Crossing The Finish Line… Or Not

Those of you who follow these things (and most of you must, or you wouldn’t be here) will have noticed the appearance of a new book by former Princeton president William Bowen, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America’s Public Universities … and that, despite the attention it’s been receiving, I haven’t discussed it.

I’m still not going to discuss it here in any depth, but I will point to some who have. See here and here in the New York Times for the predictable celebration; here and here in the higher education press; here for some criticism, as well as the comments by Roger Clegg and Jane Yakowitz (and several others) to the Inside Higher Ed article linked above.

The book tracks graduation rates from 21 public “flagship” universities, though of three different levels of selectivity. Some of its evidence is quite interesting — for example, that students with the highest probability by far of graduating were those who had the foresight to be born as girls with Asian parents (my, not Bowen’s, characterization).

Perhaps the most controversial argument of the book is its determined effort to refute Richard Sander’s “mismatch” theory, as summarized by Inside Higher Ed:

The large gaps in graduation rates, especially for black men, are an issue of great concern to the authors. And they note that some might look at these figures and see evidence for the “mismatch” theory that is popular with many critics of affirmative action. That theory holds that students from various minority groups are not well served by being admitted to highly competitive colleges with grades and test scores that are lower than those of other admitted applicants. These students — as evidenced by lower graduation rates — don’t experience academic success as they might at less competitive institutions, the theory holds.

The new book argues that it has conclusive evidence to debunk mismatch theory. The authors used data from their database to compare black men with high school grade-point averages below 3.0 who enrolled in the most selective flagships and those who enrolled in less selective flagships and the least selective flagships. What the authors found was that these students — who mismatch theory would suggest would do better at less competitive institutions — actually are most likely to graduate at more competitive flagships. The graduation rate for this cohort of black males at the three selectivity levels of flagships is (starting from the most selective), 46 percent, 40 percent, and 38 percent. So these black males benefit significantly from being at the more competitive institutions.

Even without having read the book one can see some problems here. As Roger Clegg pointed out in his comment linked above,

the book treats “black men with high school grade-point averages below 3.0” as fungible — that is, that the students meeting this description who go to the more selective schools are no more academically promising than those who go to the less and least selective schools. That’s very dubious: I would think that, ceteris paribus, the students who got into and chose to go to the more selective schools had something to suggest that they were more likely to succeed academically than those who did not go there.

Good point. In addition, I think it clear that in this day and age of rampant undergraduate grade inflation, combined with the absence of blind grading in college (who has enough nerve to flunk black kids?), it’s simply much easier to graduate from college than it is to graduate from law school and pass the bar. If so, college graduation rates do nothing to challenge Sander’s conclusions based on law students.

There is, however, an even more fundamental problem with Bowen’s data, and that is that the Mellon Foundation, which controls the database on which Bowen’s conclusions are based, will not allow access to other scholars to see if they can replicate his analysis. Similarly, with his controversial book on affirmative action, The Shape of The River (subjected to a devastating review by Stephan Thernstrom that can be found here, discussed in part here), only scholars trusted by Bowen were allowed access to the underlying data.

I doubt that Richard Sander will be allowed to examine the data, but I am confident that he will have something to say about Crossing the Finish Line anyway. Look for it.

Say What? (2)

  1. Sam September 12, 2009 at 11:42 pm | | Reply

    Grade inflation is pretty bad, but it has more consequences than simply decreasing the value of a degree (see: http://higher-ed-reform.blogspot.com/2009/09/inflation.html). It also creates a pedigree trend, towards students from ivy league schools, which is bad, since it devalues an A at a great public university like UCLA or SUNY Stone Brook

  2. CaptDMO September 13, 2009 at 9:08 pm | | Reply

    And which scholarly peers, “trusted by Bowen”, are respected and renowned contrarians to his “thesis”?

    Is it safe to assume that Thernstrom and Clegg are out?

Say What?