The Chronicle of Higher Education has just released the results of its own wide-ranging poll of American attitudes toward higher education. You will not be surprised to hear that the part of this poll that interests me the most concerns affirmative action.
The Chronicle attempts to put a positive spin on these results, claiming in its cover article that “those polled seem to support the goals of tenure and affirmative action, but disagree with colleges’ methods of achieving them.”
Indeed they do.
On affirmative action, nearly four in five Americans said it was important or very important for colleges to prepare minority students to become successful. But 64 percent of respondents said they disagreed or strongly disagreed that colleges should admit minority students with lower grade-point averages and standardized-test scores than those of other applicants. Only 3 percent of white respondents strongly support the use of racial preferences in college admissions, compared with 24 percent of black respondents and 8 percent of Hispanic respondents.
Well, sure. If agreeing that it is important for colleges to prepare minority students to become successful means support for affirmative action, then my guess is that 100% of Americans support it. But that is hardly a useful, or even honest, description of what in practice affirmative action is.
The overwhelming objection of racial preference, by all racial and ethnic groups, should no longer surprise anyone. Virtually all national polls on the topic have reached the same conclusion. There is now a pretty consistent pattern: if respondents are asked only their opinion of affirmative action, many will support it. But if respondents are provided with a description of how affirmative action works in practice, i.e., that it entails racial preferences, there is strong and consistent opposition. This poll is no exception.
This response is by now so predictable that the only people who still seem surprised by it are those administering affirmative action programs.
So soon after the publicity surrounding the two University of Michigan cases now before the U.S. Supreme Court, the sparseness of support for affirmative-action programs in the poll surprises many college presidents.
Some, in fact, remain in denial. David Ward, president of the American Council on Education,
attributes the meager support for affirmative action to a lack of public understanding, particularly about the highly publicized Michigan cases. Much has been said about the statistical advantage that Michigan gives to undergraduate minority applicants. But Mr. Ward notes that the bump is granted only after the students meet the university’s minimum admissions standards, a fact that has been lost on the public. “We just haven’t done a good job at explaining ourselves in these areas,” he says.
On the contrary, what we have here is not a failure to communicate. Mr. Ward is either being, shall we say, disingenuous, or he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Unless I don’t know what I’m talking about (which is possible, and if so I trust someone will set me straight forthwith), undergraduate admission to Michigan is governed for most students by their score on a scale with a maximum of 150 points, with 100 points usually assuring admission, and African American, Native American, and some Hispanic applicants are awarded 20 points because of their race or ethnicity. It thus would seem that these racial bonus points are an integral part of determining qualification, not something taken into account once threshold qualification has been determined by racially neutral means.
Again, if I’m wrong about this, someone please clue me in right away. But if I’m not wrong, would someone please give the president of the American Council on Education some new talking points that correspond at least minimally with the facts.
President Ward is not alone. From my point of view the American Council on Education has gone off the deep end on discrimination. On behalf of itself and 53 other national higher education associations, it filed a major brief in the Supreme Court supporting Michigan’s use of racial preferences. Sounding very much like any big business resisting federal regulation, the most noteworthy argument of that brief is that the feds should keep their dirty hands off higher education, even when those hands are laid on to enforce anti-discrimination laws. As Sheldon Steinbach, vice president and general counsel of ACE and one of the two authors of its brief, stated in an accompanying press release,
We feel very strongly that each institution should be able to decide for itself what the best path to diversity is, and then to take that path without interference. The outcome of this case will tell colleges and universities if they will be able to continue to make these decisions individually, or whether restrictions and guidelines will be imposed from the outside.
George Wallace couldn’t have said it better. As I commented on another version of this argument a few weeks ago,
At this point the pro-preference argument seems to reduce to one of academic freedom: universities should be free to define academic excellence for themselves without being second-guessed by courts. But since we would not be hearing that argument from the same quarters if, say, David Duke State University determined that “diversity” detracted from academic excellence, the academic freedom argument doesn’t really work.
Or rather, like President David Ward’s lack of clarity about how preferences work in practice, it’s not credible. But the good news, affirmed once again by this latest poll from the Chronicle, is that the education, media, and corporate elite have failed, big time, to persuade a substantial majority of the American people that this particular emperor is wearing any clothes. As the Chronicle pointed out,
The biggest criticism of colleges in the poll involves the perception that they are playing politics or unfairly favoring some groups of students over others.
Let’s hope the Supremes are as wise and perceptive as the respondents in this poll.
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