Justifications For Preferential Treatment

Consider the following common justifications for preferential admissions:

The students admitted … were qualified (variant: they can “do the work.”

Only a small number of students were admitted … (variant #1: “they only get a little push”; variant #2 “only if all else was equal”).

Admitting [these] students … benefits the university financially via donations and state appropriations, which are in turn used for virtuous purposes such as need-based financial aid.

We’ve all heard these justifications for racial preferences and preferences for legacies so often we’ve memorized them, and criticisms of them like the following are equally familiar:

In the end, these practices persist because they’re a kind of genteel, behind-closed-doors corruption, veiled by the deliberate vagueness of the admissions process and given a sheen of respectability by institutions that we look to for intellectual and cultural leadership. A lot of the people in positions of power within the government and certain business circles benefitted from these policies and hope their children will too. I imagine they think of themselves as generally moral people and aren’t all that interested in thinking otherwise.

Oh, wait. These justifications and this criticism are all taken from this article on the Chronicle of Higher Education blog by Kevin Carey, the policy director for Education Sector, an independent think tank in Washington, and they have nothing to do with either race or legacy preferences. Mr. Carey is concerned only with the “preferential treatment [of] students with ties to trustees, politicians and deep-pocketed donors” at the University of Illinois, a controversy I discussed at some length last month, here.

In that post I quoted the following from an article from the Chicago Tribune

The University of Illinois has refused a request by the Chicago Tribune for test scores and grade-point averages of applicants who appeared on its admissions clout lists, saying the release would violate privacy rights even if the students are not named.

— and then commented:

Insofar as the objection to “clout” preferences is based on merit, i.e., on opposition to less qualified students being admitted, then the Tribune should also be pressuring the University to release test-score and grade point averages of its entering class broken down by race and ethnicity. If it did, I’m sure the University would engage in the same stonewalling all institutions do when this data is sought….

I also quoted Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who said ““This is a troubling situation. Admission to this great university should be based on merit, never on clout,” and concluded as follows:

If the Governor really believes that admission should be based only on merit and that all “special treatment” should be “rooted out and corrected,” he will direct his commission to investigate “any and all” special treatment, including preferences based on race and ethnicity. And if the Chicago Tribune believes that all applicants have as much a right to be treated without regard to race as they do to be treated without regard to the power or influence of their parents, it will insist on a thorough investigation of all special treatment programs at the University.

Apparently neither the Governor, his special commission, nor the Chicago Tribune really believe that merit should be the controlling principle governing admission. And neither does Mr. Kevin Carey, who concludes his piece with a very weak answer to the question he can hear rising up from his audience:

And, since you asked: No, I don’t think affirmative action is a corrupt process per above. There’s a difference between naked bribe-taking and contributing to larger social goals of diversity and justice.

I agree. Racial preference in admissions is not naked bribe-taking. It is,however, naked racial discrimination, a case made far better than I ever have a number of years ago (1995) by the estimable Carl Cohen of the University of Michigan in Naked Racial Preference: The Case Against Affirmative Action .

Say What?