Yesterday I mentioned, in passing, a better than expected New York Times article on the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI).
Today a reader sent me the following remarkable email exchange between his brother, a professor at a New England college, and Julie Peterson, whose official title is Associate Vice President for Media Relations and Public Affairs at the University of Michigan but whose title, based on a description of her actual work, should be AVP for Media Obfuscation and Public Disinformation. (Reprinted with the professor’s permission)
Julie Peterson
Associate Vice President for Media Relations
University Of Michigan
Dear Ms. Peterson,
In an article in today’s New York Times (“Campaign to End Race Preferences Splits Michigan”; October 31, 2006), you take exception with the Center for Equal Opportunity in Virginia’s presentation of University of Michigan admission data. Specifically, you state that the CEOV’s “analysis is flat-out wrong”; and the Times reporter goes on to paraphrase your argument as follows: “the data on which the center based its conclusions did not include all applicants.”
If the median SAT values in the article are indeed based on incomplete data sets, then I am disappointed that the Times published the CEOV’s assertion, without affording you the space to present the correct values. Could you please remedy this oversight by sending me the correct 2005 median SAT values, based on all applicants, for admitted African American and white students?
Thank you for your time.
All the best,
__________
From: Julie Peterson [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, October 31, 2006 10:54 AM
To: ___________
Cc: Pat Sellinger; Lee Doyle; Deborah Greene; Julie Peterson
Subject: Re: New York Times article
The data received by CEO in response to its Freedom of Information request was redacted in some instances where the data could serve to identify an individual student and thus violate his or her privacy by making the individual’s grades and test scores known to an entity outside the University. We cannot supply the complete data file to you or any other requester for the same reason.
Even if the data were complete, the CEO analysis would still be wrong for two other reasons. First, it selected two components of the data file, either race and GPA or race and test scores, but ignored many other factors that are important in the admissions decisionmaking process. It also selected subsets of students with specific grades and test scores in order to conduct its odds ratios. Our statistical experts have debunked this flawed analysis many times in the past.
My complete response to the CEO report is posted at http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=996.
Professor Steve Raudenbush, an expert witness on statistics during the Supreme Court cases and now a faculty member at the University of Chicago, shares his review of some of the CEO assertions on our website at
http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/diversityresources/ceorebut.html. For his prior work on these topics during the lawsuits, see:
http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/research/rebut-raudenbush.html
http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/research/swrjul13.pdf
http://www.vpcomm.umich.edu/admissions/research/swrjul13.pdf
__________
Dear Ms. Peterson,
I am sorry to see that my request for a simple piece of clarifying data was met with a dissembling, irrelevant data dump. The notion that providing median SAT scores for African American and white admitted students at a university as large as Michigan “could serve to identify an individual student and thus violate his or her privacy” is simply risible.
I expect secrecy and intellectual dishonesty from government and corporate interests, but it is dispiriting to encounter it in one of our great institutions of higher learning.
Sincerely,
One need read only this brief summary of the Center for Equal Opportunity study to see how utterly vapid Ms. Peterson’s response is. For example, the CEO study, based on data supplied by the University of Michigan, found, among other things, the following:
The black-to-white odds ratio for 2005 was 70 to 1 among students taking the SAT, and 63 to 1 for students taking the ACT. (To put this in perspective, the odds ratio for nonsmokers versus smokers dying from lung cancer is only 14 to 1.)
In terms of probability of admissions in 2005, black and Hispanic students with a 1240 SAT and a 3.2 high school GPA, for instance, had a 9 out of 10 chance of admissions, while whites and Asians in this group had only a 1 out of 10 chance.
Note that Ms. Peterson does not even attempt to challenge these numbers. What she says, in what she above calls her “complete response,” is:
CEO’s analysis does not take into account many important factors considered in admissions, including the rigor of the student’s high school or undergraduate curriculum, extracurricular activities, essays, teacher and counselor recommendations, and socioeconomic status.
Well, no; it didn’t. Funny, its comparison of the grades and test scores of preferred minorities and all other students only measured the differences in grades and test scores.
As for Professor Raudenbush’s expert testimony, some readers may recall that I’ve had occasion to mention his arguments several times before. Those of you who don’t recall (or whose recall is less than perfect) should check here, here, here, and here. And while you’re at it, also take a look at this post. It doesn’t discuss Prof. Raudenbush, but it does discuss another study making a similar (and similarly unpersuasive) claim that race is “only one of many factors” admissions officers consider.
That last post ends with a query that Prof. Raudenbush failed to answer in his expert testimony, and that in fact I’ve never seen anyone answer satisfactorily. In fact, I can’t recall if I’ve every seen any preferentialists even attempt to address it:
colleges claim that race is “but one of many factors” they consider in admissions, but take away that “one factor,” leaving all other factors in place and in play, and, as the lede of [the article discussed in the post] reports, “the number of black and Hispanic students at elite schools would plummet.”
If race is only “one of many factors,” how can that be?
“If race is only “one of many factors,” how can that be?”
obviously, it’s because the factor[s] aren’t weighted equally, with race being accorded the most weight. this may not be a “satisfactory” answer to you, john, but it’s basically correct
The professor writes:
I expect secrecy and intellectual dishonesty from government and corporate interests, but it is dispiriting to encounter it in one of our great institutions of higher learning.
The University of Michigan is a Constitutionally-created “4th branch” (independently operated by the elected Regents) of the government of the State of Michigan. Let’s not misunderstand this. It is the government. It is also quite intwined with it corporate special-interests, with many “cooperative” research arrangements partially funded by corporations and other governmental branches (there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, and indeed, many good things come with it, but it does also bring with it other things).
So we should not be surprised.