors, and which law professors should be doing the supportive office work?
Ha! I wanted to get into mismatch when I left this comment on the oral argument thread:
I was recruited by a couple of Ivy schools because of my minority status and good PSAT score. I never even looked into it because I didn't think I could afford it. I had no idea about financial aid for working class kids. Now I'm glad I didn't pursue. I would not have been able to do the work.
My parents were Mexican immigrants. I had certain knowledge gaps that people who grew up in upper middle class families didn't have. I recognized this when I was moved to a gifted/talented program in 5th grade. I read a lot to fill in the gaps, but I know if I had gone Ivy, it would have been exponentially worse. That's one reason why "Hillbilly Elegy" or "The Blind Side" resonated with me. I see how it would have been.
I went to a good school, but the culture was something I could relate to and that made the academic challenges easier to conquer. My kids do not have the same knowledge gaps I had. They could go Ivy if they wanted to and they would do well.
This isn't a new concept - it's long been a criticism of SAT test - Bread is to plate as cup is to A table B fork C saucer. I grew up in a house where the cup went on the table.
Absolute bullshit. You are using a tired old example that is over 50 years old.
ETS has Ph.D. statisticians and test constructors regularly examine all their questions for potential bias. They bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of bias, but the results have not changed.
It could very well be that people who grow up poor do poorly on academic achievement tests because reading and verbal discussion is not emphasized in their households as it is with other communities.
They are reticent because there isn't a pleasant way to convey Scalia's meaning.
As a former President put it, "The soft bigotry of low expectations"
He was derided at the time as well.
I have a great example of how mismatch works practically. I dated a guy at my non-ivy who had Ivy level SAT and grades, even for a white male. He was raised upper middle class and had taken Latin in highschool. Me? I didn't even know the ILLIAD existed until a Simpsons episode in 2002. Who would have done better at an Ivy? Pretty obvious.
I have another high school friend who got into a very swank private school in California. Didn't come to the US until he was 7. Smart kid. He ended up taking some time off because the environment got to him. The rich CA kids already knew how to balance their partying with academics. He didn't. He didn't drop out though; he went back, buckled down, graduated and is now very successful. Probably wouldn't have had a breakdown if he'd gone to the State University.
"No one likes to admit that, rather than helping, their actions may in fact be harmful."
The hallmark of liberalism is the refusal to admit, first, that some problems have no satisfactory solution, and second, that their proposed (and enacted) solutions don't work.
I am shocked and disappointed that my Black students (I teach high school juniors and seniors) usually have no idea that Affirmative Action even exists, and when I explain it to them they don't believe me. This fact alone goes along with explaining the problem.
My youngest son graduated 2nd in his HS class. He was accepted at both a top ranked and a second or third tier school and ROTC. I encouraged him to attend the lower ranked school. He graduated 2nd from a HS graduating class of 98 in ruralville. He was smart, but didn't have the education level to succeed at the top ranked school. I knew that- I was sadly familiar with the experience myself. He graduated summa cum laude and was the distinguished military graduate at the school he attended. Likely would have dropped out of the better school.
We would need to totally redo teh US educational system to challenge the truly gifted. Starting with elementary school testing. Each year starting in first grade, test the students. Seperate out the top 10% and put them in advanced classes. Would likely need to establish boarding schools to do it. Each year, se;erate them further, so by the time HS years come around, the top students are doing college level work. Calculus in the 7th ot 8th grade for those who met the challenge, not senior year of HS. The top tier schools will develop scientists and engineers. Politicians and business leaders will come from the second tier schools. Generalized and specialized knowledge are two entirely different things.
Yes, tim. Gladwell has a number of interesting ideas based on deterministic factors. Revisionist History is a decent podcast.
I still remember a college class with a leftist professor (what are the odds?) in which during a discussion of affirmative action I raised the related point of a possible stigma against non-white students, who might be seen as likely to be less academically qualified. The professor thought it was such a bizarre idea that it wasn't even worthy of discussion. I dropped the class (and changed majors, as the class was required for the major). And this was more than 40 years ago.
Birches said...
Smart kid. He ended up taking some time off because the environment got to him. The rich CA kids already knew how to balance their partying with academics. He didn't. He didn't drop out though; he went back, buckled down, graduated and is now very successful. Probably wouldn't have had a breakdown if he'd gone to the State University.
