The Harvard admissions lawsuit

The lawsuit over race-conscious admissions models has led to discussions of other factors that lead to higher or lower probabilities of acceptance to highly competitive colleges.

These other factors include legacy admissions:"Bob Dole, the Department of Education, and the Nebulous Fight Against Legacy Admissions"

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/10/18/legacy-admissions/

...and athletes: "College Sports Are Affirmative Action for Rich White Students"

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/10/college-sports-benefits-white-students/573688/

...in addition to the race vs. socioeconomic status debate: "Harvard Is Challenged on Whether Socioeconomic Status Should Replace Race as Admissions Factor

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Is-Challenged-on/244881


I started thinking about the purpose of their admissions formulas (and missions of their institution) vs. the forces of factors such as college rankings, resources for financial aid, and current and future alumni donor bases.

As forces of power, selective colleges' admissions criteria can influence actions of society, depending on what increases probabilities of admissions. But the institutions are also trying to optimize their financial resources and prestige. For Harvard, their admissions process has done a great job at the latter. It will be interesting to see what changes they make to admissions after this case, and how it influences society and Harvard's status.


What are you trying to do, kill the "Pocahontas" thread?

Just joking, sprout, though you may indeed find the last five pages there of interest. The discussion took a turn to this lawsuit. It could probably use a thread of its own like this.


Thanks -- I actually did start off there.  Then I figured I'd start a thread destined to get little response since the Harvard admissions process is probably a more interesting topic when it can be cherry-picked to defend tangential points on another discussion.


As a parent of a relatively recently rejected Harvard applicant, I have mixed feelings about the “mission,” as you mentioned, and its influence on society. On transcript and test scores, he was right there. But he’s not what you’d call a striver, or “effervescent,” and it showed in his essays and probably in his interview. I doubt it was a hard call in Cambridge.

So I can understand Asian-Americans’ complaints about subjective bias when it comes to evaluating an applicant’s personality traits. While they believe Harvard holds the Tiger Mom stereotype against them, I sense (in my own subjective way) another side of the same coin: an underappreciation of the lower-key type who doesn’t like calling attention to himself. If both of those are in fact Harvard’s judgments and society takes a cue from them — let’s all accept the Ivy League’s idea of a “positive personality” — I think that’s a mistake.

How complaints about this small, personality-driven part of Harvard’s process became a legal attack on race-conscious admissions with potentially nationwide implications is another matter.

[Edited.]


The Ivy League schools have a long history of exclusive admissions.  I assumed this but was still kind of shocked when I read Jerome Karabel's excellent 2006 book,

The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton

https://www.amazon.com/Chosen-History-Admission-Exclusion-Princeton/dp/061877355X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1540351094&sr=8-1&keywords=karabel+the+chosen

A landmark, revelatory history of admissions from 1900 to today—and how it shaped a nation

The competition for a spot in the Ivy League—widely considered the ticket to success—is fierce and getting fiercer. But the admissions policies of elite universities have long been both tightly controlled and shrouded in secrecy. In The Chosen, the Berkeley sociologist Jerome Karabel lifts the veil on a century of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. How did the policies of our elite schools evolve? Whom have they let in and why? And what do those policies say about America?

A grand narrative brimming with insights, The Chosen provides a lens through which to examine some of the main events and movements of America in the twentieth century—from immigration restriction and the Great Depression to the dropping of the atomic bomb and the launching of Sputnik, from the Cold War to the triumph of the market ethos.

Many of Karabel’s findings are astonishing: the admission of blacks into the Ivy League wasn’t an idealistic response to the civil rights movement but a fearful reaction to inner-city riots; Yale and Princeton decided to accept women only after realizing that they were losing men to colleges (such as Harvard and Stanford) that had begun accepting “the second sex”; Harvard had a systematic quota on “intellectuals” until quite recently; and discrimination against Asian Americans in the 1980s mirrored the treatment of Jews earlier in the century.

Drawing on decades of meticulous research, Karabel shines a light on the ever-changing definition of “merit” in college admissions, showing how it shaped—and was shaped by—the country at large. Full of colorful characters, from FDR and Woodrow Wilson to Kingman Brewster and Archibald Cox, The Chosen charts the century-long battle over opportunity—and offers a new and deeply original perspective on American history.

