UCLA violates California's ban on racial discrimination
California law (Proposition 209) prohibits the use of race as a factor in, among other things, admission to public universities. If this article in the New York Times Magazine by David Leonhardt is accurate, UCLA is violating California law. It's doing so by preferring African-American applicants under the guise of preferring low income students. We know that these preferences are racially based because, according to Leonhardt, as low income black admittees rose last year, the overall number of low income admittees fell. In essence, low income African-Americans took slots that previously had gone to low income students of other races (mostly, it seems, Asians). As Leonhardt, a fan of what UCLA has done here, puts it: "Looking at the numbers, it’s hard not to conclude that race was a factor in this year’s admissions decisions."
Leonhardt says that the change in UCLA admissions policy was spearheaded by an alum named Peter Taylor who was appointed to lead a task force to figure out how to increase the admission of black students. Taylor made it clear to Leonhardt that he is indifferent as to whether this involves what he calls "civil disobedience." His approach is to do whatever it takes to increase black admissions. If a court objects, "You say, ‘Mea culpa,’ and you don’t do it anymore.”
In violating the law, UCLA is lowering its academic standards (in fact, it's the lowering of standards for members of one race that constitutes the violation). According to Leonhardt, the average SAT score for admitted African-American students fell 45 points this year, to 1,738 (out of 2,400 -- the new SAT adds a writing component). Leonhardt doesn't say whether the old average for African-American admittees, 1783, was already significantly lower than the overall for members of other races, but a glance at my daughter's 2006 guide to colleges indicates that it was.
In fact, granting preferences to low income black students, instead of simply preferring blacks regardless of income, will tend to lower the objective credentials of admitted black students. That's because (a) an extraneous factor has been introduced and (b) there's some evidence that low income blacks score lower on tests than middle and upper income blacks.
In any case, it's against the law to grant an income based preference to black students but not to students of other races -- if that still matters.
Via Real Clear Politics.
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