I just started reading Jeff Mauer. I consider myself a staunch conservative, and I was directed to him by either Jonah Goldberg or David French from the Dispatch, the thinking Conservative publication - knuckle draggers need not purchase a subscription.
Jeff has fast become my third favorite liberal, my Daughter and future Son-in-Law are #1 and #2. I am convinced that if we just think about actual real world problems and real world solutions with open minds, we can bridge the divide between the idiots on the Left and the idiots on the Right.
It's obvious to me that kids from the lower socio-economic classes are the folks that could most benefit from a "hand up", not the kids born on Third base. Good stuff here! Thank you.
We have a shortage of people who can swing a hammer, weld, or wire an electrical panel. We have a glut of people who can find something problematic in a Twinkie.
An electrician can make $100k easy. Someone with a sociology degree working for a non-profit will probably get $20 an hour. Oh, and they also have a hundred grand worth of student debt they'll never pay off.
IMO bringing back shop class in high school (free!) will do more to pull up the lower class than adding a bunch of worthless BAs will.
There is an underappreciated problem that complicates the otherwise useful plan to swap socioeconomic status (SES) for race. It is based on three conditions:
1. Although black people are disproportionately poor, they are a small minority of the US population (~12%). That means that there are actually a lot more poor white people than poor black people.
2. There are a lot more rich white people than either rich Asian or rich black people.
3. Most selective universities (those taking less then 60% of applicants) but outside the top 20 universities with the largest endowments, deliberately make tradeoffs by admitting more a few more rich (i.e. white) students, and also international students, so that they can use the full-freight tuition paid by those rich families to subsidize the financial aid they use to cover the tuition for a much larger number of poorer students.
When you combine these together, you get some weird dynamics. All the attention on Harvard and the Ivy League obscures the fact that they represent a really small proportion of universities that employ affirmative action. Those universities could in fact completely drop all tuition and still be financially healthy enough to operate for years as they currently are from their endowments. They are also prestigious enough that they will get enough applications from highly capable students of all races to come up with proxies to have a racially diverse student body.
The problem comes in with the lower-tier universities, the state flagship campuses, the solid regional colleges, and other selective but not top institutions. They still have to charge tuition to some students to make an operating budget. Let's say they admit all students based purely on test scores, with no affirmative action. Because there are relatively few black students in the US, and even fewer who have good enough training to do college-level work (as in all categories), and the top 20 schools suck up the real superstars, the resulting student body compared to now would be a little more white, somewhat more asian, and a LOT less black. You might go from 75% white, 8% asian, 9% hispanic, and 8% black with affirmative action, to 79% white, 11% asian, 8% hispanic, and 2% black.
Maybe the right thing to say there is that that is a result of a legacy of redlining, slavery, present discrimination, etc., and the answer is to improve early childhood education, K-12 schooling, and focused investments in the black community. But colleges have an immediate political problem in that if all of them except for the very elite appear to be nearly free of black students, then they are seen as perpetrators of direct discrimination, and a pedagogical problem in that they genuinely believe they provide better education if their student body better reflects the racial and SES diversity of the country. You can disagree with those beliefs, but that is part of the system.
So what if you employ affirmative action by SES? Well the first thing that happens is that your incoming class is poorer, with many more needing financial aid. Harvard can tap its endowment, but most schools will burn through their next egg in a few years by supporting all poor students through the endowment. So maybe you admit a few extra rich students to help offset the cost, but then you've increased the proportion of white students since rich people are more white than poor people are nonwhite. However, that ultimately doesn't help the earlier problem, because most poor people are white! So by shifting to SES affirmative action, you've reduced your financial flexibility while not actually increasing racial diversity.
In the end, colleges are trying to accomplish three things: academically good students, a racially diverse student body, and enough money to keep running. You have a number of levers, but most are correlated with each other, and one of the few uncorrelated ones is racial affirmative action. Unless you have the financial power of Harvard or MIT or Stanford, you can't achieve all your goals unless you have that lever.
