Race vs SES-based Affirmative Action: Part 2
Should affirmative action at highly selective universities be based more on race or socioeconomic status?
Research by Saul Geiser, a research associate at UC Berkeley who has directly contributed to designing the University of California’s admissions process, shows that race was a stronger predictor of SAT scores among Californian UC applicants than socioeconomic status (SES) or parental education (Geiser, 2015). Another source corroborates this finding. At every parental income level, the authors find, whites score significantly higher than blacks on the SAT. For example, the median scores for those with family incomes less than $10,000 is 488 (reading) and 505 (math) for whites versus 398 and 395 for blacks. Since there are also 3.5 million white 18 to 24-year-olds under the poverty line and 1.5 million poor blacks of the same age, a system incorporating test scores and SES, but not race, would give many of the spots at elite universities currently being occupied by minority students to white ones (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2007). Therefore, if the purpose of affirmative action is to foster diversity, it would be logical for colleges to prioritize admitting minority students.

The existing affirmative action system
in place at many colleges and universities across the United States is well-known
to be based on race. Originally designed in hopes of making amends for decades
of racial injustices, affirmative action was enacted in 1961 to encourage
corporations to hire more minority employees. Colleges wanted to be considered
progressive and thus incorporated affirmative action into their admissions to
help restore racial justice. However, today, their objective in utilizing
affirmative action is to prioritize admitting students from diverse backgrounds
so the students can share their perspectives and learn from others’
thinking (Shafer, 2018). The affirmative action system at highly selective colleges should
continue to be based on race, because giving preferences to minority students will
both create ethnic diversity on campus and aid those who have historically been
discriminated against.


Research by Saul Geiser, a research associate at UC Berkeley who has directly contributed to designing the University of California’s admissions process, shows that race was a stronger predictor of SAT scores among Californian UC applicants than socioeconomic status (SES) or parental education (Geiser, 2015). Another source corroborates this finding. At every parental income level, the authors find, whites score significantly higher than blacks on the SAT. For example, the median scores for those with family incomes less than $10,000 is 488 (reading) and 505 (math) for whites versus 398 and 395 for blacks. Since there are also 3.5 million white 18 to 24-year-olds under the poverty line and 1.5 million poor blacks of the same age, a system incorporating test scores and SES, but not race, would give many of the spots at elite universities currently being occupied by minority students to white ones (The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 2007). Therefore, if the purpose of affirmative action is to foster diversity, it would be logical for colleges to prioritize admitting minority students.
An additional study conducted by Alice Xiang and Donald Rubin, both education researchers
from Ivy League schools, proposes that SES-based affirmative action would
require sacrificing racial diversity. In their paper, they argue that
SES is not a proxy for race, and minority students will be at a disadvantage in
SES-based affirmative action because they tend to score lower on standardized
tests than whites and Asian-Americans of similar income levels (Xiang, Rubin, 2015). At
highly selective law schools in the United States, a simulated implementation
of the authors’ simulated SES system significantly decreased the proportion of
black students. While this research was conducted only at law schools and thus
cannot necessarily be extrapolated to undergraduate admissions, it does suggest
that race and SES are not directly related, meaning that the demographics of
colleges would be altered under a different affirmative action system. Therefore,
in order to maintain racial diversity on highly selective universities’
campuses, the affirmative action system should stay the way that it is.
Works Cited
Geiser, Saul. THE
GROWING CORRELATION BETWEEN RACE AND SAT SCORES: New Findings from California
by Saul Geiser. UC Berkeley Center for Studies in Higher Education, 1 Oct.
2015,
cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/growing-correlation-between-race-and-sat-scores-new-findings-california-saul-geiser.
Accessed 12 Sept. 2019.
"Income-Based
Affirmative Action Will Do Almost Nothing to Produce Greater Racial Diversity
in Public Schools or in Colleges and Universities." The Journal of
Blacks in Higher Education, no. 56, Summer 2007, p. 20. JSTOR,
www-jstor-org.ez.pausd.org/stable/25073696. Accessed 15 Sept. 2019.
Shafer, Leah. "The
Case for Affirmative Action." Harvard Graduate School of Education,
11 July 2018, www.gse.harvard.edu/news/uk/18/07/case-affirmative-action.
Accessed 23 Sept. 2019.
Strauss, Valerie.
"Actually, we still need affirmative action for African Americans in
college admissions. Here's why." The Washington Post, 2 Aug. 2017,
www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/08/02/actually-we-still-need-affirmative-action-for-african-americans-in-college-admissions-heres-why/.
Accessed 28 Sept. 2019.
Xiang, Alice, and Donald
B. Rubin. "Assessing the Potential Impact of a Nationwide Class-Based
Affirmative Action System." Statistical Science, vol. 30, no. 3,
Aug. 2015, pp. 297-327. JSTOR,
www-jstor-org.ez.pausd.org/stable/24780657. Accessed 16 Sept. 2019.
Comments
Post a Comment