5 ms·

Assuming that is true, why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursu

Assuming that is true, why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb. Rankings are really a pretty critical part of US education. Without rankings you don't attract the prestige seeking students willing to pay. In turn you don't earn the money you need to pay your professors and administrators. You probably don't attract the star professors you wanted with higher salaries. These things are all linked. Maybe their solution is to have a giant endowment or maybe they just establish a different ranking system that suits them better. But I still think it seems like a surprising outcome if affirmative action is more important than rankings.

WaxProlix 4y ago
A good reason to think it might not be true.
causi 4y ago
Assuming that is true, why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? Advocating for diversity admittance makes the individual advocates look good and it quiets the rabble. Stanford has a 36 billion dollar endowment so money is basically irrelevant to them. What they care about is prestige. Having a high rank gives you more prestige. Seeming to not care about social justice gives you less prestige. They're trying to ladder-jump from a reality where prestige is based on accomplishment to one where prestige is based on PR. It might work or it might not.
gnicholas 4y ago
> why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb. Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have established their place at the top of the law school rankings. They have been at the top for decades (I applied to law school in 2004 and they were well-established as the top-3 even back then), so it is unlikely that they will be considered to have fallen in anyone's esteem anytime soon. My guess is that this move, and the move by the ABA to no longer require law schools to have applicants take the LSAT, [1] are both moves being taken in advance of the affirmative action cases currently at the Supreme Court. The schools know that if SCOTUS gets rid of affirmative action, it will be very difficult for them to maintain diversity if they continue asking students for LSAT scores, and have to report them to US News. These moves make their admissions processes more opaque. I thought it was interesting that in the WSJ's piece about the ABA decision on the LSAT, the only school quoted on how the move might not actually help diversity was UC Berkeley. They are already not allowed to consider race outright (due to CA law), so they would have to fall back on metrics like GPA — which they indicate may have even more correlations with race. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to-consider-making-lsat-optional-11668778730 https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to...
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  If they feel like they can just ignore the US News rankings because their brand name is enough, that's a power move but this is all being triggered by the potential ban on race based discrimination for admissions. They didn't decide this X years ago, it's probably not a coincidence. It coincides with the Bar decision. I guess I am still wondering why affirmative action is a societal good more important than the previous standards we had for lawyers. Lawyers can do a lot of harm or good. If you are accused of a crime, you hire a lawyer. You are tried before a judge, who is a lawyer. We have to trust these people for it to work. Maybe it's to deflect against bad press and not a societal benefit. Maybe they don't care what happens. Maybe I am overestimating the impact of lowering standards. idk.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    It's actually a little more complicated because there's also the bar exam as a gatekeeper. It doesn't test the same things, but you definitely do need to have a pretty good grasp of logic to do well. The upshot is that the de-emphasis of the LSAT on the admissions side may result in (1) some additional new lawyers who are not as analytically capable, (2) some additional new lawyers who are just as capable, but are bad test-takers, and (3) some additional new law students who are unable to pass the bar. Without knowing the proportion of these three groups, it's hard to say if the net effect will be positive or negative. But I would venture to guess that if schools dramatically relax their LSAT standards, the "beneficiaries" will have much lower bar pass rates than their classmates. They will be saddled with the same $200-250k of debt, though. This trend is apparent at UC Hastings, whose admissions selectivity dropped significantly in the years following in the last decade, and whose bar pass rate plummeted. [1] (Many schools became less selective around 2010, when potential applicants heard about how the graduates of 2009 and 2010 had a very hard time finding jobs, let alone jobs that can service $200k debt loads.) If these new policies/procedures do result in students being admitted to law school who can't pass the bar (or have to take it multiple times), these students could reasonably be upset for having been misled about their prospects. Of course, the schools are already lobbying for the Bar exams to be made easier, so perhaps the end result would just be that marginally-prepared students would be lifted up over another hurdle, and plopped down in the laps of unsuspecting clients. Not surprisingly, one of the law schools pushing hardest for lowering Bar standards is UC Hastings. [2] 1: https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-blame-for-uc-hastings-horrific-51-bar-pass-rate.html https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-b... 2: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_deans_call_for_lowering_california_bar_exam_cut_score https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_dean...
s1artibartfast 4y ago
>why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb. Rankings are really a pretty critical part of US education. One hypothesis is that they feel the reputational damage from getting dragged through the mud for lack of diversity would be more damaging to the school than loss of the US news rank. Another is that they truly feel that furthering racial equality is a higher priority for the school than reputation.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  The way to end discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    I said furthering racial equality, not ending discrimination.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      To clarify, you can have a completely race- blind Merit system but still have inequality of outcome due to differences in the applicant pool. The whole point of affirmative actions is to make a race conscious selection system to achieve equality of outcome, not a quality of selection
      - slowmovintarget 4y ago
        You must work to resolve the prerequisites to the outcomes. Academic success comes from exposing children to a consistent viewpoint (from role-models, usually parents) that values knowledge and education, and insists that those children spend their time on such pursuits. Attempting to correct for those missing prerequisites at the point of college admissions presupposes that getting in is the only thing needed for success. It isn't.