None of the above justifies blatant discrimination against asian students. And maybe you don't believe that all those goals are worthwhile. But unfortunately, the focus on the Iveys obscures the fact that a simple change like "do affirmative action based on SES" does not really solve the racial diversity problem at most schools.
I laughed at your observation that DeBoer can hang with you with regards to profanity. (btw, DeBoer recommended you in one of his weekly round ups, which is why I read all your work. And that your writing is very good...and funny)
Should "absorb whatever hit might accrue to their endowment" even be a consideration, particularly for Harvard? It would be completely fair to call Harvard a hedge fund that has a schoolhouse instead of a college with an endowment.
Great article, and Chait’s was great too. Everyone knows they discriminate against Asians. Everyone. The least they could do is stop insulting us by pretending it’s some dippy holistic evaluation that *just happens* to favor the children of rich whites and rich Nigerians over those of working class Koreans.
I accept that elite colleges want kids from wealthy families, but what bothers me the most is the idea that a disproportionately Asian population is undesirable for the institution because it would be less attractive to white kids, might affect the reputation, etc. If it’s just about $$$ that sucks… but it also seems to be actual racism toward these Asian kids.
I don’t care if my (half) Asian child attends Harvard. It’s expensive and far away, and state school was good enough for mommy. But I don’t want my country’s elite institutions to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Asian kids.
In defense the Ivies: they are private institutions and can do whatever the fuck they want. They have decided cap admissions for Asian-Americans because every high-achieving student is the same in the personal score of likability, respectability, and courage. Never mind that Asia, with more than half the world's population, is far from monolithic. For fuck's sake, we gave the world Gandhi _and_ Pol Pot, Confucius _and_ Bin Laden, Pramila Jayapal _and_ Dinesh D'Souza.
Our first-generation-American children are at a disadvantage in writing a hardship essay for college because their parents earn enough to give them comfortable lives. So, come to America, work hard, prioritize education. give your children the best environment to succeed, and they will not get into an Ivy league school. It's good that the data have come out. Maybe the prestige will fade in a generation or two as people realize Ivy League students are not the cream of the crop - but hey, they have personality like Don Jr.
The institutional solutions for racial inequality have been very troubling to me. The diversity that so many want is simply based on skin color. Each of us are incredibly complex and our identities are tied up in a multitude of different inputs. I just can’t imagine a top down strategy that can help us get to and understand the identities that really matter: the identities that bring us together and help us see the humanity in each other.
I also think whoever this dude called “society” is would be well advised to stop granting so much social power to graduates of Harvard. Let’s be honest, is the average undergrad at Harvard reeeeaaaaallly that much more talented than the average undergrad at UCLA? Yet the admissions office at Harvard is treated like the Oracle at Delphi; whatever it says must be true about a candidate’s quality. If US News and World Report started evaluating prestige based on how much a college or university contributes to upward mobility or how much “value-added” a school provides its students, Harvard would be at the back of the pack and would have to change.
Outstanding. Came to Jeff from Andrew Heaton's political orphanage. I can get behind "affirmative action" on the basis of class as a conservative who cares about the working poor
Quotaphobia strikes me as a root of that Asian-stereotyping problem.
Imagine Harvard did/could just set quotas of black and Latinx admissions up front, and declare, "we're giving SAT-point bonuses of 𝙓₁, 𝙓₂, 𝙓₃, 𝙓₄, 𝙓₅, 𝙓₆, and 𝙓₇ to applicants who are, respectively, black, Latinx, legacy, athletes, Dean's/Director's list, donors' relatives, and Harvard employees' kids, and we're admitting everyone with a bonus-included SAT score ≥ 𝘠" — they could choose 𝙓 and 𝘠 to fulfill the black and Latinx quotas for every cohort.
That way Harvard would ensure pre-specified black and Latinx admission rates without hiding behind a defense that impugns Asian applicants' personalities. Gets rid of "How come Asians have to score better than whites?" questions as well; you just don't give a bonus to either.
I just started reading Jeff Mauer. I consider myself a staunch conservative, and I was directed to him by either Jonah Goldberg or David French from the Dispatch, the thinking Conservative publication - knuckle draggers need not purchase a subscription.
