“Some law deans are already exploring ways to sidestep any restrictive ruling by reducing their emphasis on test scores and grades — criteria used in our rankings,” Eric J. Gertler, the executive chairman and chief executive of U.S. News, wrote in an opinion essay on Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal....
It's a little hard to figure out the causality. If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?
Here's the WSJ op-ed. It's quite short. Here's the part that is relevant to the Supreme Court case (with the quote used in the NYT boldfaced):
[E]lite schools object to our use of a common data set for all schools because our rankings are something they can't control and they don't want to be held accountable by an independent third party. There is added urgency as the Supreme Court considers a pair of cases on affirmative action that could change admission norms. Some law deans are already exploring ways to sidestep any restrictive ruling by reducing their emphasis on test scores and grades -- criteria used in our rankings. By refusing to participate, elite schools are opting out of an important discussion about what constitutes the best education for students, while implying that excellence and important goals like diversity are mutually exclusive.
Notice how he slid from the topic of "admission norms" — who will be the students — to delivering "the best education for students" — how to serve the students.
Gertler's piece is quite crudely written — easy to read but impossible to understand!
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89 comments:
makes sense to me.
Currently, Law schools pick the best and brightest (as well as the AA picks, that are NOT bright)
with The New Plan; standards and testings are OUT THE DOOR, and schools will be able to pick on
New, Improved Reasons.. Like: Because They WANT TO
No one will be able to say: "I had good grades! WHY Wasn't I admitted?"
because good grades are NO LONGER relevant.
The Creighton Law Dean withdrew from the US News rankings. In his email, he played the Jesuit card. That really pissed me off because my alma mater is now in the third tier. The smart thing to do was to stay in because the ranking would go up.
The Law School is wasting $100k plus on a DEI Dean. If the Medical School did the same, then Creighton would be in big trouble.
This opinionator puts a lot of words into the mouths of the law school deans. The words get all mushed together into a noisome and indigestible political porridge.
Switching metaphors, such rhetoric is battlespace prep. Can’t wait to see what happens when the Supremes hand down an actual decision!
With no objectivity, one only has subjectivity. And affirmative action racism continues.
Using objective criteria for entrance into law school (LSAT) or into the profession (bar exam) can point out just how un-special "elite" colleges are. They can now form a true club barring all non-members. Even more than already exists.
I would guess the causality argument goes; if I am allowed to admit by race, I can require test scores, because I just pick a certain number of students of different races no matter what they get on the test. If they ban selection by race, I won’t use test scores because that lets me claim that everyone of any race is equally admissible because test scores are not a visible factor.
Personally, I don’t care who they admit, because I am not applying anywhere.
It seems pretty obvious to me. Schools will willfully violate the prohibition on racial discrimination by accepting black applicants who would never have been accepted if they were white or east Asian. This will be obvious if everyone can look at the schools LSAT scores by race. But if that information doesn't exist, it becomes easier to plead, "we don't discriminate; we just look at the whole person."
It's a little hard to figure out the causality. If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?
It's not hard at all. They want more BIPOCs at their schools. They can either use race as a basis for admission, or if that is not allowed, they can change the admission standards to get the same result.
If you don’t build it, they will come.
It's like throwing the gun in the river after shooting someone.
Without the gun, they can't pin it on you.
Without third party scores, they can admit anyone they want regardless of those pesky court decisions.
It's a little hard to figure out the causality. If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?
Are you being serious?
The causality is that the people running universities are racists. They are also sexists and marxists.
And it is middle aged women that are supporting this racist sexist crap and telling everyone else not to get so worked up about it.
This is just a part of the greater corporate HR movement where mediocre people get jobs in univeristy, bureaucracy, and human resources because they want to tell people better than them what to do.
The goal here is to kill meritocracy.
Progressives and Marxists hate competition because they suck so they use racism and sexism to make up for their failures.
"If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?"
C'mon man, you know the answer to this question!
What is being set up is black box law school admissions.
"We don't take anything that you can understand into account, and certainly not crude things like standardized tests. We have goals that embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion, and we have talent scouts out in the field. Our ideal admit is a student who is diverse, equitable, and inclusive."
Got it? The elite law schools will admit anyone they choose (probably with some off-system dark sites administering IQ tests), cronyism will be a big factor, bribery will creep in, and Asians will still be less than 5% of the class.
The reason they opt out is so there is no objective proof they will be discriminating. No test scores and the asians have no proof…
I would guess schools are going to try to say they favor poor and disadvantaged people, regardless of race. Things like test scores have to be discounted, and this kind of diversity will be better for the students as a whole because of the old Grutter reasoning, if I have that name right. The woke think the rich are disproportionately non-black for reasons that are unfair, and the expectation is that the poor are disproportionately black, perhaps indigenous.
