{"id":67,"date":"2006-07-02T22:51:25","date_gmt":"2006-07-03T03:51:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress\/?p=67"},"modified":"2006-07-02T23:41:13","modified_gmt":"2006-07-03T04:41:13","slug":"different-shades-of-diversityconfusion-persists-in-campus-diversity-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"Different shades of diversity\/Confusion persists in campus diversity efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Different shades…” title reprinted from the <\/em>The Badger Herald<\/span>, April 4, 2003<\/em>“Confusion persists…” title reprinted from the <\/em> Wisconsin State Journal<\/span>, April 6, 2003 <\/em><\/p>\n

Confusion continues about the meaning of diversity, affirmative action, and racial preferences in college admissions. This confusion is apparent in debate about President Bush\u2018s stand on college admissions, how the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on the University of Michigan\u2018s admission case, and UW-Madison\u2018s campus admissions policy discussed recently by Provost Peter Spear.<\/p>\n

Colleges and universities, most everyone would agree, should be hotbeds of diversity, in ideas, opinions, approaches to knowledge, and the search for truth. Unfortunately, the meaning of diversity in higher education has been narrowed to describe the race\/ethnic mix of students. In so doing, competing methods of achieving greater race\/ethnic diversity are obscured.<\/p>\n

\u201cColor-blind admission\u201d\u009d allows race to play no part in admissions decisions. Applications forms do not ask about race\/ethnicity; if they do, that information is suppressed in evaluating student applications for admission.<\/p>\n

\u201cAffirmative action admission\u201d\u009d might just as easily be labeled \u201cdouble standard admission.\u201d\u009d In making admissions decisions, a lower standard is applied to minority applicants. This method varies in how it works. The University of Michigan\u2018s \u201crace conscious\u201d\u009d policy is straightforward, giving minority applicants an additional 20 points in calculating their admissibility.<\/p>\n

The University of Wisconsin-Madison \u201crace-based\u201d\u009d preference policy based on Faculty Senate legislation is more complicated. The campus grants automatic admission to all minority applicants who meet even the minimum admission requirement. More than that, it admits and enrolls substantial numbers of minorities who fail to meet even a key minimum admission requirement, which is to graduate in the upper half of their high school class.<\/p>\n

These two policies differ significantly. Michigan\u2018s point system would never admit as large a proportion of minorities who do not meet its minimum requirements. At Madison, about an eighth of enrolled minorities would not have been admitted because they did not graduate in the top half of their high school class. Another fifth would not have been admitted on a competitive basis, i.e., using a color blind admission standard. The remainder would have been admitted on their individual merit but are still less than competitive with non-minority students. While Madison\u2018s lower standard may advance the goal of boosting minority enrollment, it undercuts the equally important goal of increasing minority student graduation rates.<\/p>\n

The Madison approach to minority admission also ignores well-documented research showing the importance of prior academic performance (high school class rank and test scores) on academic success in college. UW-Madison\u2018s own data demonstrate this obvious fact, but little is done to publicize that information. Similar results emerge from research UW-Madison Professor Albert Cabrera and other experts presented at a recent national conference here in Madison on minority student retention.<\/p>\n

Campus leaders meanwhile continue to defend the indefensible. Provost Peter Spear maintains that \u201cEvery student we admit is qualified to succeed.\u201d\u009d If that statement is true, why are the graduation rates for minority students who do not meet even the minimum admission requirement about 40 percent as compared to about 65 percent for those who are admitted competitively. Even if one believes in double standards, why set such a low standard for admitting minority students? What do these graduation rates say about Spear\u2018s assertion that every student is qualified to succeed, if succeed means to graduate?<\/p>\n

If Provost Spear means that minorities admitted because of their race\/ethnicity can and do perform academically acceptable work, he should be happy to present the data supporting his statement. If, however, these students perform only passably, they may be more inclined to drop out early, fearing their inability to perform adequately through the rest of their degree work.<\/p>\n

UW-Madison officials, in their dogged, three-decade long effort to achieve diversity, regularly violate the standards of performance evaluation that apply elsewhere on the campus, examining the evidence and describing in detail how their admission system works. These officials try to convince others of the merit of their own \u201cprincipled\u201d\u009d position by assertion rather than with hard empirical evidence.<\/p>\n

Worse, they regularly tell many minority students, by the act of admitting them, that they have a good likelihood of graduating when the record shows that is not the case. Shouldn\u2018t minority applicants who receive preferential treatment be fully informed about their likelihood of graduating, before they enroll, rather than having to learn the hard way after they do enroll?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Different shades…” title reprinted from the The Badger Herald, April 4, 2003“Confusion persists…” title reprinted from the Wisconsin State Journal, April 6, 2003 Confusion continues about the meaning of diversity, affirmative action, and racial preferences in college admissions. This confusion … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/users.ssc.wisc.edu\/~wlhansen\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}