WaxProlix 4y ago

A good reason to think it might not be true.

causi 4y ago

Assuming that is true, why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? Advocating for diversity admittance makes the individual advocates look good and it quiets the rabble. Stanford has a 36 billion dollar endowment so money is basically irrelevant to them. What they care about is prestige. Having a high rank gives you more prestige. Seeming to not care about social justice gives you less prestige. They're trying to ladder-jump from a reality where prestige is based on accomplishment to one where prestige is based on PR. It might work or it might not.

gnicholas 4y ago

> why would affirmative action be viewed as so important that schools abandon participation in the premier ranking system in order to pursue it through a backdoor? I am genuinely curious why affirmative action is considered so sacred that elite schools suddenly reject the ranking system they have spent decades trying to climb. Yale, Harvard, and Stanford have established their place at the top of the law school rankings. They have been at the top for decades (I applied to law school in 2004 and they were well-established as the top-3 even back then), so it is unlikely that they will be considered to have fallen in anyone's esteem anytime soon. My guess is that this move, and the move by the ABA to no longer require law schools to have applicants take the LSAT, [1] are both moves being taken in advance of the affirmative action cases currently at the Supreme Court. The schools know that if SCOTUS gets rid of affirmative action, it will be very difficult for them to maintain diversity if they continue asking students for LSAT scores, and have to report them to US News. These moves make their admissions processes more opaque. I thought it was interesting that in the WSJ's piece about the ABA decision on the LSAT, the only school quoted on how the move might not actually help diversity was UC Berkeley. They are already not allowed to consider race outright (due to CA law), so they would have to fall back on metrics like GPA — which they indicate may have even more correlations with race. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to-consider-making-lsat-optional-11668778730 https://www.wsj.com/articles/law-school-accrediting-panel-to...

onetimeusename 4y ago
If they feel like they can just ignore the US News rankings because their brand name is enough, that's a power move but this is all being triggered by the potential ban on race based discrimination for admissions. They didn't decide this X years ago, it's probably not a coincidence. It coincides with the Bar decision. I guess I am still wondering why affirmative action is a societal good more important than the previous standards we had for lawyers. Lawyers can do a lot of harm or good. If you are accused of a crime, you hire a lawyer. You are tried before a judge, who is a lawyer. We have to trust these people for it to work. Maybe it's to deflect against bad press and not a societal benefit. Maybe they don't care what happens. Maybe I am overestimating the impact of lowering standards. idk.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  It's actually a little more complicated because there's also the bar exam as a gatekeeper. It doesn't test the same things, but you definitely do need to have a pretty good grasp of logic to do well. The upshot is that the de-emphasis of the LSAT on the admissions side may result in (1) some additional new lawyers who are not as analytically capable, (2) some additional new lawyers who are just as capable, but are bad test-takers, and (3) some additional new law students who are unable to pass the bar. Without knowing the proportion of these three groups, it's hard to say if the net effect will be positive or negative. But I would venture to guess that if schools dramatically relax their LSAT standards, the "beneficiaries" will have much lower bar pass rates than their classmates. They will be saddled with the same $200-250k of debt, though. This trend is apparent at UC Hastings, whose admissions selectivity dropped significantly in the years following in the last decade, and whose bar pass rate plummeted. [1] (Many schools became less selective around 2010, when potential applicants heard about how the graduates of 2009 and 2010 had a very hard time finding jobs, let alone jobs that can service $200k debt loads.) If these new policies/procedures do result in students being admitted to law school who can't pass the bar (or have to take it multiple times), these students could reasonably be upset for having been misled about their prospects. Of course, the schools are already lobbying for the Bar exams to be made easier, so perhaps the end result would just be that marginally-prepared students would be lifted up over another hurdle, and plopped down in the laps of unsuspecting clients. Not surprisingly, one of the law schools pushing hardest for lowering Bar standards is UC Hastings. [2] 1: https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-blame-for-uc-hastings-horrific-51-bar-pass-rate.html https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/12/who-is-to-b... 2: https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_deans_call_for_lowering_california_bar_exam_cut_score https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_law_school_dean...

s1artibartfast 4y ago

slowmovintarget 4y ago
The way to end discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  I said furthering racial equality, not ending discrimination.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    To clarify, you can have a completely race- blind Merit system but still have inequality of outcome due to differences in the applicant pool. The whole point of affirmative actions is to make a race conscious selection system to achieve equality of outcome, not a quality of selection
    - slowmovintarget 4y ago
      You must work to resolve the prerequisites to the outcomes. Academic success comes from exposing children to a consistent viewpoint (from role-models, usually parents) that values knowledge and education, and insists that those children spend their time on such pursuits. Attempting to correct for those missing prerequisites at the point of college admissions presupposes that getting in is the only thing needed for success. It isn't.