Or worse, he would have been able to manage the partying with less academic stress and completed college while continuing the partying.
If schools have such a strong desire to be racially diverse (no desire to be ideologically diverse) they can solve the problem very simply: create adequate numbers of qualified students! Test kids in underpriveledged communities, open free K-12 academies for the smarter ones, and bust their butts for 12 years. You will get enough high SAT scores and academic achievement to compete with everyone else on a level playing field and not have to give them a handicap score. They won't be mismatched and can make it or fail on their own.
Affirmative Action is a simplistic solution to a complicated problem. The reason fewer students "of color" were graduating from college had many reasons. Most of those reasons applied to any person suffering from them. They are many: home environment not conducive to learning, peer pressure away from academic performance, environment at school being inadequate for learning, etc. Any one of which will cause the child exposed to it to be more challenged than children who are not.
Of course, solving those sort of problems are difficult, maybe even impossible, to eliminate. Not every parent is a good role model, eliminating crime seems to be very difficult, poverty can befall any family due to circumstances - and once in those circumstances can be very difficult to get out of. A good education, one that teaches a person self discipline, to think critically, and the capability to calculate enough to budget household expenditures will go a long ways towards getting out of poverty.
Affirmative Action doesn't actually address the core problems and until it does, the disparity in apparent capabilities in the disadvantaged (of any skin color) will persist. The only thing AA does is allow those in power to say that they "did something" about the issue. Which they did, but in a completely ineffective way.
Sounds like affirmative action is just like just about every other left-wing policy - it hurts the intended beneficiaries more than it helps. Of course, AA isn't about helping minorities, it's about allowing upper crust guilty white leftists to feel good about themselves for being "allies".
The issue in the SFFA cases, however, is not whether the racial discrimination at these universities is a good idea or not. Mismatch is relevant to that discussion, not so much to the discussion of whether it Harvard's or UNC's racial discrimination is legal under the Civil Rights Act or 14th Amendment, which common sense would tell you they're not, but common sense isn't that common, even among judges.
Sounds like affirmative action is just like just about every other left-wing policy - it hurts the intended beneficiaries more than it helps. Of course, AA isn't about helping minorities, it's about allowing upper crust guilty white leftists to feel good about themselves for being "allies".
The issue in the SFFA cases, however, is not whether the racial discrimination at these universities is a good idea or not. Mismatch is relevant to that discussion, not so much to the discussion of whether it Harvard's or UNC's racial discrimination is legal under the Civil Rights Act or 14th Amendment, which common sense would tell you they're not, but common sense isn't that common, even among judges.
Wince said...
How would you describe the difference between the pace at STEM programs at colleges whose enrollments are 90% AP and 10% AP, respectively?
The 90% AP STEM program will have better graduation rates and grades.
You will get more inventions and innovation out of the 10% AP program though.
Let's not just unquestionably accept the very flawed premise that the "elite schools" offer a better and higher quality education and thus are more difficult for that reason.
True. There are studies of life outcomes comparing Ivy-educated kids with kids who got accepted by an Ivy but chose to go elsewhere for one reason or another (usually money), and the life outcomes pretty much align. By the time college rolls around, it is much more the qualities of the student - diligence, intellectual curiosity, desire to work hard and learn and succeed - than the qualities of the school that determine outcomes.
Ann Althouse said...
"Was Professor Althouse originally hired because UW needed more female law professors or because she was good? Was she hired instead of a more qualified man?"
It's funny. I used to look around at the roomful of men who were hired mostly before any women were hired, and I would think that half of them didn't deserve to be there, because if the whole population had had a chance to compete — a level playing field the whole time — the hiring would have been 50/50 and instead it was 100/0. So I would speculate about which half would not be there. I used to look at the staff, which was close to 100% women, and think which of these would have been the law professors, and which law professors should be doing the supportive office work?
This is a good retort to a troll post.
A better retort would not look down upon the staff though imo.
50% of people are below average and we are all below average in various aspects.
Also women are going to tend toward jobs/professions that are less physically and temporally demanding.
If you teach a man how to make 1000$ an hour, he will think "I can make 24000$ a day."
If you teach a woman how to make 1000$ an hour she will think "I only have to work 1 hour a day."
Neither perspective is better or worse and there are distributions in both men and women that overlap. Men and women are just different and there is nothing wrong with that.
