In addition to the Chronicle of Higher Education article I discussed below, the Chronicle also had two other articles today. Personally, I think this is overkill; TopX simply isn’t that interesting.
In one of them, two leaders of the anti-preference forces of light, Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity and Edward Blum of the American Civil Rights Institute, argue forcefully that the TopX plans are bad educational policy. I don’t disagree, at least strongly. Of course, I don’t agree, strongly, either. The fact is, I don’t really care very much. Like Clegg and Blum, my own preferences (if you’ll pardon the expression) lean toward merit, at least at those institutions that strive, or pretend to strive, for academic excellence. But I also think that educational policy ought to be left to the universities and not to civil rights lawyers — except when the institutions engage in racial or religious discrimination. There’s no academic freedom to do that. If a university wants to compromise merit (whatever it takes that to be) for other values, in my view that’s its prerogative, so long as it doesn’t discriminate in doing so.
The other article, “In Michigan and Many Other States, ‘Percent Plans’ Could Undermine Diversity,” is another extended criticism of such plans. Enough already.
The article does make one really good point, which is to say one already made here. It quotes David Montejano, an associate professor of ethnic studies at Berkeley, one of the authors of the Texas Top 10% Plan, who argues that Michigan could “de-emphasize SAT scores in admissions, because white and Asian students typically score higher on such tests than do black and Hispanic students….” He also argues, however, that admissions officers could then give more weight to overcoming adversity, which in my view would turn them (the admissions officers) even more into victimologists.
It is my impression that most law schools grade exams blindly, i.e., the grader does not know the identity, including obviously the race, of the exam writer. Think how much simpler, and fairer, it would be if admissions could be equally race-blind.
Your last paragraph says it all. It would be very simple for a college to administer its own entrance exam, and keep the identities of the applicants secret during the scoring process. That way, race doesn’t figure at all in admissions.