An interesting take on the power/influence of these highly selective private universities... and their money:

Elite Universities Are Entrenching a Privileged Class. An Endowment Tax Can Fix That.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/why-conservatives-are-turning-elite-universities/573592/

"...conservatives would still have good reason to cast a wary eye on the most richly endowed universities in the country: Their power and influence is unbefitting a democratic society. And more prosaically, it is not clear that these institutions are generating public benefits commensurate with the extraordinary public privileges they enjoy, including, most of all, their favorable tax treatment. These are, to my mind, the issues conservative critics of academic elitism ought to focus on—not racial preferences, which aim to make elitism more palatable, nor even the spread of leftist orthodoxy on elite campuses, which can be understood as a form of ritualistic self-flagellation by people who have no interest in surrendering their elite status, but rather the fact that we as a country are actively subsidizing institutions that, in their current form, have noxious spillover effects."


If you polled Americans and asked if they thought Harvard is "elitist," I imagine the vast majority would say "yes." If you asked if Harvard should admit more Asians, the same people would say "no."

Seems that when people talk or think about Harvard, Yale, Princeton and so on, they picture undergraduates from wealthy families walking around leafy campuses and interviewing for cushy jobs on Wall Street and in Washington. But it's important to remember that these places, along with our largest public research universities, are where cures for diseases are discovered, where climate change has been identified and studied, and where everything that goes into creating appliances and cars and trains and planes and computers and technology was first learned. State funding for public universities has been on decline for years now, partly (but not exclusively) leading to the huge rises in tuition - decisions made by legislators who we elect.

So while some and perhaps many of the charges of elitism in the Ivies have some validity, I think they also reflect the country's overall attitudes towards higher education, which are skewed by unreasonable biases that it's all a bunch of "elites" strolling on campuses and it has nothing to do with the "real" world. Trump gets that and mentions his Ivy education very sparingly, only when he perceives it works to his advantage, and certainly not at his rallies.


The strategy of charging Student A twice as much as Student B is a problematic way to attempt to equalize opportunity. Especially with regard to tax-paying residents of a state attending their own state university, I think tuition should be very low for all.  I hope there won't be an endowment tax partly for that reason.  For public universities, it would be better to draw from an endowment to equalize opportunity, than to make college so expensive for middle class families.


apple44 said:
If you polled Americans and asked if they thought Harvard is "elitist," I imagine the vast majority would say "yes." If you asked if Harvard should admit more Asians, the same people would say "no."
Seems that when people talk or think about Harvard, Yale, Princeton and so on, they picture undergraduates from wealthy families walking around leafy campuses and interviewing for cushy jobs on Wall Street and in Washington. But it's important to remember that these places, along with our largest public research universities, are where cures for diseases are discovered, where climate change has been identified and studied, and where everything that goes into creating appliances and cars and trains and planes and computers and technology was first learned. State funding for public universities has been on decline for years now, partly (but not exclusively) leading to the huge rises in tuition - decisions made by legislators who we elect.

So while some and perhaps many of the charges of elitism in the Ivies have some validity, I think they also reflect the country's overall attitudes towards higher education, which are skewed by unreasonable biases that it's all a bunch of "elites" strolling on campuses and it has nothing to do with the "real" world. Trump gets that and mentions his Ivy education very sparingly, only when he perceives it works to his advantage, and certainly not at his rallies.

Racial preferences poll extremely badly  when voters have had the opportunity to disallow them they have chosen to do so, including in liberal-leaning states like California, Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Washington.  Even though California has become even more liberal and non-white since Prop 209 was passed and the California electorate can do anything it wants in a referendum, there has been no referendum to overturn it.

 Although in the abstract American want diversity and sentiment is complex, when you boil it down, Americans do not want racial background to be a factor in admissions.

I would argue that opposition to race-based affirmative action is one of the Republican Party's most popular planks and one that finds agreement among many moderates and even liberals.  Indeed, Richard Kahlenberg is a centrist-liberal and he just testified against Harvard in the SFFA lawsuit.  In fact, if you just Google "liberal criticism of affirmative action" you'll find plenty of it.  