Jeff has fast become my third favorite liberal, my Daughter and future Son-in-Law are #1 and #2. I am convinced that if we just think about actual real world problems and real world solutions with open minds, we can bridge the divide between the idiots on the Left and the idiots on the Right.
It's obvious to me that kids from the lower socio-economic classes are the folks that could most benefit from a "hand up", not the kids born on Third base. Good stuff here! Thank you.
We have a shortage of people who can swing a hammer, weld, or wire an electrical panel. We have a glut of people who can find something problematic in a Twinkie.
An electrician can make $100k easy. Someone with a sociology degree working for a non-profit will probably get $20 an hour. Oh, and they also have a hundred grand worth of student debt they'll never pay off.
IMO bringing back shop class in high school (free!) will do more to pull up the lower class than adding a bunch of worthless BAs will.
There is an underappreciated problem that complicates the otherwise useful plan to swap socioeconomic status (SES) for race. It is based on three conditions:
1. Although black people are disproportionately poor, they are a small minority of the US population (~12%). That means that there are actually a lot more poor white people than poor black people.
2. There are a lot more rich white people than either rich Asian or rich black people.
3. Most selective universities (those taking less then 60% of applicants) but outside the top 20 universities with the largest endowments, deliberately make tradeoffs by admitting more a few more rich (i.e. white) students, and also international students, so that they can use the full-freight tuition paid by those rich families to subsidize the financial aid they use to cover the tuition for a much larger number of poorer students.
When you combine these together, you get some weird dynamics. All the attention on Harvard and the Ivy League obscures the fact that they represent a really small proportion of universities that employ affirmative action. Those universities could in fact completely drop all tuition and still be financially healthy enough to operate for years as they currently are from their endowments. They are also prestigious enough that they will get enough applications from highly capable students of all races to come up with proxies to have a racially diverse student body.
The problem comes in with the lower-tier universities, the state flagship campuses, the solid regional colleges, and other selective but not top institutions. They still have to charge tuition to some students to make an operating budget. Let's say they admit all students based purely on test scores, with no affirmative action. Because there are relatively few black students in the US, and even fewer who have good enough training to do college-level work (as in all categories), and the top 20 schools suck up the real superstars, the resulting student body compared to now would be a little more white, somewhat more asian, and a LOT less black. You might go from 75% white, 8% asian, 9% hispanic, and 8% black with affirmative action, to 79% white, 11% asian, 8% hispanic, and 2% black.
Maybe the right thing to say there is that that is a result of a legacy of redlining, slavery, present discrimination, etc., and the answer is to improve early childhood education, K-12 schooling, and focused investments in the black community. But colleges have an immediate political problem in that if all of them except for the very elite appear to be nearly free of black students, then they are seen as perpetrators of direct discrimination, and a pedagogical problem in that they genuinely believe they provide better education if their student body better reflects the racial and SES diversity of the country. You can disagree with those beliefs, but that is part of the system.
So what if you employ affirmative action by SES? Well the first thing that happens is that your incoming class is poorer, with many more needing financial aid. Harvard can tap its endowment, but most schools will burn through their next egg in a few years by supporting all poor students through the endowment. So maybe you admit a few extra rich students to help offset the cost, but then you've increased the proportion of white students since rich people are more white than poor people are nonwhite. However, that ultimately doesn't help the earlier problem, because most poor people are white! So by shifting to SES affirmative action, you've reduced your financial flexibility while not actually increasing racial diversity.
In the end, colleges are trying to accomplish three things: academically good students, a racially diverse student body, and enough money to keep running. You have a number of levers, but most are correlated with each other, and one of the few uncorrelated ones is racial affirmative action. Unless you have the financial power of Harvard or MIT or Stanford, you can't achieve all your goals unless you have that lever.
None of the above justifies blatant discrimination against asian students. And maybe you don't believe that all those goals are worthwhile. But unfortunately, the focus on the Iveys obscures the fact that a simple change like "do affirmative action based on SES" does not really solve the racial diversity problem at most schools.