In addition to the erasure of merit standards for admission, add this from a commenter over at Instapundit:
[T]he POINT of these subsidies is to make education unaffordable without them.
Why? Because subsidies come from politicians. And once a person can’t afford college or a home on their own, then the politicians get to decide who does, with subsidies. Then middle-class hallmarks like home ownership and higher education can be doled out – or denied – based on a person’s race, gender, or political persuasion.
As a parent of teens approaching college, it has become abundantly clear to me that students must signal the appropriate political virtues to college admission committees, not only to gain admission but to receive the subsidies necessary to afford admission.
And I can’t help but to think that is by design.
A slippery bunch, aren't they? Do they really believe that overall scores and rankings will decline once their artificial schemes to advance poorer scores over better ones are sent packing? A real case of Duh!-versity? Or is there another shoe to drop in this denouement?
Gertler's piece is quite crudely written — easy to read but impossible to understand!
Well we can’t help you because it’s behind a paywall. I’m sure he’s on to something, though, or your hair wouldn’t be on fire.
Has DEI taken on Bar Exams yet? Seems like low hanging fruit for them. Perhaps I just missed it.
The result of all this is people are going to become race-selective in hiring a lawyer … and in just about every other area of life. It shocks me that after all we’ve been through in the US, after the Civil Rights era, after MLK and his famous dream, we are reverting to segregation.
Oh, just wait til they get the crap students coming up. They're already infecting grad schools. Can't write, can or won't read, won't meet deadlines. College Algebra freshmen who don't know addition from multiplication. And every freaking lame excuse and accommodation demand they want.
Gonna be an interesting time.
But if that information doesn't exist, it becomes easier to plead, "we don't discriminate; we just look at the whole person."
The roll of law colleges is turning out lawyers. Lawyers have to be hired. What standard is the employer going to use deciding on new hires?
Grades? Are those also going to be pass fail? If you passed a Constitutional law class, vs a person from a different college with a 94% in con-law.
Who's going to get the offers as assoc law prof?
Somehow someway, an objective standard will evolve.
Seems to me the central hypothesis of the op-ed is spot on.
Getting rid of objective criteria for admission enables the law school administrators to select anyone they like based on whatever secret criteria they embrace at the moment, with particular emphasis on how much more money they can bring in. So I'd expect lots of well-connected BIPOC admissions for virtue-signaling purposes, and even more admissions from affluent families. Those non-BIPOC families will, of course, find ways to contribute lots of cash to the law school before, during, and after the admissions process.
As an added bonus the elite administrators will no longer have to deal with those grubby, hard working, smart middle class white and Asian kids who dominate the highest echelons of GPA and LSAT scores, but don't bring any significant cash to the table.
Let's face it: Those people are simply not our kind, dear. Meritocracy is our enemy. (Snark)
"ways to sidestep any restrictive ruling by reducing their emphasis on test scores and grades"
Thanks to all commentators upthread for their appropriate cynicism. Of course, "No one will be able to say: "I had good grades! WHY Wasn't I admitted?" because good grades are NO LONGER relevant" and "With no objectivity, one only has subjectivity. And affirmative action racism continues." and "If they ban selection by race, I won’t use test scores because that lets me claim that everyone of any race is equally admissible because test scores are not a visible factor." and "it becomes easier to plead, "we don't discriminate; we just look at the whole person." and "The reason they opt out is so there is no objective proof they will be discriminating. No test scores and the asians have no proof."
But let's also note the obvious: that "sidestepping" a "restrictive" ruling that says higher ed [and especially public institutions, under the Constitution] can't favor some groups over others will also mean violating actual anti-discrimination law. All the shenanigans are battle-space prep for prog law-breaking.
The law schools are so firmly committed to what they consider 'social justice' that they have taken the opposite tack of the last 20 years, leaving the much touted US News rankings to allow more freedom to operate. Similar to how Hillsdale College refuses Federal funds to allow for more freedom to operate- from the other side.
Not to get sidetracked, but I think this article ties in nicely with your post yesterday about Jews disappearing from law schools. They have simply been cast now as random White people, and even if they do excel in education, that is no longer the standard. As for the top law schools, there is and will continue to be a clear capping of unapproved White people entering as new students. The only way to keep that up is to remove any possible light shone on the law school's activities. US News rankings would be such a light on some of what they do.
If it's so obvious what you think the schools will do, after it's illegal to take race into account, please just say it clearly. Spare me the oh, come on, you know damned well. Say it plainly so we can look at it and critique it.
Elite education is coming full circle. Who you know and how liked you are was the only standard 100 years ago. The Ivy League welcomes you to the 1920s where they do what they want.
“If it's so obvious what you think the schools will do, after it's illegal to take race into account, please just say it clearly.”
