Reprint from the Badger Herald, December 4, 1996Intense concern among UW-Madison students, faculty, and administrators continues, as I am sure it should, about the low enrollment and low retention rates of African Americans. Yet, the likelihood of soon achieving substantial improvements in either of these measures is remote. To understand this statement we must go beyond notions of diversity and look at the larger problem of academic preparation.
What are the possibilities of reaching the UW-Madison’s minority enrollment goal for the year 2000, established last spring by Chancellor Ward under pressure from the Civil Rights Coalition, an activist student organization? One answer, shown in my earlier piece on “The Arithmetic of Diversity,” and made by the Chancellor himself, is that this goal has already been reached. But, another answer, or another perspective, calls for examining what would happen if all students, including minorities, were admitted on the basis of the standard admissions criteria. Those criteria include submitting ACT scores, graduating in the top half of their high school class, and completing the core academic subjects in high school.
With the available data, we can show how the application of the first two of these criteria changes the racial/ethnic pool of potential applicants. Two cases are considered. Both involve taking the ACT but one requires being ranked in the top half while the other requires being in the top quarter of the high school graduating class. The first case represents a minimum standard. The second case represents a more stringent standard that reflects more closely the characteristics of students who subsequently enroll as UW-Madison freshmen.
The impact of applying the same merit-based admission standard to all applicants, including minorities, is dramatic. For African Americans, their proportion of eligibles for admission falls from the 3.9 percent of the state’s 1994-95 high school graduates to the 2.5 percent who that same year took the ACT and ranked in the upper half of their high school class. Their proportion drops to 1.6 percent for those who took the ACT and ranked in the upper quarter of their high school class. Based on a minimum standard of being ranked in the top half of the class, African Americans are still underrepresented, with 1.7 percent of new freshmen in Fall 1995 compared to the 2.5 percent eligible for admission. Based on the more stringent standard of the top quarter of the high school, they are slightly overrepresented, with the 1.7 percent of new freshman compared to the 1.6 percent eligible for admission. Thus, applying a standard that emphasizes academic merit produces a quite different picture of the freshmen enrollment prospects for African Americans.
Thus far, little has been said about how ACT scores enter into the UW-Madison admissions process. ACT scores are employed to estimate a predicted freshman GPA for each student. This predicted value is then used with other criteria in making admission decisions. The differences in average ACT scores among the racial/ethnic groups prove to be revealing. No matter how the pool of potential applicants is defined, the average ACT score for African Americans is roughly three points below those of the other racial/ethnic groups. This difference persists among newly enrolled freshmen, with average ACT scores of 21.3 for African Americans, 23.7 for Hispanic Americans, 24.0 for American Indians, 25.6 for Asian Americans, and 26.0 for White Americans.
If the ACT scores could be used here as they are in deciding whom to admit, the percentages of eligibles among the state’s African American high school graduates would be lower. For those taking the ACT and in the top quarter of their class, the 1.6 percent figure would fall but by exactly how much we cannot say. Even if the fall were modest, to say 1.2 percent, new African Americans freshmen would be still be overrepresented.
The lower average ACT score for new African American freshmen clearly signals that for them the admission process is less selective. Indeed, minorities do benefit from preferential admissions. According to UW-Madison admissions policies, those minorities who fail to meet the standard qualifications (graduation in the upper half of their high school class and completion of core academic courses in high school) may be still considered for admission. They can be admitted “if, on the basis of other factors, they appear to have a reasonable probability of success.” Exactly what these “other factors” might be is not clearly specified.
In fact, little is known about the impact of preferential admissions. The only hint comes from a statement by the UW-Madison Director of Undergraduate Admissions as reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education (7 September 1994). That statement, made in the context of recruiting African Americans, is: “He [Millard Storey] said that without Madison’s current policy, minority enrollment could fall by as much as half.” The implications of this statement are clear. The percentage of new UW-Madison freshman African Americans who would qualify based on the standard admission criteria which emphasize academic merit could be roughly half, or 0.8 to 0.9 percent, which is below their 1.7 percent share of new freshmen enrolled in Fall 1995.
The current minority enrollment goal of proportional representation and the preferential admission standards for minorities fail to recognize the importance of academic preparation. If minority students are to perform well and subsequently graduate from this highly selective teaching-research university, they must meet the same admissions standards as do all other racial/ethnic groups. Students who are admitted under a lower standard will experience greater academic difficulty and be more likely to drop out for academic reasons. As this situation persists, the campus will continue to be criticized for not doing enough to both recruit and retain minorities. Proposals such as those by the Civil Rights Coalition calling for the campus to invest additional resources to attract and retain additional marginally qualified minority students are unlikely to produce significant results, as the experience of the last two decades demonstrates so well.