Discriminations

Peter Salins, provost of the State University of New York, the country’s largest comprehensive university system, from 1997 to 2006 and now a professor of political science at SUNY Stony Brook, argues in a compelling New York Times OpEd that the SAT predicts the likelihood of students to graduate within six years better than their high school grades. He claims, based on an analysis of extensive data from the SUNY system, that those critics who “claim that the SAT is a poor predictor of academic success in college, especially compared with high school grade-point averages,” are wrong.

“Consider,” Salins writes, “the changes in admissions profiles and six-year graduation rates of the classes entering in 1997 and 2001 at SUNY’s 16 baccalaureate institutions.”

Among this group, nine campuses raised the emphasis they put on the SAT after 1997. This group included two prestigious research universities (Buffalo and Stony Brook) and seven smaller, regional colleges (Brockport, Cortland, New Paltz, Old Westbury, Oneonta, Potsdam and Purchase).

Among the campuses that raised selectivity, the average incoming student’s SAT score increased 4.5 percent (at Cortland) to 13.3 percent (Old Westbury), while high school grade-point averages increased only 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent — a gain in grades almost identical to that at campuses that did not raise their SAT cutoff.
Yet when we look at the graduation rates of those incoming classes, we find remarkable improvements at the increasingly selective campuses. These ranged from 10 percent (at Stony Brook, where the six-year graduation rate went to 59.2 percent from 53.8 percent) to 95 percent (at Old Westbury, which went to 35.9 percent from 18.4 percent).

Most revealingly, graduation rates actually declined at the seven SUNY campuses that did not raise their cutoffs and whose entering students’ SAT scores from 1997 to 2001 were stable or rose only modestly. Even at Binghamton, always the most selective of SUNY’s research universities, the graduation rate declined by 2.8 percent.

I find this argument and evidence persuasive, but then I’m fond of “merit” as rather traditionally defined and believe that the SAT does a reasonable job of measuring some aspects of it. Since those who are less impressed with the SAT, however, are sure to raise their trademark objection — that its results are more closely associated with a student’s family wealth and social class than with academic ability, I sent an email to Prof. Salins to get his response to that objection, and to the predictable view of critics “that what explains the higher graduation rates at the SUNY campuses that raised SAT requirements is that they got wealthier students.”

He replied promptly, and again persuasively:

.... SUNY campuses have never had many students from either tail of the class/income spectrum.... At Old Westbury, for example, the higher SAT scoring students there today — that are graduating at twice the rate of their counterparts four years ago — have almost exactly the same racial/family income profile of their predecessors — namely predominantly African American and lower middle class. Moving to more typical schools like Oneonta and Brockport; these are places that then and now have been predominantly white and middle-middle class, with profiles nearly identical to that of their lower SAT scoring counterparts, Plattsburgh and Oswego. And when Oneonta and Brockport raised their SAT profiles, their graduation rates rose. This may not be the last word on the subject, but I would not overestimate the socioeconomic dimension. In any case, the point of my analysis is to determine predictive validity, not admissions policy. If campuses want to admit low SAT scoring applicants, they are free to do so; they just should not be surprised if they don't do well academically — or they can use the SAT data to justify giving them additional academic support and guidance.

Salins’ view comports nicely with the position I’ve long argued here — that although I like merit, colleges are and should be free to disregard it, or to subordinate it to other goals such as achieving “diversity,” if they wish (so long as they don’t engage in racial discrimination). An easy way to do that, as others have pointed out (and as I discussed here), is to minimize the importance of the SAT.

In short, I disagree with critics of racial preference policies who base their objections heavily on their affection for merit. “If,” as I wrote here,

one objects to racial preference only where “merit or deservedness” is “at stake,” then ... one will see nothing wrong when a white or Asian child is denied his or her preference for a school close to home, or a school with some special programs, solely because of his or her race. In fact, if distributing burdens and benefits based on race is wrong only where “merit or deservedness” is compromised, then there would be nothing wrong with, say, counting black votes as worth more than white or Asian votes (perhaps each black vote could be counted as equal to 1.4 white votes to make up for the 3/5 of a person apportionment compromise in the original Constitution) or, for that matter, with racial segregation where there is no invidious intent and facilities are in fact “separate but equal.”

And here:

I wish I didn’t have to keep repeating that the most fundamental, and also most persuasive, criticism of racial preference is not based on a false fealty to “merit.” Merit is nice. Most conservatives (and even many liberals) like it. But racial preferences would be wrong even if merit were not an issue.

Racial preference policies are wrong not because they often reward people who are less qualified (not necessarily unqualified, but often less qualified), though they do that, but because it is wrong to reward some and punish others because of their race.

I could quote myself many times making versions of this same point, but I won’t. The point of this post was not to rehash my often-stated objection to pinning objections to race preferences on the tail of merit, but to commend Salins’ OpEd, which I do. Read the whole thing.