I laughed at your observation that DeBoer can hang with you with regards to profanity. (btw, DeBoer recommended you in one of his weekly round ups, which is why I read all your work. And that your writing is very good...and funny)
Thanks!
Should "absorb whatever hit might accrue to their endowment" even be a consideration, particularly for Harvard? It would be completely fair to call Harvard a hedge fund that has a schoolhouse instead of a college with an endowment.
Great article, and Chait’s was great too. Everyone knows they discriminate against Asians. Everyone. The least they could do is stop insulting us by pretending it’s some dippy holistic evaluation that *just happens* to favor the children of rich whites and rich Nigerians over those of working class Koreans.
I accept that elite colleges want kids from wealthy families, but what bothers me the most is the idea that a disproportionately Asian population is undesirable for the institution because it would be less attractive to white kids, might affect the reputation, etc. If it’s just about $$$ that sucks… but it also seems to be actual racism toward these Asian kids.
I don’t care if my (half) Asian child attends Harvard. It’s expensive and far away, and state school was good enough for mommy. But I don’t want my country’s elite institutions to perpetuate harmful stereotypes about Asian kids.
In defense the Ivies: they are private institutions and can do whatever the fuck they want. They have decided cap admissions for Asian-Americans because every high-achieving student is the same in the personal score of likability, respectability, and courage. Never mind that Asia, with more than half the world's population, is far from monolithic. For fuck's sake, we gave the world Gandhi _and_ Pol Pot, Confucius _and_ Bin Laden, Pramila Jayapal _and_ Dinesh D'Souza.
Our first-generation-American children are at a disadvantage in writing a hardship essay for college because their parents earn enough to give them comfortable lives. So, come to America, work hard, prioritize education. give your children the best environment to succeed, and they will not get into an Ivy league school. It's good that the data have come out. Maybe the prestige will fade in a generation or two as people realize Ivy League students are not the cream of the crop - but hey, they have personality like Don Jr.
The institutional solutions for racial inequality have been very troubling to me. The diversity that so many want is simply based on skin color. Each of us are incredibly complex and our identities are tied up in a multitude of different inputs. I just can’t imagine a top down strategy that can help us get to and understand the identities that really matter: the identities that bring us together and help us see the humanity in each other.
I also think whoever this dude called “society” is would be well advised to stop granting so much social power to graduates of Harvard. Let’s be honest, is the average undergrad at Harvard reeeeaaaaallly that much more talented than the average undergrad at UCLA? Yet the admissions office at Harvard is treated like the Oracle at Delphi; whatever it says must be true about a candidate’s quality. If US News and World Report started evaluating prestige based on how much a college or university contributes to upward mobility or how much “value-added” a school provides its students, Harvard would be at the back of the pack and would have to change.
Outstanding. Came to Jeff from Andrew Heaton's political orphanage. I can get behind "affirmative action" on the basis of class as a conservative who cares about the working poor
Quotaphobia strikes me as a root of that Asian-stereotyping problem.
Imagine Harvard did/could just set quotas of black and Latinx admissions up front, and declare, "we're giving SAT-point bonuses of 𝙓₁, 𝙓₂, 𝙓₃, 𝙓₄, 𝙓₅, 𝙓₆, and 𝙓₇ to applicants who are, respectively, black, Latinx, legacy, athletes, Dean's/Director's list, donors' relatives, and Harvard employees' kids, and we're admitting everyone with a bonus-included SAT score ≥ 𝘠" — they could choose 𝙓 and 𝘠 to fulfill the black and Latinx quotas for every cohort.
That way Harvard would ensure pre-specified black and Latinx admission rates without hiding behind a defense that impugns Asian applicants' personalities. Gets rid of "How come Asians have to score better than whites?" questions as well; you just don't give a bonus to either.
For late 80s TV Al Bundy was kind of a diverse dude-working stiff whose work buddy was black and most frequent houeseguest was a lesbian!
"effectiveness of a seventh grader hiding his erection behind a math book"
NOTHING was worse than having to do this.
"Importantly, they don’t require the Texas-sized dose of race-based discrimination that we’re inflicting on Asian applicants"
Hey now, don't bring Texas into this. We don't like Harvard either. :P