They’ll take race into account, of course. They’ll just be more careful about it, by eliminating objective evidence such as test scores. “Innocent until proven guilty.”
I don’t really care if law schools lower standards, though. Sure, the lawyers on your side may get dumber, but so will the lawyers on the opposite side, so it’s a wash. Medical schools are a different matter, since then the opponent is Mr. D., who doesn’t mess around with lawyers.
Everywhere it seems to be an attack on both competence and fair assessments of ability or performance. Commercial pilots and crews touted for their sexual perversions instead of their professionalism. Medical schools incorporating deference to duhversity and gendermania into classical diagnostics and health care.
What will happen in the legal profession, one wonders? Is it logical to assume that competency in the courtroom will ultimately prevail over education / hiring preferences based on things-other-than-competency? For example, if corporations start biasing their hiring practices to staff their legal departments with 90% duhversity-hires, will they start losing court cases? Will an industry appear of prosecutors and personal-injury lawyers that are hired for results, sharks finding easy pickings to be had in their opposition? Or will the corruption spread to the judicial side, with rulings that violate precedents left and right in order to impose duhversity on society at large?
If it's so obvious what you think the schools will do, after it's illegal to take race into account, please just say it clearly. Spare me the oh, come on, you know damned well. Say it plainly so we can look at it and critique it.
There is a bit of this but there are several comments that make it quite clear- they are eliminating the test score criteria that can/will later be used against once the Supremes rule and the schools continue to favor favored minority groups over students qualifying on merit. No merit based entry requirements = no discrimination...
Critique that...
Grutter was about the situation at the margin. Two applicants roughly comparable, the school could use race as the deciding factor. Or not roughly comparable, but still within some margin while one race was "under represented" and again, race is OK.
But the LSAT data for the Ivies changes the framing. The disparity in admissions criteria for different races is very clear, and it is shocking. Largely numbers of obviously well qualified candidates are being excluded to make room for candidates who, objectively, are far less qualified.
Put another way, if the Ivies had abandoned the LSAT decades ago, there would be no data upon which they could lose this case.
So, they hope better late than never.
"Say it plainly so we can look at it and critique it."
That is exactly what the law schools will refuse to do. Their admissions process will go dark, and they will announce that they have achieved diversity, equity, and inclusion in each entering class.
You were on the admissions committee at Wisconsin at one point. What would your committee have done without the helpful guidance provided by the US News ratings?
(I know you don't solve problems for your readers, but you do have insight into how your committee behaved in the past to achieve a good result.)
Affirmative action has been banned in California for decades. It will cause problems for schools elsewhere when Bakke is overturned, but from what I have read that has been irrelevant to the USNWR law school battle, which has been focused at the other end--high paying jobs for graduates. Elite law schools want more graduates going into low paying jobs. Seems like USNWR jumping on an irrelevancy to deflect from the public relations disaster threatening its cash cow before it spreads to other rankings. Med school next.
The third party rating can still look at graduation rates and bar passage, at least until the states stop requiring a bar exam for admittance.
Just imagine if the NFL or the NBA starting admitting players based mostly on vacuous non-physical metrics. Think about how ridiculous pretty much everyone would find this to be.
Althouse,
Let's try to define where you stand, then.
What would you say to a system where a school made it an explicit policy to have its student body reflect the US demographics- 58.2% white, 19% Hispanic, 11.6% black, 5.7% Asian? Is this constitutional? Is this ethical?
"It's a little hard to figure out the causality. If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?"
Is this a trick question?
Althouse,
OK, I'll try. If it becomes "illegal to take race into account," schools will try as best they can to erase any "hard" evidence suggesting that race is being taken into account. Test scores are an obvious place to erase. There are persuasive -- to some -- arguments for ditching them anyway.
Ideally (from the schools' point of view), all "hard" evidence will eventually disappear, and "holistic review" will be the only justification for admission or rejection. This makes the whole operation a black box; the adjudicators can just say that the holistic review produced whatever racial makeup the school happens to (coincidentally) prefer.
Ann @ 10:15: “… Say…plainly [what the law schools will do] so we can look at it and critique it.”
Schools will abolish objective criteria like LSAT and college GPA because those —inconveniently— enable critics to compare objectively (across institutions and over time) which demographics are being favored for political rather than meritocratic reasons.
All will be well until the schools’ graduates begin failing the bar exam like flies after a hard frost. The pressure will then grow to abolish or dilute the bar exam. Which after a suitable lag will lead to increased claims under malpractice insurance. That will lead to higher premiums and lessened respect for the profession: if that’s even possible.
