3 ms·

It seems like there are two conflicting goals: - don’t explicitly consider race, gender, etc., while you make a decision about a cohort of admitted applicants.

by mlthoughts2018 8y ago

It seems like there are two conflicting goals: - don’t explicitly consider race, gender, etc., while you make a decision about a cohort of admitted applicants. That is, only use other “performance” criteria (grades, essay, recommendations, etc). - ensure that post facto, the observed distribution of demographic properties of your cohort of admitted students fairly reflects the natural distribution, within a societally acceptable margin of error. The problem is that these two goals are in conflict for at least two reasons, one big and one small. The small reason is that a person’s most salient “performance” metrics might involve direct relationship to their role in a religious community, race-related organization, etc., such that it is impossible to treat it like a truly demographic-blind process. The big reason is that for whatever performance criteria you pick, like grades, test scores, essays, community involvement, etc., there is endemic and generational discrimination and privilege issues that can mean even if you truly did not want to make decisions based on race, religion, nationality, etc., you inadvertently did just by using proxies for societal scale discrimination or disadvantage in those categories. So in the end, you can see why a big organization or corporation is terrified and would rather use quotas to explicitly control the relative ratios and acceptance ratios on a category-by-category basis. I’m not trying to defend it. I think it’s a bad thing. But what do we do? It seems like a lose-lose. - If you ensure perfect decision blindness to race, religion, nationality, etc., you’ll end up admitting a cohort of students that greatly favors basically wealthy white people, because whatever proxies you do use will encode longterm privilege deeply enmeshed in them, way beyond whatever we are consciously aware of. - If you do explicitly consider race, religion, nationality, etc., to try to manually control rates of admission per each possible category, you can ensure the admitted cohort has the overall demographic statistics you want, but only by explicitly making race, religion, etc., as major driving factors that are explicitly and consciously weighted into the admission decision.

acomjean 8y ago
Harvard is the position of Ranking and admitting students. They have a fair number of very high scoring academic performers so they use some other metics. They use 4 criteria: Academic, extracurricular, personal, and athletic. Some of the stats are on rankings based on race are here [1]. I suspect its not as cut and dry as the lawsuit alleges: (pg 36) [1]https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/files/expert_report_-_2017-12-15_dr._david_card_expert_report_updated_confid_desigs_redacted.pdf https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file... Also for that report: "These data show that even if Harvard wanted to admit every student with elite academic credentials, it could not. Harvard admits roughly 1,800 domestic students each year, yet thousands of applicants have impeccable academic qualifications.9 For example, based on the statistics in Exhibit 2, even if Harvard sought to admit only applicants with a perfect GPA, it would need to reject at least 6,000 such applicants and all other domestic applicants. Similarly, even if Harvard sought to admit only applicants with a perfect Math SAT score, it would need to reject nearly 2,000 such applicants and all other domestic applicants." ( I didn't go the Harvard, but I do work there)
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  Suppose the application was fully race-blind, and Harvard could rank all applicants on the four criteria you listed (academic, extracurricular, personal, athletic), and derive an overall score for each applicant. I would claim that this score would strongly suffer from racial bias. A cohort admitted based on this score would look like a cohort where certain racial groups historically disadvantaged would appear to have been directly disadvantaged by the admissions choices, despite the process being fully race-blind. And the same for religious affiliation, gender, able-bodiedness, and various other designations. So while nobody consciously evaluating admission criteria would have ever considered e.g. race, it nonetheless would have been a major determining factor in the decisions. The question is if society does not want that outcome, then what steps is the university allowed to take to fix it? It seems explicitly considering e.g. race ahead of time, to ensure an acceptable cohort demographic distribution, is not OK. So then what else?
  - acomjean 8y ago
    Well the same guy behind this lawsuit filed one in Texas earlier. It went to the supreme court in 2016. The result said that Universities can use Race as one measure of admissions. Having a diverse student body is considered a good thing, but its a balancing act: >>“A university is in large part defined by those intangible ‘qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness,’” Justice Kennedy wrote, quoting from a landmark desegregation case. “Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission. >>“But still,” Justice Kennedy added, “it remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action-university-of-texas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court... I guess being transparent about how you are doing admissions is probably the best way forward, but it leads to lawsuits when the data doesn't look like expected. Expect statistical analysis of this data from both sides saying what they want.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
snomad 8y ago
> there is endemic and generational discrimination and privilege issues that can mean even if you truly did not want to make decisions based on race, religion, nationality, etc., you inadvertently did just by using proxies for societal scale discrimination or disadvantage in those categories. Agreed. However, it seems to rest on confusing race for class. How about we just focus on class and get all the benefits (pick up the poorest; policy that attempts to correct those suffering generational discrimination) without the negatives that come with race based policy.
- Covzire 8y ago
  The rich will just go elsewhere, so you might end up doubling their education cost (if new institutions need to be created) but their placement in society will still be the same. Current Ivy league's would fall in stature and we'd back here again within a decade.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago
  Some of the difference may be caused by class, but it is definitely not all of the difference. Black men consistently end up with a lower income than white men even when comparing only people with the same parental income[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...
StanislavPetrov 8y ago
The answer is one that was unfortunately rejected years ago - class-based affirmative action instead of race-based affirmative action. For example, there are far few legitimate greivances that would (or could) be raised by giving admissions preferences to those whose parents don't have a college degree. The end result would still end up assisting minorities most in need without codifying racial preferences or getting bogged down in the arbitrary idea of race at all.
babkayaga 8y ago
> a cohort of students that greatly favors basically wealthy white people Isn't that already the case?