It would take massively invasive and authoritarian interventions to upset this.
I don't know about law schools, but many graduate departments realize that they will produce a few stars who will get jobs in the field. The rest of the enrollees are there to fill out the class enrollments without much hope of getting tenured positions or even finishing the program. That's without even taking affirmative action into account.
I also recall how many students who had always gotten A's at top schools fled the STEM fields when they got their first B's. Elite schools don't like students to fail or drop out. It looks bad in the statistics, but there are definitely mismatches, students who would have done better at a non-elite or public university. If you really want a STEM major and career and aren't brilliant and driven and extremely focused, the elite colleges aren't necessarily your best bet.
"This idea is forbidden."
Because it is a show stopper. Stating the obvious flaw in a lefties silly mind fart is beyond insolent.
"I'm sure you've heard of the Malcolm Gladwell piece about how the NHL has far more players who were born January-March than October-December. It happens because, in the pee wee leagues, children are grouped by birth year."
I lived this, except in little league. My birthday was one day before the cutoff date, where you either played as the age you would turn that year or your age when the year started. I was essentially playing against kids that were up to a year older than me even though we were registered as the same age. In the 8 to 12 year old range, a difference of a year is yuuuge. Coupled with the fact that I wasn't exactly the biggest kid in the league, I already had two strikes against me before I even stepped on the field.
Achilles,
I did not mean my comment about Prof Althouse as a troll post, as you called it. It was a serious question about a serious and real problem that all women (and blacks) face in the workplace.
Were they hired because of who they are or because of what they can contribute? I have a personal stake because of my daughter and her career. I hope, and believe, that she has been successful because of competence. I am sure she does too. But how will either of us ever know for sure? Or anyone else?
As a man, I am glad it is not something I have to worry about. Especially as a many working in a gig job without a net. I know that I succeed or fail because of competence (including personality and a bunch of other factors) not because of sex, race or anything else.
I hope I made it clear in my original comment that I think our hostess was probably a fine professor based on reading her all these years. I certainly did not mean to slight her in any way.
John stop fascism vote republican Henry
Gospace said:
"My youngest son graduated 2nd in his HS class. He was accepted at both a top ranked and a second or third tier school and ROTC. I encouraged him to attend the lower ranked school. He graduated 2nd from a HS graduating class of 98 in ruralville. He was smart, but didn't have the education level to succeed at the top ranked school. I knew that- I was sadly familiar with the experience myself. He graduated summa cum laude and was the distinguished military graduate at the school he attended. Likely would have dropped out of the better school.
We would need to totally redo teh US educational system to challenge the truly gifted. Starting with elementary school testing. Each year starting in first grade, test the students. Seperate out the top 10% and put them in advanced classes. Would likely need to establish boarding schools to do it. Each year, se;erate them further, so by the time HS years come around, the top students are doing college level work. Calculus in the 7th ot 8th grade for those who met the challenge, not senior year of HS. The top tier schools will develop scientists and engineers. Politicians and business leaders will come from the second tier schools. Generalized and specialized knowledge are two entirely different things."
Here's a news flash for you: Much of the problems we're having as a society stem from precisely such infantile notions of "test-based merit" trumping everything else.
"Doing well on the tests" is not what evidence would show to be a good discriminator for such things. That's precisely how we've gotten the essentially autistic bunch of idjits we have running much of the world around us into the ground, these days.
School is a simulation, a training scenario. As with all such things, the quality of the experience that produces the end product is dependent upon one thing, and one thing only: Fidelity with the reality of that which is simulated. If your training regime doesn't match what those subject to it will encounter out in the "real world" you're seeking to replicate, then the experience is utterly without value outside of the simulation space.
Which is why so many of the products of our vaunted education system are actually useless at their jobs. The fidelity with reality has been lost; mostly because of the endless feedback loop of autistic savants feeding back into the pipelines of academia. These people aren't assessed or ever held accountable.
(cont)
Case in point: Whole language reading instruction. Did any of the bright lights that came up with this brilliant theory actually have extensive time teaching kids to read? Were any of them deeply experienced primary teachers who'd actually done that, successfully, for decades? Little old ladies, who were the backbones of the primary teaching profession, with decades of experience?
