Playing Percentages – The Chronicle

Playing Percentages – The Chronicle of Higher Education has a new article (link requires subscription) touting the benefits of the plans adopted, so far, by California, Texas, and Florida that guarantee admission to the state university system to the top graduates (top 4%, 10%, and 20% respectively) of each high school in the state. These plans were adopted to move away from race-based affirmative action while preserving what is seen as the latter’s diversity-enhancing effects.

The two authors do argue that percentage plans should not be seen as a substitute for affirmative action, which the continue to support.

For example, critics of percentage plans argue that they disadvantage outstanding minority students who graduate from competitive, integrated high schools and barely miss being in the top 10 percent. Affirmative action would allow universities to recognize the special contribution that such students can make.

This is of course true, but it begs the question of fairness (which in turn is based on our understanding of equality) that is at the core of debates over affirmative because percentage plans also disadvantage non-minority students from strong schools who barely miss being in the top 10%. Making these strong students, both minority and non-minority, stand in line behind students in the top 10% of their classes at weaker schools is, after all, why percentage plans tend to lower the academic quality of entering students.

The authors actually criticize the California and Florida plans because they, out of concern with the point mentioned above, do not guarantee admission to the flagship campuses, only to the system as as whole.

California’s 4-percent plan, like Florida’s 20-percent plan, suffers from a fundamental deficiency: It guarantees admission only to the university at large, not to its elite institutions. That defect has helped perpetuate a two-tier educational system in California, whereby students, often underrepresented minorities, are steered, or “cascade,” to lower-ranked colleges and universities. Not only have flagship campuses remained largely closed to black and Hispanic students, but many of those who might be admitted remain deterred because financial aid is not tied to admissions.

Query: What is it that makes elite campuses elite and flagship campuses flagship? Whatever it is, will they remain elite and flagship if they accept larger numbers of students whose academic credentials are weaker than those they formerly accepted? That is, insofar as the attraction of elite and flagship campuses is that they are, well, elite and flagship, do not admissions schemes that tamper with what made them elite and flagship in the first place risk implementing an academic version of Groucho Marx’s famous quip (“I would not want to join any club that would have me”)?

Say What?