We have seen how the argument that affirmative action in higher education is racial discrimination against white people has gained a great deal of legal and public opinion ground, but also how that argument does not apply to Indians because the Indian demand for admission is based on political status rather than on race.
RELATED: Affirmative Action I: The Rise of White Rights
Another anti-affirmative action argument does apply to Indians. “Mismatch theory” holds that affirmative action puts Indians and other minorities into schools where the academic expectations far exceed the students’ abilities. Because of this mismatch, minority students forego admission to lesser schools where they would flourish, and instead of flourishing, they either drop out or absorb so little of what is offered that they do not increase their earning power as substantially as students better suited to the environment.
William C. Kidder of the University of California, Riverside, and Richard O. Lempert of the University of Michigan have undertaken a survey of all the evidence addressing the mismatch theory. A short version of their results was published this year as a chapter in a book edited by others called Affirmative Action and Racial Equity.
This is not a place where we can go through their analysis step by step, but the existence of a comprehensive look at the mismatch theory is important for two reasons.
First, mismatch theory will be put in front of tribal leaders to deter negotiations with state governments or universities for tribal preferences in admissions. The argument will be that the preferences will harm the people they are intended to help.
Second, the most well read of potential Indian university students might come across the mismatch argument and take it to heart. It sounds plausible and kids of that age do not have a strong sense of their own abilities. Particularly Indian kids, some of whom get used to being told what they can’t do.
The earliest tests of mismatch theory were in studies of University of Michigan law graduates between 1970 and 1996 and another parsing of 20 years of data from the University of California at Davis Medical School. Career satisfaction and earnings of whites and Asians were compared to the African-Americans, Latinos, and American Indians and the major differences found were that the non-Asian minority graduates were more likely to go on to community leadership roles and to devote more time to volunteer work.
Removing graduates from the sample based on test scores and undergraduate grades to isolate the affirmative action admissions did not change the results.
Kidder and Lempert also point out that minority students who attend higher tier law schools tend to graduate and pass the Bar exam in greater percentages than those who attend less selective schools—the opposite of what mismatch theory would predict.
Between 1996 and 2003, affirmative action was temporarily halted by court action in Texas. Mismatch theory would predict that minority graduation rates should rise because minorities would no longer be mismatched with schools where they could not do the work. In fact, the gap between minority and non-minority graduation rates widened by one-fifth.
Studies of African-American law students show a lower rate of passing the Bar on the first try than white students, but it turns out the most common reason a law student did not pass the Bar was dropping out and the reason for dropping out cited by most students was lack of money to continue. The argument in favor of mismatch theory is that dropping out is due to low grades and low grades are due to mismatch. The cause of dropping out was assumed rather than proven by advocates of the mismatch theory.
In the real world, leaving aside money as a cause for dropping out, money is also a reason for not taking a Bar preparation course. Those who offer the thousand dollar courses are quick to point out that they raise the probability of passing on the first try.
Kidder and Lempert claim that their parsing of all the published evidence to date should “disabuse anyone of the notion that abolishing affirmative action will somehow enhance the academic accomplishments and boost the future life chances of minority students.”
The implication for Indian students is that they should jump at the best university that will admit them and they can afford. Selective universities cannot waste admission slots, and those who are admitted can in fact do the work.
The implication for the rest of us, particularly tribal leaders, is that we should continue to fight for admissions on behalf of our kids and understand mismatch theory for the nonsense it is.