The fact that liberal criticism exists of affirmative action doesn't automatically make it correct, but it underscores that opposition to race-based affirmative action transcends our usual ideological divides.

If you asked if Harvard should admit more Asians, the same people would say "no."

Where on earth are you getting this?

I'm unaware of any polling specifically about the prospect of elite colleges admitting more Asians, but the objectors to race-based affirmative action realize that ending race-based affirmative action will mean exactly that.

You should try looking up reactions to Bill DeBlasio's plan to slash Asian enrollment in Stuyvesant in conservative magazines and people are absolutely horrified by it.  

EG

https://www.city-journal.org/search?searchterms=Stuyvesant

For for down-to-earth conservativism, the NYPost, but it has run impassioned op-eds against DeBlasio's plan because it is so blatantly anti-Asian.  (I could not find a NYPost op-ed in favor of DeBlasio's plan)

https://nypost.com/2014/07/19/why-nycs-push-to-change-school-admissions-will-punish-poor-asians/

but it's important to remember that these places, along with our largest public research universities, are where cures for diseases are discovered, where climate change has been identified and studied, and where everything that goes into creating appliances and cars and trains and planes and computers and technology was first learned. 

The above is all true, but it doesn't have anything to do with affirmative action being race-based or SES-based.


apple44 said:

So while some and perhaps many of the charges of elitism in the Ivies have some validity, I think they also reflect the country's overall attitudes towards higher education, which are skewed by unreasonable biases that it's all a bunch of "elites" strolling on campuses and it has nothing to do with the "real" world.

Similarly, it may be that in Reihan Salam’s world parents are “locked ... in an intensified, zero-sum competition for access to selective universities in the U.S.,” but for every high school graduate who applies to Harvard there are roughly a hundred who don’t.

Whatever the flaws in their selection practices and economic diversity, elite universities do attract dynamic concentations of extraordinary students and extraordinary faculty. You don’t have to be in thrall to elitism to respect that.


Runner_Guy said:

I'm unaware of any polling specifically about the prospect of elite colleges admitting more Asians, but the objectors to race-based affirmative action realize that ending race-based affirmative action will mean exactly that.

They also realize, or should, that it will mean more whites in a lot of other colleges and universities.


Runner_Guy said:

Even though California has become even more liberal and non-white since Prop 209 was passed and the California electorate can do anything it wants in a referendum, there has been no referendum to overturn it. 

 California’s Asian-American population is double the African-American population, and politically well organized. Again, go figure.


Runner_Guy said:
 Indeed, Richard Kahlenberg is a centrist-liberal and he just testified against Harvard in the SFFA lawsuit.  In fact, if you just Google "liberal criticism of affirmative action" you'll find plenty of it.  

While Kahlenberg is testifying against Harvard, he was (1) hired by SFFA to run simulations of different admissions weightings; and (2) It seems all his simulations indicate that fewer African Americans will be admitted to Harvard if they use economic indicators instead of race. It's just that he thinks that a reduction in AfAm students admitted would be OK. 

My guess is that what will happen, as the racial achievement gap on standardized assessments are well known, is that using an economic indicator will be helpful in finding high-performing African American students of low economic status, but will miss the high-performing African American students of moderate and higher economic status who are more of the demographic currently admitted.  

Considering race as well as economic status would allow Harvard not to reduce their proportion of admitted African American students, by allowing them to select students from a broader cross-section of economic backgrounds.  If we go to a purely economic indicator without considerations of race, Harvard students will interact primarily with 'poor Black students'. Which would be antithetical to the point of trying to have a diverse student body for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of our society.



sprout said:


Runner_Guy said:
 Indeed, Richard Kahlenberg is a centrist-liberal and he just testified against Harvard in the SFFA lawsuit.  In fact, if you just Google "liberal criticism of affirmative action" you'll find plenty of it.  
While Kahlenberg is testifying against Harvard, he was (1) hired by SFFA to run simulations of different admissions weightings; and (2) It seems all his simulations indicate that fewer African Americans will be admitted to Harvard if they use economic indicators instead of race. It's just that he thinks that a reduction in AfAm students admitted would be OK. 
My guess is that what will happen, as the racial achievement gap on standardized assessments are well known, is that using an economic indicator will be helpful in finding high-performing African American students of low economic status, but will miss the high-performing African American students of moderate and higher economic status who are more of the demographic currently admitted.  
Considering race as well as economic status would allow Harvard not to reduce their proportion of admitted African American students, by allowing them to select students from a broader cross-section of economic backgrounds.  If we go to a purely economic indicator without considerations of race, Harvard students will interact primarily with 'poor Black students'. Which would be antithetical to the point of trying to have a diverse student body for the purpose of gaining a better understanding of our society.

