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May 27, 2007
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A step in the right direction
One of the biggest hypocrisies of today's academy is the assumption that "diversity" can be achieved by engineering student bodies and faculties according to genetic criteria. A related one is the assumption that this automatically gives the entire campus community some sort of special insight into privilege and oppression. This assumption persists despite our belated recognition that most elite college students come from comfortable backgrounds, no matter what color they are (a 1998 study showed that 86% of blacks enrolled at prestigious colleges and universities were either middle- or upper class).
Merit should be the most important factor in college admissions. But if there is a place for affirmative action, and I think there is, when it is clearly distinct from quotas, it should be centered on economic background.
Some schools are beginning to get it. From this morning's New York Times:
AMHERST, Mass.--The discussion in the States of Poverty seminar here at Amherst College was getting a little theoretical. Then Anthony Abraham Jack, a junior from Miami, asked pointedly, "Has anyone here ever actually seen a food stamp?"To Mr. Jack, unlike many of his classmates, food stamps are not an abstraction. His family has had to use them in emergencies. His mother raised three children as a single parent and earns $26,000 a year as a school security guard. That is just a little more than half the cost of a year's tuition, room and board, fees and other expenses at Amherst, which for Mr. Jack's class was close to $48,000.
So when Mr. Jack, now 22 and a senior, graduates with honors on May 27, he will not just be the first in his family to earn a college degree, but a success story in the effort by Amherst and a growing number of elite colleges to open their doors to talented low-income students.
Concerned that the barriers to elite institutions are being increasingly drawn along class lines, and wanting to maintain some role as engines of social mobility, about two dozen schools--Amherst, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Williams and the University of North Carolina, among them--have pushed in the past few years to diversify economically.
They are trying tactics like replacing loans with grants and curtailing early admission, which favors the well-to-do and savvy. But most important, Amherst, for instance, is doing more than giving money to low-income students; it is recruiting them and taking their socioeconomic background--defined by family income, parents' education and occupation level--into account when making admissions decisions.
Amherst's president, Anthony Marx, turns to stark numbers in a 2004 study by the Century Foundation, a policy institute in New York, to explain the effort: Three-quarters of students at top colleges come from the top socioeconomic quartile, with only one-tenth from the poorer half and 3 percent from the bottom quartile.
"We want talent from across all divides, wherever we can find it," President Marx said. Amherst covered the full cost of Mr. Jack's education beyond what he earned in work-study. The only debt he says he owes is the $41 it cost to make copies of his 107-page honors thesis.
One of the corruptions of the current diversity system is the degraded and degrading assumption that "talent" is synonymous with being a minority; the system obeys an exploitative logic that says that sheltered white kids will benefit from the enriching presence of non-white classmates, and as such it pays far more attention to the demographic profile of the prospective minority student than it does to either that student's background or his own educational needs.
Nobody thinks being poor is a talent, and nobody thinks it's wonderfully exotic. Hopefully that will help keep an economically oriented system of affirmative action from falling into the hypocrisies of race- and gender-based systems. There are dangers with any sort of social engineering, and it's not hard to imagine the kinds of marxist manipulations that could come with this territory. But it's also easy to imagine poor kids' worlds being opened up by the opportunity to be educated. That's what Anthony Jack says has happened for him at Amherst: "Thanks to Amherst, Mr. Jack said, he has rewritten the narrative of his life." That's the American dream. And there is nothing wrong with that.
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Right on. Until Americans realize that being born poor by definition negates equality of opportunity, we will continue to have a society that flys in the face of the Founding Fathers' ideas.
At the same time, let's stop singling out race-based admissions policies. A recent student showed that a rich kid admitted by legacy stands a worse chance of earning his degree than a student admitted through affirmative action.
So let's start pressuring universities to get rid of legacy programs. And let's start pressuring universities to recognize that SAT scores correlate directly to economic status, that tying admission to "extracurricular activities" too often privileges those students whose parents can buy them leisure time.
And if the American dream really means starting from scratch and earning, through one's merits, one's status in life, then maybe it's time to bring back the estate tax to redistribute some wealth. I'd love to see where George W. Bush would be today without his family's money. (I imagine a barstool. And food stamps.)
"So, Martha, should we admit this boy?"
"I don't like the look of his family. They aren't the sort of people we should have associated with us. And look at the house they live in -- no, no, we don't need any of their kind here."
(I think the system described in the NYT story is a perfect cover for the vilest form of bigotry to be seen in higher ed since the days of Jim Crow.)
"being born poor by definition negates equality of opportunity"
What?
What is your definition of equality of opportunity?
One of the factors in the Washington Monthly "listing" (truly a counter-listing to U.S. News & World Report's rankings) is the % of students on Pell Grants, as well as the % of graduates who head into something you could call service.
Right on. Until Americans realize that being born poor by definition negates equality of opportunity, we will continue to have a society that flys in the face of the Founding Fathers' ideas.
Since when were any of that crew of late 18th century politicians members of the Fabian Society?
At the same time, let's stop singling out race-based admissions policies. A recent student showed that a rich kid admitted by legacy stands a worse chance of earning his degree than a student admitted through affirmative action.
Was the study admitted to the subset of legacy admissions for which their legacy status was decisive?
And let's start pressuring universities to recognize that SAT scores correlate directly to economic status,
And the causal relationships are exactly what?
that tying admission to "extracurricular activities" too often privileges those students whose parents can buy them leisure time.