Nope. All of them were pretty much overly-credentialed dolts with theories and no experience, who deliberately and with malice aforethought ignored the protestations of the actual voices of experience who'd successfully managed to teach reading to primary-age students for decades.
That's where this process of "test, identify, segregate, and elevate..." winds up taking you. Because, that's precisely how we got into trouble, here.
I would submit that it would be a better approach to start ignoring the tests, and raising standards of education across the board. Not test-taking; education.
Affirmative Action should have been a regime of examining why minorities weren't getting those "good jobs" like firefighter, and then fixing the underlying problems. Not passing the testing regime (physical and mental) to be a firefighter? Well, let's look at why: Is it academic preparation? Failure to self-improve on the job? Physical deficiencies like not knowing how to swim?
Once those problems were identified, then they should have worked to eliminate them, offering opportunities for self-improvement. No takers? No jobs. No passing of the high standards for firefighter? No jobs.
If there was real bias, then it should have been removed. The last thing that should have been done was to lower standards or promote based on skin color; all that did was serve to discredit anyone and everyone who made the grade on actual, y'know... Merit.
Each year starting in first grade, test the students. Seperate out the top 10% and put them in advanced classes.
The demographics this would produce would be unacceptable, which is why tracking is verbotten.
Althouse: We're not cowardly. You're just being an idiot. We are blogging, not writing long exposition. The "mismatch" theory is well-known, and my old posts discuss it and link to it. So it's not just forthright, it's preferable to use the standard term to refer to it. It's like the way we can say "Grutter" without writing a discourse on the case.
You miss the point completely. The issue isn't that you use the label "mismatch theory." It's that you complain about Scalia's *explanation* for the mismatch (some students can't process material quickly enough to keep up with classmates in elite programs) without bothering to offer a better explanation. He took a risk by spelling out the cause of the problem, which you don't do.
The closest you come is to quote Richard Sander back in 2012, but his description is the same as Scalia's (the pace of instruction at elite schools is too fast for some AA students who would flourish at lower-ranked schools).
Scalia deserves credit for attempting to describe reality. Yes, I think it's cowardly to restrict yourself to anodyne shorthand like "mismatch theory" if you then attack someone for explaining what it means.
(Btw, I may be an asshole from your perspective, but I'm not a troll. And you don't have to threaten to delete my comments. You can just ask me to stop commenting, and I'll honor that.)
John Henry said:
" a serious and real problem that all women (and blacks) face in the workplace. Were they hired because of who they are or because of what they can contribute?"
I was hired to fill a quota back in the Eighties. The field was electronics which I had been diverted from because "women don't do that." When quotas came in, I got a second chance. Thing is, I always knew why I was hired and I simply thought I had to work hard to get up to speed and to keep my head down till I was good at the job. This happened and in the end at my company I was the first woman field engineer. Did I earn that promotion? I worked 7 days a week for 28 months in computers when they were new. Yes, I earned it and yes, there were doubts around me, due mainly to jealousy. You have to produce and you can hold your own if you do. Nothing is easy.
I was hired for my first Asst. Professor job out of grad school in 1977 because I was female. The department head told me so and he wasn't happy about it. At the time, I was one of very few women Asst. Professors at the college and was constantly marginalized. I knew I was qualified and proved myself so that my subsequent hires were based on competence.
Affirmative Action is based on the same concept as that of a cargo cult. AA recipients are similar to those South Pacific islanders waiting for their planes to come in and sweep them away to brilliance, erudition, and wealth.
Nope. All of them were pretty much overly-credentialed dolts with theories and no experience, who deliberately and with malice aforethought ignored the protestations of the actual voices of experience who'd successfully managed to teach reading to primary-age students for decades.
What's worse is that the consultants they hire to teach us these new wonder methods provide us with data that prove that the traditional ways (phonics, direct instruction, drill and kill) work best.
As Tim Maguire said up near the top, it's the Goldilocks Principle. Appropriately matching students with universities allows students whose high school curriculum was poor, or who were lazy in high school, to start at a lower level but to accelerate if they show promise, closing much of the gap with their initially better prepared or harder-working peers. And as for the rest, remember what George W. Bush once said: "To those of you who are graduating this afternoon with high honors, awards and distinctions, I say, 'Well done.' And as I like to tell the C students: You too, can be president."
Richard Sander had a similar interpretation to Heriot's
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