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What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

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Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#91

Post by dragonwriter »

T2_t2 wrote: post #88
dragonwriter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a non-american, your obsession with race confuses me for one very specific reason: it is all about involvement, and never about achievement. As an American, your comment confuses me for one very specific reason: it doesn't at all reflect the actual dialogue about race I've experienced in this country (from all sides of the dialogue), in which very much is about achievement. > It is weird to me that the US has ma…

> Attending formal education at a higher level is, itself, an outcome. See, there it is again - SHOWING UP. You didn't say "getting a degree" or "graduating to a high paying job" or even "putting themselves in a position to succeed in life" - simply "attending". That's the problem - merely attending isn't enough to address any historical disadvantage other than "spent at least a day on a college campus as a student".…

> See, there it is again - SHOWING UP.

Whatever you call it, it is in fact an outcome, and one with a demonstrated influence on other outcomes of interest, so its one that it make sense to target as a means of targeting those other outcomes.

> You didn't say "getting a degree" or "graduating to a high paying job" or even "putting themselves in a position to succeed in life"

Incorrect. I didn't mention the first. I did mention future income as something that increased attendance of formal education is demonstrated to affect, even short of getting a degree.

I didn't mention the third because it is a fuzzy concept, of which the second (which, again, I did mention) is a concrete operationalization.

> That's the problem - merely attending isn't enough to address any historical disadvantage other than "spent at least a day on a college campus as a student".

You assert this, but there is considerable evidence that further educational attainment, even at the level between "graduated high school" and "some college", has positive influence on other outcomes, including future income and one's childrens' future outcomes, including their own level of educational attainment.

> In a list of historical disadvantages, this is just above "has used a ski lift at least once" in importance.

I am aware of no evidence supporting that the difference between "some ski lift use" and "no ski lift use", controlling for other known contributing factors, has any significant positive contribution to one's future income or other important outcome measures, either one's own or one's children. So, no, I don't think this is correct, at all.

> Attendance does not address true disadvantage unless the other three also improve

While I'd want graduation and other factors that assume graduation to improve as well, the actual evidence is inconsistent with the claim that attendance without graduation has no effect on reducing disadvantage.

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#92

Post by kuschku »

curryst wrote: post #73
T2_t2 wrote: post #31

As a non-american, your obsession with race confuses me for one very specific reason: it is all about involvement, and never about achievement. I wonder if this is a consequence of the "every kid gets a trophy" phenomenon, where merely showing up is seen as the key. Not once in that article were graduation rates from colleges, or post-college outcomes, mentioned. Surely, that is the most important factor in improving…

> it is all about involvement, and never about achievement. The ultimate goal is achievement, but that's much harder to achieve without creating more borderline racist policies. Unless you're going to adopt affirmative action for grades as well, and punish professors for fair grading, it's hard to affect those rates. > the US has made the goal to close it in opportunity, assuming (hoping?) that will improve outcomes…

But how does putting people with worse grades in college help?

It doesn't fix the actual issue: access to quality primary and secondary education.

If a person going to a school with mostly minorities and underpaid staff never heard of complex numbers, then their math study won't be successful, no matter if they need a 3.5 or 3.0 GPA to attend.

Sure, attendance rate goes up, but the outcome is the same.

You need to target the roots of the issue, not the outcome.

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#93

Post by tomp »

dragonwriter wrote: post #91
T2_t2 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Attending formal education at a higher level is, itself, an outcome. See, there it is again - SHOWING UP. You didn't say "getting a degree" or "graduating to a high paying job" or even "putting themselves in a position to succeed in life" - simply "attending". That's the problem - merely attending isn't enough to address any historical disadvantage other than "spent at least a day on a college campus as a student".…

> See, there it is again - SHOWING UP. Whatever you call it, it is in fact an outcome, and one with a demonstrated influence on other outcomes of interest, so its one that it make sense to target as a means of targeting those other outcomes. > You didn't say "getting a degree" or "graduating to a high paying job" or even "putting themselves in a position to succeed in life" Incorrect. I didn't mention the first. I di…

> Whatever you call it, it is in fact an outcome, and one with a demonstrated influence on other outcomes of interest

Maybe, but if you optimize only this metric (enrollment) while disregarding all others (graduation), then you'll soon get ineffective results and the "demonstrated" influence will no longer hold true - simply enroll minorities, regardless of their knowledge or intelligence, and make sure most fail the next year. Will you be satisfied? Will it still correlate with the desired outcome?

