Yet Another Study…

Inside Higher Ed discusses yet another study finding that eliminating affirmative action would be bad bad bad.

The authors, economists and a business school professor, applying no doubt sophisticated statistical techniques, found (sit down and prepare yourself for a shock) that eliminating racial preferences would lead to a “dramatic [35%] drop in the enrollment of students from underrepresented minority groups at the most competitive colleges.” Can you believe it?

In the same vein, and equally shocking, the authors found that

[i]f affirmative action is eliminated … there would be an increase in minority average SAT scores among less competitive colleges because some students who would otherwise have gained admission to competitive colleges would enroll elsewhere.

Well, we can’t have that, can we?

There’s more, but you’ll have to read the Inside Higher Ed article, or the study itself, to get it. While you’re at it, be sure to read the comments to the former. Some of them are quite good. Some, like a couple from Jay Rosner, Executive Director of the Princeton Review Foundation, simply (and I do mean simply) repeat the “Race matters!” mantra. And some, such as this excerpt from one by Roger Clegg, are brilliant:

… even if there are some dubious benefits to the use of racial preferences, they are overwhelmed by the costs: It is personally unfair, passes over better qualified students, and sets a disturbing legal, political, and moral precedent in allowing racial discrimination; it creates resentment; it stigmatizes the so-called beneficiaries in the eyes of their classmates, teachers, and themselves, as well as future employers, clients, and patients; it fosters a victim mindset, removes the incentive for academic excellence, and encourages separatism; it compromises the academic mission of the university and lowers the overall academic quality of the student body; it creates pressure to discriminate in grading and graduation; it breeds hypocrisy within the school; it encourages a scofflaw attitude among college officials; it mismatches students and institutions, guaranteeing failure for many of the former; it papers over the real social problem of why so many African Americans and Latinos are academically uncompetitive; and it gets states and schools involved in unsavory activities like deciding which racial and ethnic minorities will be favored and which ones not, and how much blood is needed to establish group membership.

Rosner’s response to the above? An attack on … the Bush administration.

Lawyers have long been advised to argue the law if their facts are weak and to argue the facts if their law is weak. Now we have what might be called the Liberal Corollary to that sage advice: When your argument is weak, attack Bush.