Kahlenberg became a critic of race-based affirmative action prior to this lawsuit, so he isn't acting as a hired gun researcher to manufacture data for the SFFA claims.

Kahlenberg estimates that the number of African-American students at Harvard would be unchanged under SES-affirmative action because he also wants Harvard to drop legacy preferences, Z-list preferences, and Dean's list preferences.  If Harvard were forced to drop race-based preferences and it still wanted to have a "critical mass" of African-American students, it would find itself under much more pressure to eliminate or scale back its preferences for the children of the rich & powerful, since those preferences are anti-black.

Considering race as well as economic status would allow Harvard not to reduce their proportion of admitted African American students, by allowing them to select students from a broader cross-section of economic backgrounds.  

Broader cross section of economic backgrounds?  

I think what you are saying here is an implicit defense of black applicants having a parallel admissions process, which is the whole controversy with race-based affirmative action.

If replacing race-based affirmative action with SES-based affirmative action resulted in black students being lower-income than black students are today, then it would be doing more to help students who grow up disadvantaged, which I see as a good thing.  It would also more closely align affirmative action with its original intent, which was to remedy for past enslavement & discrimination.


Runner_Guy said:

It would also more closely align affirmative action with its original intent, which was to remedy for past enslavement & discrimination.

In case anyone reads “past” as modifying “discrimination” as well as “enslavement,” here’s an excerpt from the 1973 federal guidelines that originally applied affirmative action to college admissions: “Even in the absence of such prior discrimination, a recipient in administering a program may take affirmative action to overcome the effects of conditions which resulted in limiting participation by persons of a particular race, color or national origin.“


Runner_Guy said:
I think what you are saying here is an implicit defense of black applicants having a parallel admissions process, which is the whole controversy with race-based affirmative action.
If replacing race-based affirmative action with SES-based affirmative action resulted in black students being lower-income than black students are today, then it would be doing more to help students who grow up disadvantaged, which I see as a good thing.  It would also more closely align affirmative action with its original intent, which was to remedy for past enslavement & discrimination.

If their goal is a 'diverse' student body by areas of expertise, backgrounds, and experience, it seems that admissions may be better thought of as having several hundred parallel admissions processes -- one for each category of what the school wishes to include. 

For example, athletes and legacy already have parallel admissions processes. Gender also can result in parallel admissions processes (a female with high mathematics performance is more likely to be admitted if they indicate plans for a mathematics/engineering major (which has fewer females) than if they indicate plans for a psychology major). In other words, the probability of admissions changes based on the pool of applicants available for a specific category (or intersection of categories) to be filled.

This case is attempting to make one specific single category, race, illegal to use, out of the hundreds of implicit categories that currently exist for parallel admissions processes.


sprout said:

This case is attempting to make one specific single category, race, illegal to use, out of the hundreds of implicit categories that currently exist for parallel admissions processes.

 I’ve yet to hear a reason beyond the idea that race, unlike other categories, is immutable and just an ordinary fact of life — until college admissions, when it’s given outsize importance at the expense of more economic diversity.

Is that a fair summary, Runner_Guy?


DaveSchmidt said:


sprout said:

This case is attempting to make one specific single category, race, illegal to use, out of the hundreds of implicit categories that currently exist for parallel admissions processes.
 I’ve yet to hear a reason beyond the idea that race, unlike other categories, is immutable and just an ordinary fact of life — until college admissions, when it’s given outsize importance at the expense of more economic diversity.
Is that a fair summary, Runner_Guy?

 Yes, this is fair, although, with the caveats that Latino status is not a racial classification, since a "Latino" can be black, Indian, white, or even Asian and that an applicant who has multi-racial ancestry can choose the racial classification that will give the biggest advantage in admissions.  

