Why Aren’t There More Black Scientists? The evidence suggests that one reason is the perverse impact of university racial preferences. By Gail Heriot
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-arent-there-more-black-scientists-1445467260
Meanwhile, numerous studies—as I explain in a recent report for the Heritage Foundation—show that the supposed beneficiaries of affirmative action are less likely to go on to high-prestige careers than otherwise-identical students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them in the middle of the class or higher. In other words, encouraging black students to attend schools where their entering credentials place them near the bottom of the class has resulted in fewer black physicians, engineers, scientists, lawyers and professors than would otherwise be the case.
But university administrators don’t want to hear that their support for affirmative action has left many intended beneficiaries worse off, and they refuse to take the evidence seriously.
The mainstream media support them on this. The Washington Post, for instance, recently featured a story lamenting that black students are less likely to major in science and engineering than their Asian or white counterparts. Left unstated was why. As my report shows, while black students tend to be a little more interested in majoring in science and engineering than whites when they first enter college, they transfer into softer majors in much larger numbers and so end up with fewer science or engineering degrees.
This is not because they don’t have the right stuff. Many do—as demonstrated by the fact that students with identical entering academic credentials attending somewhat less competitive schools persevere in their quest for a science or engineering degree and ultimately succeed. Rather, for many, it is because they took on too much, too soon given their level of academic preparation.
It is no fluke that historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, have an excellent record of graduating future scientists and engineers. In 2006 HBCUs accounted for 21% of the bachelor’s degrees awarded to black students. Yet 33% of the black students awarded Ph.D.s in science or engineering had received their bachelor’s degree at an HBCU. Probably the single most important reason is that at HBCUs half the black students have entering credentials in the top half of the class. At competitive colleges elsewhere, given race-preferential admissions, black student credentials cluster at the bottom.
The temptation to give up and assume that these counterproductive policies will remain forever should be resisted. With Fisher v. University of Texas, the Supreme Court will soon have another opportunity to get the law back on track.
This is the second trip to the Supreme Court for Abigail Fisher, a white applicant to the University of Texas at Austin who argues that, as a result of the school’s affirmative-action policy, she was unconstitutionally denied admission in 2008. In 2013 the court issued its first Fisher opinion, remanding her case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals with directions to more closely scrutinize that policy, but hinting that it might be prepared in the future to get tough on policies that are not narrowly tailored to fit the goal of capturing the educational benefits of diversity for all students. After the Fifth Circuit stuck by its earlier decision to grant the university summary judgment, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case again.
But regardless of the Supreme Court, congressional Republican leaders involved in the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act this fall—notably Sen. Lamar Alexander and Reps. John Kline and Virginia Foxx—can nudge things in the right direction. Here’s how:
The first step is to understand that not every college or university is enthusiastic about race-preferential admissions policies. While only a small number would prefer to eliminate them, a large number are uncomfortable with the large preferences—amounting to hundreds of points on the SAT or an entire letter grade on GPA—that are currently routine. If these schools were able to act on their own judgment, the overall level of preference would be reduced, which in turn would reduce the “mismatch effect” that currently retards minority-student success.
The schools’ problem is that state legislatures, private foundations and the federal government sometimes push them to magnify preferences. The worst of these offenders are accrediting agencies. Although these accreditors do not dispense funds, an individual institution’s federal funding hinges on their stamp of approval. Many use their clout to enforce what is in effect an affirmative-action cartel.
Sen. Lamar Alexander knows this all too well. When he was education secretary under President George H.W. Bush, 24% of medical schools and 31% of law schools admitted that they were under pressure from accreditors to engage in race-preferential admissions. He resisted such pressure.
After Grutter, however, accrediting agencies were again emboldened. About 50% of the public medical schools I recently surveyed have since been warned by their official accreditor—the Liaison Committee on Medical Education—that they need to pay more attention to racially diversifying their classes. At least one law school, George Mason University, had its re-accreditation seriously threatened for failure to toe the diversity line.
This is where Congress can help, by prohibiting accreditors from wading into student-body diversity issues. This proposal is modest, since it will not prevent any school from pursuing its own preferred diversity policy. But it is a first step toward bringing race-preferential policies under control—something that Justice O’Connor mistakenly believed would happen on its own.
Ms. Heriot is a professor of law at the University of San Diego and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
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