If I were running a school myself, I would probably rely heavily on test scores to form my student body. My main rule as a law school head would be admit the X number of highest LSAT scorers from the Y number of applicants. I would design it to be as objective as possible. I wouldn't give a shit if that X number had 100% Asian-Americans, 100% Jewish-Americans, 100% white Americans, 100% Hispanic-Americans, or 100% black Americans, or any combination of percentages.
And you don't have to rely on a single test- you could consider a combination of tests- SAT, ACT, LSAT, GRE, or GRE subject tests, along with college grades
Where the schools are getting into trouble is that objective criteria exist today to help demonstrate racial discrimination- in the cases at hand, discrimination against Asian-Americans as it turns out. The movement to stop using tests like SAT and LSAT is certainly due to this problem, and due to this problem alone. To deny this is true pretty obtuse.
So... if they don't rely on test scores to identify those candidates most likely to complete the degree, what other criteri will they use?
One of the assumptions being made here is that the favored minorities are unable to come up with a proportionate number of students that get good test scores even though they would otherwise be successful graduates of the program. In my opinion, your background experiences and education factor into your ability to score well on tests - i.e., the tests aren't just testing basic knowledge but also how you think about things. So... if you are a bright and intelligent kid who is raised in a gangland environment, will you be as likely to get a good test score as a another bright and intelligent kid who is raised in a more "privileged" environment, shall we say?
If you desire to accept all of the bright and intelligent kids of whatever background, then you need some criteria capable of highlighting them for your selection committees.
But is that what these schoos are trying to do? Has anyone looked at the failure/dropout rates since they started choosing students based on other than LSAT scores?
All of this can be summarized very simply: “Objective reality is not fair!”
The efforts to render reality “fair” —I.e. politically more advantageous— will ultimately fail. But only every single time.
To me the saddest part of DIE is that it studiously and strenuously avoids requiring those in its grip to apprehend reality and learn to accept it —and where possible improve it.
DIE is a corrupting fairy tale.
"What would you say to a system where a school made it an explicit policy to have its student body reflect the US demographics- 58.2% white, 19% Hispanic, 11.6% black, 5.7% Asian? Is this constitutional? Is this ethical?"
That has been plainly unconstitutional since the Court first looked at the question in Bakke. That's a quota. No school will adopt a blatant quota.
How do we look at or critique extreme race privilege/discrimination in admissions if we cannot quantify it via test scores?
How extreme? Steve Sailer has written on the massive gap in index admissions (LSAT plus GPA) and also bar failure rates between black and white students. Based on data from Michigan Law School, for example, he shows that, with affirmative action, a white applicant with an index of 730 would have a 5% chance of getting admitted, while a black applicant with an index of 730 would have a 95% chance of getting admitted. And bar failure rates by race more or less conform with admission index rates.
Eliminating the LSAT will keep Steve Sailer and the rest of us from seeing or rationally critiquing such realities, let alone nudging positive solutions such as matching minority students to institutions at their skill level, where, statistically, they have more successful academic outcomes, which is wonderful. Moondawggie says it well: without the LSAT, it will be easier for the affluent and connected to use graft to gain admission for their less intellectually competent offspring (think famous bar failure John Kennedy) and easier for the schools to increase the number of black students they admit while skirting new anti-affirmative action rules.
And as administrators openly state that it is their mission to increase the number of black students admitted, I see no reason not to take them at their word. They are the ones who are the most obvious (frankly, obsessive) about saying so. Even the U.S. News rankings reward law schools up to a 5% higher ranking for higher percentages of diversity: they literally practice affirmative action in the rankings. There is much talk of eliminating the Bar Exam too. High-achieving, hard-working white and Asian middle and lower class students will, as usual, be the ones whose intellect and labor goes unrewarded.
Isn't is obvious?
The Marxists in charge want to make all the decisions rather than let things like intelligence, hard work and persistence factor in it.
In other words, "Whiteness" must be exterminated. That is as long as that objective meets the goals of the Marxist hucksters.
You can't do racial balancing. The only ground for taking race into account that met the strict scrutiny standard of the Supreme Court was an idea of the value of diversity in the student body, which was characterized as an educational benefit for all of the students. It can't be about trying to get the group to "look" like the general public, and it can't be compensating for discrimination out there in society or history. It has to be about the value of a diverse student body.
College education for some time has been all about teaching people the narrative or the optics are more important than the substance. Our institutions are now governed by people educating in the 70's through the 90's who believe this. I feel we're living on the capital of prior generations.
Personally I'm very attracted to the old City College system of open admissions and those who don't meet performance standards being kicked out. The first doesn't work unless you have standards and are willing to hurt the feelings of those who don't meet them.
I presume what schools will do is look at the applicant's entire life story, so that someone with disadvantages or various distinguishing factors will get in with a lower test score. That's already very close to what Grutter required anyway.
Not that Grutter was really being followed!