I see no parallel at all between racial preferences and preferences for applicants who are distinguished artistically, athletically, in leadership etc, because those are cultivated skills.  Perhaps an applicant was born with an innate talent and perhaps an applicant had parents who really fostered that skill, but still, those are talents that someone develops through hard work.  

By contrast, belonging to a certain race (or being Latino) isn't something someone achieves.  It's a status something you receive at birth.  It has nothing to do with merit.  

 Doing great in school, being a great athlete, being a great musician etc is an individual achievement.  

I understand that the current justification for race-based affirmative action is that elite colleges need to be racially diverse for the perspective of having diverse viewpoints, but, again, this would be accomplished in a more meaningful way by using SES-based affirmative action.  SES-based affirmative action would, by definition, also be more effective in promoting income mobility.  

I do see a parallel between legacy admissions etc, since that's also just a fact of ancestry.  Legacy admissions should also be eliminated.


At least when it arguably involves some kind of state action, discrimination based on race, national origin, or religion - what the courts have long called "suspect" classifications - are subject to judicial "strict scrutiny."  Other kinds of discrimination - athletic ability, my dad went to the school, we can pay the whole bill without financial aid etc. - are not.  


Runner_Guy said:
I understand that the current justification for race-based affirmative action is that elite colleges need to be racially diverse for the perspective of having diverse viewpoints, but, again, this would be accomplished in a more meaningful way by using SES-based affirmative action.  SES-based affirmative action would, by definition, also be more effective in promoting income mobility.  


1. What about the use of gender as a category in considerations for acceptance in some majors?

2. Why not have SES and race as independent categories in consideration for acceptance to build a student body that is diverse in both of these aspects?


Runner_Guy said:



Racial preferences poll extremely badly  when voters have had the opportunity to disallow them they have chosen to do so, including in liberal-leaning states like California, Michigan, and New Hampshire, and Washington.  

New Hampshire is not a "liberal-leaning" State.

"Live Free or Die"


Does Catholic University of America have the right to favor Catholics?

Does Liberty University have the right to favor Evangelical Christians?

I would guess so but if anyone actually knows the law respecting this I'd like to know.


Runner_Guy said:

Yes, this is fair, although, with the caveats that Latino status is not a racial classification, since a "Latino" can be black, Indian, white, or even Asian and that an applicant who has multi-racial ancestry can choose the racial classification that will give the biggest advantage in admissions.  

What's your fair summary of the counterargument? You say you understand "that the current justification for race-based affirmative action is that elite colleges need to be racially diverse for the perspective of having diverse viewpoints." Anything else?


sprout said:


Runner_Guy said:
I understand that the current justification for race-based affirmative action is that elite colleges need to be racially diverse for the perspective of having diverse viewpoints, but, again, this would be accomplished in a more meaningful way by using SES-based affirmative action.  SES-based affirmative action would, by definition, also be more effective in promoting income mobility.  


1. What about the use of gender as a category in considerations for acceptance in some majors?
2. Why not have SES and race as independent categories in consideration for acceptance to build a student body that is diverse in both of these aspects?

 Or Gender as a category when trying to create more gender diversity in colleges, something that is not happening now.  Most colleges are close to 70/30 Females to Males, and whatever the reason for that,  some institutions are actually recruiting males in the hope that one day there can be closer to a 50/50 gender balance.   Not sure how realistic that is.  But where does gender fall in this?



DaveSchmidt said:


Runner_Guy said:

Yes, this is fair, although, with the caveats that Latino status is not a racial classification, since a "Latino" can be black, Indian, white, or even Asian and that an applicant who has multi-racial ancestry can choose the racial classification that will give the biggest advantage in admissions.  
What's your fair summary of the counterargument? You say you understand "that the current justification for race-based affirmative action is that elite colleges need to be racially diverse for the perspective of having diverse viewpoints." Anything else?

 Meaning the counterargument in favor of race-based affirmative action? 

I would say that the argument for race-based affirmative action is that it is the easiest way to have racially balanced classes at elite colleges. 

