According to an article in today’s Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Virginia,
The acceptance rates for black applicants at 14 of the nation’s top-30 rated universities –including the University — were significantly higher than for white applicants in 2005, according to a report by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education released Tuesday.
The report also indicated that at universities with colorblind admissions, such as the University of California-Berkeley and the University of California-Los Angeles, “the black student acceptance rate was significantly below the rate for whites.”
The report confirmed that preferential admissions are still very much alive (if not well) at the University of Virginia:
The University’s acceptance rate for black applicants was 58 percent, the reported stated, while the overall rate was 37 percent.
The “overall rate,” of course, includes the black applicants, and so the gap between the acceptance rates for blacks vs. whites, Asians, and other non-preferred groups is wider, probably much wider, than the 21 percent suggested by comparing the black admissions rate with the overall admissions rate. (In the last figures from UVa I’ve seen, summaraized here, 7% of the 2004 applicants and 12% of those admitted were black. 57% of black applicants were admitted, compared to 29% of non-black applicants.)
The report attempted, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to mitigate the impact and implications of these numbers.
The release cautioned against assuming that the increased percentage means a lowering of admission standards for black students by suggesting that “a particular college or university with a high black student acceptance rate may simply have had an outstanding pool of African-American applicants.”
According to a written statement by JBHE Managing Editor Bruce Slater, “While there are standard concerns that racial conservatives on faculties and among alumni and trustees may interpret the figures as showing a so-called ‘dumbing-down’ of academic standards as in favor of unqualified blacks in favor of more qualified whites, the percentage is a strong gauge of the institution’s commitment to diversity.”
Both these points are grasping at non-existent straws. It is of course theoretically possible that any one elite college could have had a pool of black applicants that was dramatically stronger than its white or Asian applicants, but there is no evidence that this has actually occurred anywhere. Aside from the question of what a “racial conservative” is, editor Slater implies that there is some sort of either-or conflict between viewing the numbers as evidence of lowering academic or as evidence of a commitment to diversity. In fact, those two go hand in hand. By the way, I don’t know of any critic of racial preferences at the most elite schools who believes that “unqualified blacks” are admitted. The critics with whom I am familiar merely observe that if you lower standards for one group, the qualifications of that group will be lower than those groups for which standards were not lowered.
And what was the reaction among officials at UVa? If you’ve been reading DISCRIMINATIONS very long you can probably guess.
“You have to attribute that high-yield rate to the excellent job that the Office of Admission has done this past year,” African-American Affairs Dean M. Rick Turner said. “They were on a special mission to really cull the country, enticing the very, very best African-American students to come to the University of Virginia,” after the low enrollment of black students in the previous two years.
Turner said there was a more concerted effort to reach out to parents this year.
“[We] let mothers know that there’s an office at the University of Virginia that’s going to shower love on their children,” Turner said.
The University “lays out the red carpet” for prospective African-American students, Turner said.
Of course, as reported, the report dealt only with acceptance rates and said nothing about yield rates, which measure the percentage of accepted students who enroll. Dean Turner’s praise of the black students UVa persuaded to enroll is no doubt justified, but it does nothing to minimize the significance of the glaring racial disparity in the rates of admission.
I will let others worry about whether or not there are any implications for equal protection in a public university that “lays out the red carpet” for — and has an office that showers love on — only one racial group of its students. Of course Dean Turner has also said, repeatedly (see here, here, and here), that those students have been subjected to “racial terrorism” after they arrive. If that is the case (though it’s too bad real terrorism isn’t limited to graffiti, racial slurs shouted from cars, and insulting notes left on doors and windshields.), perhaps a racially restricted red carpet and some selective love are in order.
“It is of course theoretically possible that any one elite college could have had a pool of black applicants that was dramatically stronger than its white or Asian applicants, but there is no evidence that this has actually occurred anywhere.”
And, of course, if they really wanted to find out, they could, eventually, probably force those universities to give the mean scores and gpas of the admittees of the different racial groups. But I frankly think they don’t want that data.
I find it disheartening that you fail to mention the University also has the highest graduation rates among African American students. You should also note the degree to which African American Alumni give back to the University. The numbers are higher than any other single group or organization. Finally, you might also want to research the accomplishments of UVA’s African American graduates but frankly, you don’t seem to be interested in that data.
CMY – I’m not sure how you happened on this relatively old post, but before you pronounced upon what I “don’t seem to be interested in” you would have done well to do a little easy research here. If you had, you would have discovered that I’ve mentioned time and again (probably in a half dozen or so posts) the fact that UVa has the highest black graduation rate of any selective public university, a rate that is in fact higher than a large number of selective private institutions. I have also mentioned, however, a fact that somehow is always left out of all the self-congratulatory UVa press releases on this topic: the rate at which blacks fail to graduate is over twice as high as the rate for students who are admitted without admissions preferences. This of course is not surprising: whenever the admissions bar is lowered for a favored group, the graduation bar is harder for them to reach. This was also true at the University of California, and, again not surprisingly, after admissions preferences were eliminated the graduation rates have been moving quickly toward parity.
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