@Yancey Ward: If I were running a school myself, I would probably rely heavily on test scores to form my student body. My main rule as a law school head would be admit the X number of highest LSAT scorers from the Y number of applicants.
Elite law schools are on a rack of their own making.
Their test score requirements are high because they significantly correlate with graduation and passing the BAR. Moreover, by being widely acknowledged as having the most highly gifted students, their brands have cache as being the source of the best lawyers.
However, reaching down to provide entry to less objectively qualified students means that the high entry requirements are there only for the cache, and don't actually mean anything at all.
What really happens, is that the min criteria are there for a reason. The diabolical result is that the less qualified will fail disproportionately, where they would have succeeded at a less rarified institution.
But at least the Ivies can feel good about themselves.
Paulignon59 asks the right question: So... if you are a bright and intelligent kid who is raised in a gangland environment, will you be as likely to get a good test score as a another bright and intelligent kid who is raised in a more "privileged" environment, shall we say?
Almost certainly not. Those tests pretty good at discerning ability and preparation. By the time urban schools have finished not educating students*, it is far too late for colleges to make up the shortfall.
*Some stories over the last several weeks have noted that there are numerous urban schools were *no* students are grade-level proficient in reading and math.
Diversity under Grutter was based on superficial indicia and was therefore bound to devolve to “enough of X , Y, Z…demographic to optimally enrich the rest of the school community with the experience of being (somehow) close to X, Y, Z…demographic during the shared time at school.”
In other words: “We have enough of every taxon for our petting zoo.”
If our goal is to change the demographics of graduate schools, including law and medical, the solution should not be to dilute the talent level in those schools. It should be to build up a better foundational education system, K-12, so that kids in 5th grade can read like kids in 10th grade instead of not being able to read at all. Same for the other basics, math, science, history, etc.
We fail so miserably at K-12 that we're a worldwide embarrassment. Yet we clamor to even out the law schools and med schools?
>>Ann Althouse said...
It has to be about the value of a diverse student body.<<
Ah, but of course, the farcical "diversity is our strength" shibboleth of the Left.
“It can't be about trying to get the group to "look" like the general public...”
Can and will, as long as they can get away with it.
“I presume what schools will do is look at the applicant's entire life story, so that someone with disadvantages or various distinguishing factors will get in with a lower test score.”
I think I can guess what one of those “distinguishing factors” will be.
Switching metaphors, such rhetoric is battlespace prep. Can’t wait to see what happens when the Supremes hand down an actual decision!
========
any bets on leaks and dribbles and fribbles?
I am familiar enough with the admissions process at Harvard College to know that the admissions committee will continue to do its best to meet the needs of the college while end-running anything that SCOTUS has to say. That said, I think it is critically important for the court to go on record that the color of your skin should have no impact on the admissions process at any level. Though its impact- in reality-may be small, as a statement of principle it would be huge.
I am confused >>>
It is obvious that schools have to choose from applicant pool
is it not also an applicant is choosing from multiple offers?
so what standard for applicant to decide?
Right, but doesn't all of that basically show how ridiculous Bakke and Grutter were?
Now, explain why the justices thought a "blatant" quota was wrong, but soft quotas weren't. This is where I think the judges really fucked it up altogether. Either a quota is wrong, or it isn't. The standard argument, that the diverse student body was a benefit to all the other ethnicities was ridiculous on its face- it is only beneficial, if it is at all, to those that got in, not to those that were denied entry because of the soft quota- to them it was clearly not a benefit at all. In other words, it was always a fallacious argument made to defend quotas full stop.
It seems to me that if we are going to go down this road at all of trying to tell schools who they can and cannot admit, on either side of the issue, the only system that really meets the standard is a blind lottery of the sort- "you meet this certain very low level of ability, we put your name in a hat, if you send it in, and we draw out names until we have filled the open positions". What other system wouldn't get attacked more, and intensely, for disparate impact and/or claims of bias?
"If it's so obvious what you think the schools will do, after it's illegal to take race into account, please just say it clearly. Spare me the oh, come on, you know damned well. Say it plainly so we can look at it and critique it."
I thought I did upthread at 3/4/23, 8:34 AM:
"It seems pretty obvious to me. Schools will willfully violate the prohibition on racial discrimination by accepting black applicants who would never have been accepted if they were white or east Asian."
I say they will because if they don't, their racial makeup statistics will look awful, they believe that discriminating is, alas, the only way to get social justice and social justice is about the most important thing there is, and because Grutter encouraged them to do it (and they've been doing it before and since). As you explained when Roe was overturned, people hate it when a right is taken away. They are not going to easily give up their ability to discriminate.
I think many people in the law school world sincerely believe, "Racial discrimination is terrible if done by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, but good and necessary if done by the right people for the right reasons."
