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The Mythology of Diversity and Mismatch Effect

April 11, 2012 04:50


The failure of this [affirmative action] strategy may very well backfire when the Supreme Court considers the Fisher case. The justices will be presented with several years’ worth of well-researched, richly-documented studies explicating the mismatch effect–with little or nothing from the other side of the matter beyond thinly-concealed allegations of racism.

 

By Mark J. Perry at Carpe Diem

 

UCLA Law Professor Rick Sander guest-blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy and quoted at Mind the Campus:

“Colleges and universities are committed to the mythology that diversity happens merely because they want it and put resources into it, and that all admitted students arrive with all the prerequisites necessary to flourish in any way they choose. Administrators work hard to conceal the actual differences in academic preparation that almost invariably accompany the aggressive use of preferences [the “mismatch effect“].

Any research that documents the operation and effects of affirmative action therefore violates this “color-blind” mythology and accompanying norms; minority students are upset, correctly realizing that either the research is wrong or that administrators have misled them. In this scenario, administrators invariably resort to the same strategy: dismiss the research without actually lying about it; reassure the students that the researchers are misguided, but that the university can’t actually punish the researchers because of “academic freedom”–with the invocation of “academic freedom” becoming “a device to protect the administration.”

KC Johnson at “Minding the Campus” comments:

“Sander’s scholarly contributions to the issue of racial preferences came through his work on the mismatch effect in law schools–that is, the situation of “students receiving large preferences (for whatever reason) were likely to find themselves in academic environments where they had to struggle just to keep up; professor instruction would typically be aimed at the ‘median’ student, so students with weaker academic preparation would tend to fall behind, and, even if they did not become discouraged and give up, would tend to learn less than they would have learned in an environment where their level of academic preparation was closer to the class median.”
The failure of this [affirmative action] strategy may very well backfire when the Supreme Court considers the Fisher case. The justices will be presented with several years’ worth of well-researched, richly-documented studies explicating the mismatch effect–with little or nothing from the other side of the matter beyond thinly-concealed allegations of racism. Will this approach be enough to persuade Justice Kennedy to uphold the continuing use of racial preferences?”
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He blogs at Carpe Diem.


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