Outside of STEM, I mean.
When I say "mismatch," I'm talking about when a student's abilities (as measured via test scores and grades) and a school's expectations don't match up. Gail Heriot over at Instapundit posts frequently on this subject; the effect of a mismatch that goes against the student's assessed abilities (I say it this way because it's certainly possible for the mismatch to go the other way - for the student's abilities to be greater than the school's expectations - but I don't know what the result of this kind of mismatch is) is that that student is much more likely to end up at the bottom of her class and to have poorer outcomes generally.
The upshot is that traditional college affirmative action, kindly intended to give disadvantaged students a leg up at a critical time with the expectation that from there on out they'd be on a more or less level playing field, instead results in fewer people of color, et cetera, in challenging fields and high-level positions within those fields. And it seems self-evident that this would be the case. Someone is going to be at the bottom of every class. To hope that that person will turn out to be the high-achieving kid who goes hog-wild at college and loses all that high-achievingness, rather than the kid who started out not able to keep up with the high-achiever, is not a plan. It can happen - my son has a high school friend who got into UMich on his significant merits and left two years in because he just... flamed out, lost all motivation and desire for the life for which he and his parents had been preparing him. But it is not a reasonable part of a policy.
So put me on record as agreeing that AA should be scrapped, not just on philosophical grounds but on practical ones.
But now we learn of Varsity Blues. It involves, of course, the exact opposite starting conditions from affirmative action: the kids involved were the very picture of Advantage, yet their fool parents still didn't let them compete for college entrance on their own merits. (Of course they didn't - what they were going for was entrance into an exclusive club where the bouncers controlling the velvet ropes were admissions officers and the quality of entertainment - pardon me, education - inside was less important than the fact of being inside.) And they're insulated from bad outcomes by money and connections. Besides, I'd be seriously surprised to learn that any of them planned to get a STEM degree. So, considering that they're all going for "soft" majors from which they never plan to mine any actual knowledge or training, does the mismatch matter?
This isn't an academic question for me - no pun intended. The goal of our oldest was a school with a highly rated undergraduate business/finance program, and he's finishing up there now. He's been offered a great job (better than any I ever had in the workaday world) after graduation. And I vividly remember his rants in high school about the "cycle of advantage."
Now, we're not Lori Laughlin-rich or anything... but because he was our oldest and we were therefore constantly experimenting and improvising, we succumbed to the rants and paid for a private SAT tutor and a program that purported to help him hone his "story" for college essays. I have no idea whether these things did a bit of good; his grades and his first-draft essay would have gotten him into the school he attends. But even if he had been marginal for that school, and even if the money we spent on these potential advantage-builders had had a direct payoff in admission to the school, what would have been the risk of bad outcomes for him, with a mere undergraduate finance degree on the line? What about the disadvantaged kid who also "only" wants a business degree but knows that a business degree from, say, Texas A&M will mean more in the employment world than one from Sac State (my alma mater)?
That's where it gets dicey. And frustrating. That disadvantaged kid isn't wrong. She might be starting out without the money my kid's family has, but if she graduates from a higher-tier school she can gain exactly the same connections my kid did, and get exactly the same first job. And with a less demanding degree program than STEM, the phrase "if she graduates" takes on a much less ominous tone. Who can't get a business degree? I'm not saying business is easy, believe me; but I am saying a business degree is, compared with even a lowly civil engineering degree. And the business degree, not demonstrated business acumen, is the requirement for those initial employment opportunities. After that first job, her acumen either will or will not carry her the rest of the way. Business degrees don't do much, if anything, to weed out those who won't ultimately be good at business.
So now there's a class-action suit taking shape against the universities that have been revealed so far to have compromised their admissions process. It's Stanford students suing; they say that these other schools' unethical behavior deflates the value of their degrees. A Stanford degree "means something" because Stanford, like the rest, is relentlessly self-promoting, actively courts big donors, attracts high-level research by being able to foot the bill for it because of said big donors, admits only the "best and brightest" high school graduates (and now we know, if we didn't before, the dilution of that phrase) but then coddles them carefully, refusing to let them fail because if they fail, the school's reputation falters.
No, really. I know a guy who went to Stanford and, suspicious at the low level of rigor he was experiencing, said he tried to fail his classes. He not only passed, but got B's. Yes, he was smart, and yes, they were non-STEM classes - but even affirmative action students, whether traditional or moneyed, will have to meet some standard to get into a school like Stanford. So the big question is, what is that standard really? What is a Stanford degree worth, really?
I suppose I should be happy that this scandal, in the longer term, may result in a real leveling of the academic playing field: high-tier universities are being revealed as the diploma mills they've always been, only different from the Evil For-Profit diploma mills in the amount you have to pay for that sheepskin. (And heck, you used to have to build a new library or something! The universities must be falling on hard times.) But it's profoundly depressing to see not only what some parents will stoop to in order to keep their kids away from the great unwashed, but what supposedly great universities will stoop to to get these absolutely normal, but rich and connected, kids inside.
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