If law schools can't directly take race into account, why would they make an adjustment that puts less emphasis on test scores and grades?
So they can cheat!
Duh.
Althouse, you just don't have a criminal mind. You respect the law, so you're missing it.
Racists who think race is all-important want to destroy objective criteria so they can continue to be racists.
"We got too many Asians in our math department. How do we keep their numbers down?"
"Destroy math."
"That'll do it!"
Yancey Ward @ 2:15: "...What other system wouldn't get attacked more, and intensely, for disparate impact and/or claims of bias?"
I have no idea, but I can guarantee that you get the system you reward. My own bias is toward a fully-reciprocal system: that is, apply to me the same criteria you will use with anyone else. No biases. Just ask, "Who can bet do the work here?"
Why is this so very hard?
Owen @ 3:25: "...Who can BEST do the work here?"
Profuse apologies.
"Now, explain why the justices thought a 'blatant' quota was wrong, but soft quotas weren't."
The justices didn't want to break too much glass. Having put the whole color-blind project at risk by buying into affirmative action, they wanted to e-e-e-a-a-s-e their way out of racial preferences twenty-five years from then.
They wanted to buy the world a Coke futures contract...
"I presume what schools will do is look at the applicant's entire life story, so that someone with disadvantages or various distinguishing factors will get in with a lower test score."
So it will be like Miss America or Oprah--the kids with the best sob stories will have a leg up on the competition. That's one way to do it.
The top schools will find a way to goldplate their classes. These affirmative action hires are the filler.
Tina Trent, you reference Steve Sailer to justify the assertion, "Based on data from Michigan Law School, for example, he shows that, with affirmative action, a white applicant with an index of 730 would have a 5% chance of getting admitted, while a black applicant with an index of 730 would have a 95% chance of getting admitted. And bar failure rates by race more or less conform with admission index rates."
If anyone wants to check, his post is at
https://www.unz.com/isteve/why-is-the-white-black-gap-so-huge-in-law-schools/
"You can't do racial balancing. The only ground for taking race into account that met the strict scrutiny standard of the Supreme Court was an idea of the value of diversity in the student body, which was characterized as an educational benefit for all of the students. It can't be about trying to get the group to "look" like the general public, and it can't be compensating for discrimination out there in society or history. It has to be about the value of a diverse student body."
Yes, and Plessy v. Ferguson was very clear that separate had to be equal. And yet it never was.
Ann's viewpoint here is, I have to say, a mystery to me. First, on diversity. The Court adopted the diversity standard because it was already so impossible to pretend any longer that affirmative action was needed to correct for actual discrimination (which should have meant that affirmative action should no longer exist at all). The concept of "diversity" the Court resorted to, however, was itself in practice exclusively limited to race and was itself still therefore a form of racial discrimination. It has absolutely nothing to do with the any actual form of diversity that could be relevant to schooling and education. A black student from a suburban home with a liberal perspective nurtured in such an environment provides not one iota of diversity worth a lick at Harvard. A white kid from a devoutly Christian home in Cleveland, Tennessee, would add intellectual and cultural diversity significantly to Harvard's otherwise bland leftie lifeworld (check out the Harvard Crimson if you doubt that).
As to the elimination of merit and testing in admissions standards, Ann asks why that would be the move the universities make once affirmative action is eliminated. She seems to assume colleges will go along with the elimination of affirmative action's diversity standard and then, of course, go back to relying solely on grades and test scores. What she seems to miss is the degree to which elite universities are fundamentally committed to the DEI concept of identity group equity, next to which merit measures have no merit at all. Why should they care about those after all. They've inflated grades to a point where it does not matter how good any student is. They get lots of government funding for the "diverse" array of bodies they assemble. The prestige of the credentials they issue relieves their graduates of any need to demonstrate superior competency. They have become diploma mills and ideology-touting playpens. And if they do rely on merit (as also in the case of all those special high schools like Thomas Jefferson in Virginia), the Asians especially will flood in. The schools and colleges will then be attacked (by the Biden Ed Department especially) for the racism of favoring America's "model minority" over and against all the truly "marginalized." So, no, they will not go back to merit alone. They will find newer and more opaque ways to do exactly what Ann says is illegal, discriminate on the basis of race.
I wrote: "That has been plainly unconstitutional since the Court first looked at the question in Bakke. That's a quota. No school will adopt a blatant quota."
I think some of you are misunderstanding what I said. I didn't say the Court said that non-blatant quotas were okay. Quota have always been out. Racial balancing — getting percentages — this has never been considered a "compelling interest" for strict scrutiny purposes.
The reason I said "No school will adopt a blatant quota" was because they seek to avoid litigation. If they are pursuing racial balancing, they are not going to do it conspicuously. They will either genuinely try to pursue "diversity," which is permitted, or they will pursue racial balancing subtly so that if, sued, they can arguing that it was for diversity.