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#94

Post by tomp »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54
dghf wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article claims minority (presumably non-Asian) enrollment drops 23% when AA is banned. The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. That assumes that without AA the system would be meritocratic, and not biased in favour of people from particular backgrounds.

Yes, that's because building systems like this is pretty easy. Just use a point system based entirely on grades/extracurriculars/SAT/etc. For example, google the old U-Mich point system - it was entirely meritocratic except for the +1.0 boost to GPA given to non-Asian minorities, a much smaller alumni preference and some "women in engineering" boost.

The problem is that colleges don't rely only on SAT/grades (at least the elite colleges). Extracurriculars are, obviously, very non-meritocratic - doing extracurricular activities is not really correlated with how good you are at them (or at anything else), but rather with how much time you have and how much your parents can afford to pay for your activities.

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#95

Post by tomp »

taco_emoji wrote: post #61
yummyfajitas wrote: post #33

The article presents an interesting fact. The article claims minority (presumably non-Asian) enrollment drops 23% when AA is banned. The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. I was previously told it's racist to believe things like this. The article also begs another question: “The Court expects that 25 years…

> The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. Your curiously unstated but obviously logically necessary premise that non-AA systems are already magically meritocratic is what's racist. Hope that clears it up for you.

I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better".

Obviously, in average whites are better than blacks (and Asians are better than whites). All test scores prove that. That's what yummifajitas is referring to when he says "meritocracy".

Obviously blacks have been severely disadvantages throughout their lives (before college), so they aren't as good as they could be (again in average). Therefore, you're saying that we should accept more blacks, who could be just as good as whites are.

Personally, I agree with yummifajitas' definition of the word "meritocratic", but I think that favoring the disadvantaged is a better outcome for the society than a purely meritocratic system. However, I also think that favoring (affirmative action) should be non-racist, but instead targeting the disadvantaged people/families (regardless of their race); furthermore, I believe that the effect of such policies would be orders of magnitude greater if they were favoring people waaaay before university.

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#96

Post by dragonwriter »

tomp wrote: post #95
taco_emoji wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system. Your curiously unstated but obviously logically necessary premise that non-AA systems are already magically meritocratic is what's racist. Hope that clears it up for you.

I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better". Obviously, in average whites are better than blacks (and Asians are better than whites). All test scores prove that. That's what yummifajitas is referring to when he says "meritocracy". Obviously blacks have been severely disadvantages throughout their live…

> I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better".

I think both are using "who is better", the problem is that there "who is better" is very vague: better in what way?

Claims to "meritocracy" only have substantial meaning with a concrete definition of "merit", and while yummyfajitas is happy to assert that but for AA college admissions process are certainly meritocratic, there is no identification of the merit that the combination of measures used is supposedly assessing, against which one could evaluate the claim that using those measures without considering race is, in fact, meritocratic.

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#97

Post by rmxt »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #87
anigbrowl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person having bad parents and therefore having bad grades has less merit than a person with good parents and good grades. So your basic position is that lucky people are better than unlucky people (since nobody gets to select their parents) so that social outcomes are largely a matter of predestination. Well, at least this saves me the bother of even temporarily taking you seriously in any topic in the future. No d…

Yes, some people are better than others due to luck. For example, some people were strangled by their umbilical cord and born retarded, others weren't. This sad fact of life doesn't mean that choosing non-retards as nuclear physicists contradicts meritocracy.

It's even sadder that you need to draw an absurd comparison to the imaginary instance of retarded people attempting break into nuclear physics in order to frame a discussion about the very real implications of race, socioeconomic status, affirmative action and educational achievement.

Is it your implication that society shouldn't care about performance gaps between segments of the population because those other segments are incorrigible? Much like retards trying to perform nuclear physics, right?

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#98

Post by anigbrowl »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #87
anigbrowl wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person having bad parents and therefore having bad grades has less merit than a person with good parents and good grades. So your basic position is that lucky people are better than unlucky people (since nobody gets to select their parents) so that social outcomes are largely a matter of predestination. Well, at least this saves me the bother of even temporarily taking you seriously in any topic in the future. No d…

Yes, some people are better than others due to luck. For example, some people were strangled by their umbilical cord and born retarded, others weren't. This sad fact of life doesn't mean that choosing non-retards as nuclear physicists contradicts meritocracy.