Just out of curiousity, do you have any figures on the degree of correllation between parental occupational status and labor force participation rates among those between their 15th and 18th birthdays?
And if the American dream really means starting from scratch and earning, through one's merits, one's status in life, then maybe it's time to bring back the estate tax to redistribute some wealth.
Which states have abolished their estate taxes?
I'd love to see where George W. Bush would be today without his family's money. (I imagine a barstool. And food stamps.)
Blogger Steven Sailer, who is not an admirer of the President but does have a strong avocational interest in psychometrics, did a comparative analysis a while back of the scores received by the President and John Kerry on a batch of standardized tests. (I believe the Air Force Qualifying Test was among them). His conclusion was (as I recall) that the President and Mr. Kerry were likely near the 90th percentile as regards measurable general intelligence (as was John F. Kennedy). That is not too far from the median of people in professional-managerial occupations. Given the President's occupational interests and such, a good guess might be running an insurance agency or stock brokerage in Midland.
Who knew that the scruffy teenagers I see slouching around the city at all hours of the day and night had wealthy parents buying their leisure time.
One of the greatest inhibitors to social mobility in our country is the excessive and growing emphasis on credentials--especially graduate education and elite colleges--coupled with the dysfunctionality of much K-12 education. When the period of expected education gets longer and longer, it is inevitable that the advantage of coming from a well-off and educated family becomes even greater. Education becomes increasingly valued neither for its inherent value nor its practical applicability, but rather for its signaling value--like the peacock's tail in evolutionary biology.
I worry that we are creating a situation in which access to many careers will be like becoming an officer in the British Army in the 19th century--you have to buy your commission before you can prove your merit.
I find it interesting that well-off conservatives refuse to acknowledge that poor kids don't have the same opportunities as middle-class or upper-class kids. But if you ask them to compete on a truly level playing field, they refuse to give up the advantages they refuse to admit they have.
And sure, Art, no state abolished their estate taxes. But Bush did a good job demonizing the tax, and raising the upper limit.
And Laura, I'm sure those kids hanging around the city are *all* the poor kids in the city. The ones working at McDonalds are clearly middle-class kids. And Wal-Mart's full of rich kids.
Finally, the Founding Fathers wanted to establish a system that ensured equality of opportunity. Anything that stands in the way of equality of opportunity is thus against their stated aims.
Regarding opportunities: On the micro scale, you're right. On the macro scale, you're wrong.
I suppose you think that if a parent busts his butt to provide for his kids, he shouldn't offer him anything that the very poorest child in his city doesn't have.
No, Laura, this isn't about telling people what they can or cannot do. It's about ensuring that some people cannot simply buy opportunities that most people cannot afford. It's about opening those opportunities to *anyone*, not about telling those who currently can afford them that they cannot do so.
If Kaplan SAT prep guarantees a 200 point increase, then that's basically *buying* 200 points on the exam. In that case, either open such test prep up to all kids, or allow admissions committees to deduct 200 points from kids who use test prep services.
Likewise, schools should be equally funded (and then funded for special needs), not funded based on parents' property taxes.
Finally, I think we need a school system that could offer students the chance to have a boarding school/prep school experience, to leave behind blighted neighborhoods -- or suburban hells -- and be in a safe, intellectual environment year-round. (I'd also like to see all American high school students have a semester of community service as well as a semester of study abroad.)
To put it simply:
We shouldn't *stop* parents from working hard to help their children.
But we shouldn't *punish* children for the parents they have. Or the parents they don't, in fact, have.
If opportunity is a factor of one's parents, then we're far removed from the world of individual responsibility. Why shouldn't every child be given equal opportunities, so that their success (or failure) could be rightly seen as an individual achievement?
Linval--"offer students the chance to have a boarding school/prep school experience, to leave behind blighted neighborhoods -- or suburban hells -- and be in a safe, intellectual environment year-round."
Probably 70% of the value of the boarding school option could be created (without actual boarding schools) if teachers were re-empowered to do something about persistently disruptive students. The resulting school climate would be safe and maybe at least a little bit intellectual, if not year-round.
See my post Penny in the Fusebox for related thoughts.
The boarding school idea is worth considering; however, there will always be a lot of willing learners and families who, for whatever reason, don't want to go with this option. Plus, the logistics, staffing, and cost issues would be significant.
Two notes. First, adjusting subsidies for bright kids according to their families’ ability to pay is “affirmative action” only in the sense that it is partially motivated by social utility.
Second, though it's a great idea (and nothing new, really), it's not close to enough. As a recent NIH study strongly suggests (v., e.g.,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=A15FAD05-E7F2-99DF-34B5A1856E790722&pageNumber=1&catID=1), poverty affects students' performance primarily by damaging their health when young. If we want to get the most talent out of our population, that's where we need to intervene.
David, I work in a middle school, and I don't know what sorts of discipline you're saying teachers no longer can use. If a student is disruptive, we can: give them detention; take away classroom privileges; deduct points; send them to in-school suspension.
Apart from hitting students, we have available every form of discipline that my parents' and grandparents' teachers had.
linval, there are plenty of teachers who would disagree with you on that. And there are plenty of parents who are interested in alternatives such as charter schools in part because of the chaotic behavioral situations in their local public schools.
David, I'm honestly asking you: what methods or forms of discipline are not at a teacher's disposal today? Apart from corporal punishment, I cannot think of any methods that my teachers used that I cannot use today.
I agree that there are behavioral issues in schools today that I don't remember from my own schooldays. But I don't remember my teachers using any discipline methods that I don't use now.
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