I'm just explaining what's in the Supreme Court cases and making some obvious points about the practicalities of avoiding litigation. It's not my "viewpoint." I'm not taking a position on what I want the law to be.
I've served on law school admissions committees and I've taught the affirmative action cases many times. I'm just trying to be helpful explaining things here.
I would add that the key votes in the Supreme Court cases came from Justices who showed deference to the expertise of school professionals who were, supposedly, assembling a student body, taking into account an array of subtle variables and hoping to create a rewarding educational environment for everyone.
I suspect that the prevailing opinion on the Court now will be that these professionals have shown that they don't deserve this deference and that a flat ban on using race is the needed corrective.
Maybe this is it.
In the past, I trusted the education system to ensure competency. However, with AA it has reached the point I would be uncomfortable with a young, black lawyer or doctor. I can still assume the white students were the high performers, but not black students.
How does the school fight that? By installing a system whereby I can't have confidence in any student.
All the talk of "diversity." I still have no idea what that means.
Sorry to be so obtuse but C'mon. Is diversity a parameter that you can actually measure? How many dimensions of diversity can one identify and consider in a stable analytical frame: is there D1 (melanin content) and D2 (years of grinding poverty) and D3 (single motherhood family structure) and D4 (linguistic differences, within the larger Latin language grou0 and D5 (linguistic differences, with South Asian language groups) and D6 (physical deformities, not including myopia) and D7 (physical deformities, including migraine headaches and bad knees) and D8 (anxiety attacks when confronted with cats or dogs)...
and on and on?
Has anybody actually tried to lay all this out so we can compare apples to apples, and see how an intervention (like relaxed admissions standard) might make a difference?
This is law school version of Section 8 housing programs.
Intending to make the new residents into better people, it ruined the neighborhood instead.
If they are pursuing racial balancing, they are not going to do it conspicuously. They will either genuinely try to pursue "diversity," which is permitted, or they will pursue racial balancing subtly so that if, sued, they can arguing that it was for diversity.
Ann’s flowery language and archaic sensibilities about admissions committees don’t address the fact schools with academic standards have to reject too many white and asian applicants to achieve whatever racial ‘balance’ they’re trying to achieve. The pool of preferred woke applicants is too shallow so the delta on academic standards becomes too great.
Althouse,
It can't be about trying to get the group to "look" like the general public, and it can't be compensating for discrimination out there in society or history. It has to be about the value of a diverse student body.
Have you any comment on the "critical mass" concept? The idea, that is, that there need to be enough of any given minority group in a school to avoid the sense that they are racially isolated? I ask this because it has always struck me as odd that the "critical mass" for Black students seems to be 12%, while the "critical mass" for Native American students is about 2%. No doubt the fact that these are roughly the percentages these groups occupy in the general population has nothing at all to do with this.
“Elite law schools are on a rack of their own making. “
“Their test score requirements are high because they significantly correlate with graduation and passing the BAR. Moreover, by being widely acknowledged as having the most highly gifted students, their brands have cache as being the source of the best lawyers.”
“However, reaching down to provide entry to less objectively qualified students means that the high entry requirements are there only for the cache, and don't actually mean anything at all.”
So, how does US News etc rate law school then? How do we know that Yale is better than Harvard, or vida versa? Or even better than Creighton (or Wisconsin)? At least LSATs and grades could provide some metrics. Of course, they may monger be better, depending on how many low performing BIPOCs they AA enroll. Graduation rates won’t matter - you just make sure everyone graduates. Bar passage rates are harder, but you need to compare apples to apples - when I took my first bar exam, I MBE to be admitted to several states w/o the essay exams, and DC required 30 points lower than CO did. That was a massive difference - I think between 80% for CO and maybe 40% for DC. Moreover, you can get your bar passage rate up by just having a mandatory 3L class of Bar Prep.
Freddie DeBoer makes two points that are under appreciated. One, GPAs are just as racially imbalanced as SATs, so abandoning SATs in their favor does not help blacks except by making it easier for schools to lower standards without the public noticing. Two, schools adjust GPAs for school quality, using proprietary black boxes that are never publicly disclosed. In theory, the purpose is to ensure that the student who gets a 3.5 at Dalton is recognized as a superior student to one who gets a 3.5 at some crappy public high school. But the schools can easily fiddle with the black box to amp up the scores of the students at the crappy inner city high schools, in order to increase the number of admitted black students.
"Affirmative action" by race is really the amazingly effective stalking horse for what the "elite" have wanted for a very long time: the elimination of any objective standards, so that admission to gatekeeper schools, jobs, promotion within organizations, etc., etc. are based entirely on family, connections, political reliability to the Powers that Be, and willingness to go along with what those higher in the hierarchy want to do. THAT's the goal. The racial aspect is just a nice sweetener (and a way to charge up the ideology-focused Outer Party so that they provide the foot-soldiers to do what the Inner Party desires).
African Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population. This demographic fact, and the intensity of the debate and the lengths to which the Powers will go to maintain race-based policies that have been slapped down every time people have a chance to express an opinion on them because they are viscerally hated by 75% of the people in public (and 95% in private), shows that the debate over Affirmative Action is not about African Americans, but about SOME white people working to gain or maintain advantages and power over OTHER white people. If Congress, or the Supreme Court, were to say, "12% of the openings at all colleges shall be filled by African Americans, but the other 88% must be done blind by open and objective criteria, the freak-out would be just as intense and it would be led by exactly the same people. The raw demographic numbers also means, by the way, that you can't blame African Americans for taking Junior's spot at Harvard--it's all the OTHER manipulations and dishonesties of the admissions system, which have gone from "bad" to "utterly bat-crap crazy" since summer 2020, that are to blame.
“The only ground for taking race into account that met the strict scrutiny standard of the Supreme Court was an idea of the value of diversity in the student body, which was characterized as an educational benefit for all of the students”
This is what disgusts me, the idea that Ivies need a racial petting zoo of minorities so that the other kids can sit on the quad and take notes watching them do their minority stuff and learn from it.
“One, GPAs are just as racially imbalanced as SATs, “
This is really no problem at all, you just admit students in the top 10% of their individual high school class. That way the absolute GPA is irrelevant.
“Moreover, you can get your bar passage rate up by just having a mandatory 3L class of Bar Prep.“
In Engineering, to be on the PE path, you have to take the Engineer in Training exam, then work for 5 years, and take the PE exam. The E I T exam covers math, chem, phys, eng mechanics, thermo, fluids, Econ and finance etc. the only real way to pass it is to take all the classes and learn it. A prep class would just maybe help on time management and practice as a confidence builder.
Blogger Yancey Ward said..."If I were running a school myself, I would probably rely heavily on test scores to form my student body. My main rule as a law school head would be admit the X number of highest LSAT scorers from the Y number of applicants. I would design it to be as objective as possible. I wouldn't give a shit if that X number had 100% Asian-Americans, 100% Jewish-Americans, 100% white Americans, 100% Hispanic-Americans, or 100% black Americans, or any combination of percentages."
This seems to me to be a likely outcome. Does anyone think the high performers (who certainly know who they are) are going to tolerate a system which does not allow them to demonstrate their competence? I would expect schools to form who cater to this population. In a generation the Ivy League will be the dregs of the system, and they will have done it to themselves.
"I would add that the key votes in the Supreme Court cases came from Justices who showed deference to the expertise of school professionals who were, supposedly, assembling a student body, taking into account an array of subtle variables and hoping to create a rewarding educational environment for everyone."
I think Ann is absolutely right about this. People who become high ranking judges generally have a life experience like this: During high school, they did what was necessary to get into a "good college". During college, they did what was necessary to get into a "good law school". In law school, they did what was necessary to get good grades and recommendations. For eleven years, they chased approval by academics. To a large extent, their life is validated by academic approval, so they tend to defer to them.
Something similar occurs with other people who did well along the academic conveyor belt. Thus, the pressure to defer to the professionals in the CDC during COVID, to the extent of anointing them as "the science".
Where I worked they tried to implement objective standards into promotions. The results were dismal from the perspective of the equity goals.
To correct this obvious error (/sarc), the powers that be allowed self-grading on key Knowledge, Skills and Ability items and eliminated supervisory assessments. Then they added interviews to the rankings.
Shockingly this worked like peaches and ice cream... from the perspective of the equity goals.
It also led to the dumbest, laziest MF I ever worked with to skyrocket up the chain of command to become our head of an entire region of the US.
"In Engineering, to be on the PE path, you have to take the Engineer in Training exam, then work for 5 years, and take the PE exam. The E I T exam covers math, chem, phys, eng mechanics, thermo, fluids, Econ and finance etc. the only real way to pass it is to take all the classes and learn it. A prep class would just maybe help on time management and practice as a confidence builder."
I took the EIT five years after graduation (a PE wasn't required for the job I was in at that time). Scared me a LOT more than the subsequent PE test.
"I've served on law school admissions committees and I've taught the affirmative action cases many times. I'm just trying to be helpful explaining things here."
I think the crux here is that your interlocutors believe that, based on their own speech and activities, selection committees are highly motivated to do racial balancing, and do it now despite it being legally impermissible, and the point of doing away wit objective metrics is to make it easier to continue to flout the law.
As such your clarification about what the law permits is a bit of a nonsequitur.
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