More On Does Diversity Work?

Several weeks ago I reported on a new empirical study of whether diversity works.

The study itself is available online here for a fee of $12 (unless one is a subscriber to the International Journal of Public Opinion). Reader Tom Scott has alerted me to a new article by the study’s authors in the Spring 2003 issue The Public Interest presenting a fuller summary of their findings.

Observing that older studies of this issue were often the products of “a kind of indoctrination” in which students are bombarded with repetition of the assertion “that diversity is valuable, asked whether diversity is valuable, and then their positive replies are seen as proof of diversity’s value,” the authors of the new study, Stanley Rothman, Seymour Martin Lipset, and Neil Nevitte, correlated survey data on the opinions of students, faculty, and administration with other objective data about the degree of diversity at 140 institutions. Unlike previous studies, they found a negative correlation between the degree of racial diversity and the perceived quality of the educational experience. They write:

It is commonly believed that increases in black enrollment will produce positive assessments from students about their educational experience. But in fact the correlations went in the opposite direction. As the proportion of black students rose, student satisfaction with their university experience dropped, as did their assessments of the quality of their education and the work ethic of their peers. In addition, the higher the enrollment diversity, the more likely students were to say that they personally experienced discrimination. The same pattern of negative correlations between educational benefits and increased black enrollment appeared in the responses of faculty and administrators. Both groups perceived decreases in educational quality and academic preparation as the number of black students increased. Faculty members also rated students as less hard-working as diversity increased.

Among faculty and administrators, higher minority enrollment was significantly associated with perceptions of less campus discrimination and, among administrators, more positive treatment of minority students. But these findings were offset by the absence of similar results among students, who reported more personal victimization as diversity increased.

In fact, one of the more interesting findings was the sharp divergence on the desirability of preferences between the students, on the one hand, and faculty and administrators, on the other.

In response to the statement, “No one should be given special preference in jobs or college admissions on the basis of their gender or race,” two-thirds (67 percent) of the students strongly agreed, compared to only one-third of the faculty (34 percent) and one-quarter (26 percent) of the administrators. An overwhelming 85 percent of students either strongly or moderately agreed with the statement, as compared to 56 percent of the faculty and only 48 percent of administrators.

Indeed, the authors point out, student opinion is right in line with national opinion as measured consistently in polling data, which they cite, while faculty/administration opinion is in a distinct minority.

Go read the whole article. But before you do (or after, for that matter), be aware that I believe the authors got a few things wrong.

First, they say that “[t]he question of whether racial diversity enriches the educational experience for students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds is at the heart of the twin lawsuits against the University of Michigan….” As the authors otherwise give evidence of recognizing, that statement is not really true. The plaintiffs do not deny the value of diversity. What they deny is that whatever value it may have is compelling enough to justify discrimination on the basis of race.

The authors also erroneously claim that

Justice Powell, along with four other justices, defended what Justice Brennan described as “preferential treatment of racial minorities as a means of remedying past societal discrimination to the extent that such action is consistent with the [Fourteenth] amendment.”

On the contrary, Justice Powell went to great lengths to deny that correcting past “societal discrimination” could provide a justification for present racial preferences. From his controlling opinion in Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978):

The State certainly has a legitimate and substantial interest in ameliorating, or eliminating where feasible, the disabling effects of identified discrimination…. In the school cases, the States were required by court order to redress the wrongs worked by specific instances of racial discrimination. That goal was far more focused than the remedying of the effects of “societal discrimination,” an amorphous concept of injury that may be ageless in its reach into the past.

We have never approved a classification that aids persons perceived as members of relatively victimized groups at the expense of other innocent individuals in the absence of judicial, legislative, or administrative findings of constitutional or statutory violations…. After such findings have been made, the governmental interest in preferring members of the injured groups at the expense of others is substantial, since the legal rights of the victims must be vindicated…. Without such findings of constitutional or statutory violations, it cannot be said that the government has any greater interest in helping one individual than in refraining from harming another. Thus, the government has no compelling justification for inflicting such harm.

….

Hence, the purpose of helping certain groups whom the faculty of the Davis Medical School perceived as victims of “societal discrimination” does not justify a classification that imposes disadvantages upon persons like respondent, who bear no responsibility for whatever harm the beneficiaries of the special admissions program are thought to have suffered. To hold otherwise would be to convert a remedy heretofore reserved for violations of legal rights into a privilege that all institutions throughout the Nation could grant at their pleasure to whatever groups are perceived as victims of societal discrimination. That is a step we have never approved.

These lapses, however, do not detract from the value of the study or the summarizing article. In fact, the authors do quote another statement from Powell’s opinion (actually, what they quote is Powell quoting a Harvard admissions statement) that may have additional meaning in light of the facts in the Michigan undergraduate case:

When the committee on admissions reviews the large middle group of applicants who are “admissible” and deemed capable of doing good work in their courses, the race of an applicant may tip the balance in his favor just as geographic origin or life spent on a farm may tip the balance in other candidates’ cases.

It has been well and extensively demonstrated that the degree of preference awarded at Michigan, and elsewhere, goes far beyond “tipping the balance” in close cases. But what is particularly interesting here, and now, is how fundamentally the Harvard/Powell scenario differs from the Michigan practice, where many preferred minorities are placed in “the large middle group of applicants who are ‘admissible'” only because of the 20 bonus points afforded to them because of their race. That is a far different proposition from allowing race to “tip the balance” in close cases between applicants who had already been classified as qualified and admissible for non-racial reasons.

Say What? (2)

  1. Superfacial Voters March 11, 2013 at 8:50 am |

    […] research might also throw some new light on another study, discussed here and here, by Professors Stanley Rothman, director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change […]

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