acomjean 8y ago

Harvard is the position of Ranking and admitting students. They have a fair number of very high scoring academic performers so they use some other metics. They use 4 criteria: Academic, extracurricular, personal, and athletic. Some of the stats are on rankings based on race are here [1]. I suspect its not as cut and dry as the lawsuit alleges: (pg 36) [1]https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/files/expert_report_-_2017-12-15_dr._david_card_expert_report_updated_confid_desigs_redacted.pdf https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/diverse-education/file... Also for that report: "These data show that even if Harvard wanted to admit every student with elite academic credentials, it could not. Harvard admits roughly 1,800 domestic students each year, yet thousands of applicants have impeccable academic qualifications.9 For example, based on the statistics in Exhibit 2, even if Harvard sought to admit only applicants with a perfect GPA, it would need to reject at least 6,000 such applicants and all other domestic applicants. Similarly, even if Harvard sought to admit only applicants with a perfect Math SAT score, it would need to reject nearly 2,000 such applicants and all other domestic applicants." ( I didn't go the Harvard, but I do work there)

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Suppose the application was fully race-blind, and Harvard could rank all applicants on the four criteria you listed (academic, extracurricular, personal, athletic), and derive an overall score for each applicant. I would claim that this score would strongly suffer from racial bias. A cohort admitted based on this score would look like a cohort where certain racial groups historically disadvantaged would appear to have been directly disadvantaged by the admissions choices, despite the process being fully race-blind. And the same for religious affiliation, gender, able-bodiedness, and various other designations. So while nobody consciously evaluating admission criteria would have ever considered e.g. race, it nonetheless would have been a major determining factor in the decisions. The question is if society does not want that outcome, then what steps is the university allowed to take to fix it? It seems explicitly considering e.g. race ahead of time, to ensure an acceptable cohort demographic distribution, is not OK. So then what else?
- acomjean 8y ago
  Well the same guy behind this lawsuit filed one in Texas earlier. It went to the supreme court in 2016. The result said that Universities can use Race as one measure of admissions. Having a diverse student body is considered a good thing, but its a balancing act: >>“A university is in large part defined by those intangible ‘qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness,’” Justice Kennedy wrote, quoting from a landmark desegregation case. “Considerable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission. >>“But still,” Justice Kennedy added, “it remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity.” https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action-university-of-texas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/us/politics/supreme-court... I guess being transparent about how you are doing admissions is probably the best way forward, but it leads to lawsuits when the data doesn't look like expected. Expect statistical analysis of this data from both sides saying what they want.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

snomad 8y ago

> there is endemic and generational discrimination and privilege issues that can mean even if you truly did not want to make decisions based on race, religion, nationality, etc., you inadvertently did just by using proxies for societal scale discrimination or disadvantage in those categories. Agreed. However, it seems to rest on confusing race for class. How about we just focus on class and get all the benefits (pick up the poorest; policy that attempts to correct those suffering generational discrimination) without the negatives that come with race based policy.

Covzire 8y ago
The rich will just go elsewhere, so you might end up doubling their education cost (if new institutions need to be created) but their placement in society will still be the same. Current Ivy league's would fall in stature and we'd back here again within a decade.
TheCoelacanth 8y ago
Some of the difference may be caused by class, but it is definitely not all of the difference. Black men consistently end up with a lower income than white men even when comparing only people with the same parental income[1]. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-class-white-and-black-men.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/19/upshot/race-c...

StanislavPetrov 8y ago

The answer is one that was unfortunately rejected years ago - class-based affirmative action instead of race-based affirmative action. For example, there are far few legitimate greivances that would (or could) be raised by giving admissions preferences to those whose parents don't have a college degree. The end result would still end up assisting minorities most in need without codifying racial preferences or getting bogged down in the arbitrary idea of race at all.

babkayaga 8y ago

> a cohort of students that greatly favors basically wealthy white people Isn't that already the case?