Perhaps in future technology will advance tot he point that we can give you an empathy transplant, and you'll realize how glaringly obvious your rhetorical fallacies are to others. Most people would agree that 'merit' is not a scalar quality best measured by mathematical ability, notwithstanding your enjoyable position at the extreme right of that distribution.

Even in quantitative endeavors, we do not magically have access to inherently reliable objective measures. The example I use to remind myself of this is a childhood friend whom I consistently outscored over a period of several years in language, math and other subjects - but who could consistently beat me in a wide variety of pure-strategy board games. Unfortunately the standardized testing regime we grew up with was no good at measuring things like strategic ability, and so he ended up being relegated to a 'lower' academic stream and discouraged from pursuing a university education.

Had we grown up in a country where chess ability is more highly valued (as a competitive endeavor as in the US, or as a proxy for strategic ability as it is in Russia), then his academic and/or career prospects might have been very different. but in a system where strategic ability is not selected for, he was classified as below average and no doubt enjoyed fewer opportunities as a result. Between one person who is better at calculus and another that's better at chess, which is more meritorious?

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#99

Post by tomp »

dragonwriter wrote: post #96
tomp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better". Obviously, in average whites are better than blacks (and Asians are better than whites). All test scores prove that. That's what yummifajitas is referring to when he says "meritocracy". Obviously blacks have been severely disadvantages throughout their live…

> I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better". I think both are using "who is better", the problem is that there "who is better" is very vague: better in what way ? Claims to "meritocracy" only have substantial meaning with a concrete definition of "merit", and while yummyfajitas is happy to assert th…

Hm... Aren't SATs widely used for college admissions (not exclusively, of course, but if they were, I'd say the system is totally meritocratic)? I'm not saying it's the best indication of the kind of merit required to excel at the university, but it's probably one of the best we have (and definitely a better one than race or disadvantage - remember, we're favoring the disadvantaged so that they can improve despite them being worse, not because we believe SATs wrongly assess them as being worse (although there is some research that claims SATs systematically underscore women)). Also, in which way (relevant to university admissions or completion) are blacks better than whites/Asians?

Re: What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions

#100

Post by dragonwriter »

tomp wrote: post #99
dragonwriter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better". I think both are using "who is better", the problem is that there "who is better" is very vague: better in what way ? Claims to "meritocracy" only have substantial meaning with a concrete definition of "merit", and while yummyfajitas is happy to assert th…

Hm... Aren't SATs widely used for college admissions (not exclusively, of course, but if they were, I'd say the system is totally meritocratic)? I'm not saying it's the best indication of the kind of merit required to excel at the university, but it's probably one of the best we have (and definitely a better one than race or disadvantage - remember, we're favoring the disadvantaged so that they can improve despite th…

> Hm... Aren't SATs widely used for college admissions

Yes.

> (not exclusively, of course, but if they were, I'd say the system is totally meritocratic)?

Wait, what? Unless you make that tautologically true by defining the merit you are trying to assess in admission as "SAT scores", I don't see why you would.

> I'm not saying it's the best indication of the kind of merit required to excel at the university, but it's probably one of the best we have

Its not. For predicting college performance, its a very weak predictor of college grades, or even first-year grades (weaker than high school grades, class rank, or even just the high school you attended), and, to the extent its useful, at least one study has indicated that its predictive power is almost entirely explained by the degree to which it serves as a proxy measure for the high school that the student attended, and that within-school variation in SAT scores lacks predictive power.

Also, there is evidence that the relationship between SAT scores (and the same is true of other measures, like GPA) and college performance is not consistent across various axes of demographic variation (race, income, etc.) -- I've cited one analysis on this elsewhere in the thread.

> remember, we're favoring the disadvantaged so that they can improve despite them being worse, not because we believe SATs wrongly assess them as being worse

One of the many reasons for admissions preference for traditionally disadvantage groups is advocated is that many of the measures used as signals to admission disadvantage those from traditionally disadvantaged groups, where the measure reflects disadvantage of circumstance rather than lack of merit.

> Also, in which way (relevant to university admissions or completion) are blacks better than whites/Asians?

I never said they were.

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