The institutions who use racial preferences justify those preferences by saying it creates for more diverse campus experiences.  The most elite colleges and law schools see themselves as stepping stones into the American elite (aka "ruling class") and see themselves as doing something in the public good by helping to launch persons from historically disadvantaged groups into that elite.  

Despite the 1973 federal guidelines that you quoted earlier, I think the original justification for race-based affirmative action was to remedy the effects of past discrimination, hence the Bakke decision outlawing that justification for affirmative action.


Runner_Guy said:

  Meaning the counterargument in favor of race-based affirmative action?

 The counterargument to this summary: Race, unlike other categories, is immutable and just an ordinary fact of life — until college admissions, when it’s given outsize importance at the expense of more economic diversity.

I feel like I've gained some understanding of your side of the discussion. I'm asking what you've grasped from the other side.


FYI... here is a NYTimes article about what would happen if Harvard substituted SES-affirmative action for race-based affirmative action.

Under the plaintiffs’ proposal, which uses data from the class admitted in 2015, the proportion of students the admissions office would consider “disadvantaged” would rise to half the class, from the current 18 percent.

The share of white students admitted would drop to 32 percent from 40 percent, mostly because of the elimination of legacy and other preferences. The Asian-American share of the class would rise to 31 percent from 24 percent, and the share of “Hispanic and other admits” would also go up to 20 percent from 14 percent.

But the African-American share would decline, to 10 percent from 14 percent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/us/harvard-admissions-race.html


LOST said:
Does Catholic University of America have the right to favor Catholics?
Does Liberty University have the right to favor Evangelical Christians?
I would guess so but if anyone actually knows the law respecting this I'd like to know.

An admissions preference on the basis of religion at a private religious institution is not considered a violation of federal law. Title 42 USC Sec. 2000a includes a provision prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin in places of public accommodation. Title 42 USC Sec. 2000c-6 authorizes the Attorney General to act when an individual alleges he has been denied admission at a public university on the basis or race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. The specific inclusion of public universities as being subject to the law and the absence of private universities as being subject to that same statute is significant.  A private religious educational institution may ask the applicant for admission to identify his or her religion, and may grant a preference based on that information. This is part of the First Amendment free exercise right of the religious educational institution.


Runner_Guy said:
FYI... here is a NYTimes article about what would happen if Harvard substituted SES-affirmative action for race-based affirmative action.

 And, just as a historical side note, here is Brennan in his Bakke dissent:

We disagree with the lower courts' conclusion that the Davis program's use of race was unreasonable in light of its objectives. First, as petitioner argues, there are no practical means by which it could achieve its ends in the foreseeable future [ED. NOTE: CUE RICHARD KAHLENBERG 40 YEARS LATER] without the use of race-conscious measures. With respect to any factor (such as poverty or family educational background) that may be used as a substitute for race as an indicator of past discrimination, whites greatly outnumber racial minorities simply because whites make up a far larger percentage of the total population, and therefore far outnumber minorities in absolute terms at every socioeconomic level.

For example, of a class of recent medical school applicants from families with less than $10,000 income, at least 71% were white. Of all 1970 families headed by a person not a high school graduate which included related children under 18, 80% were white and 20% were racial minorities. Moreover, while race is positively correlated with differences in GPA and MCAT scores, economic disadvantage is not. Thus, it appears that economically disadvantaged whites do not score less well than economically advantaged whites, while economically advantaged blacks score less well than do disadvantaged whites.

These statistics graphically illustrate that the University's purpose to integrate its classes by compensating for past discrimination could not be achieved by a general preference for the economically disadvantaged or the children of parents of limited education unless such groups were to make up the entire class.

Runner_Guy said:


Despite the 1973 federal guidelines that you quoted earlier, I think the original justification for race-based affirmative action was to remedy the effects of past discrimination, hence the Bakke decision outlawing that justification for affirmative action.

Specifically, the Bakke decision addressed four defenses that the medical school presented for affirmative action. No. 2 was “countering the effects of societal discrimination,” which sounds broader than “to remedy the effects of past discrimination” (if, by that, you mean to exclude the effects of contemporary, everyday racism).

Those guidelines, for what it’s worth, became part of federal administrative law a few years later.


In order to add a comment – you must Join this community – Click here to do so.