Inside Higher Ed reports this morning on a new study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that attempts to explain the black-white gap in college completion. “The tendency of black students to enroll in urban and less-selective public universities and the fact that they attend high schools of lesser quality contribute to their lower graduation rates in college,” according to the study, “but the ‘primary driver’ of the black-white graduation gap is a difference” in what the study rather quaintly calls “”pre-entry’ traits such as ACT scores and high school class rank.”
Imagine that! Students with better grades and higher test scores are more likely to graduate than those with lower grades and test scores!
Wow! That suggests the possibility of a great program — let’s call it Affirmative Action — for helping out some of those lower performing students, the ones who were born with the ability to provide dermatological “diversity.” Universities could lower the admissions bar for them, profit for a few years from the “diversity” they provide to others, and then watch them sink to the bottom of their classes and not graduate.
Oh, wait. Hasn’t that already been tried?
