Affirmative Action

Interesting findings, but aren’t we all on a level playing field? I thought that every person in America has an equal chance of obtaining a college degree. You know, doesn’t every kid admitted to college come in with the same skills, same knowledge base, same understanding of how the education game is played? Is that not why affirmative action measures have been outlawed in places like California and Michigan and possibly five other states this November? I mean, if minority enrollments rates are on the rise, so should their degree attainment rates, right?

(Note for all those individuals not skilled in deciphering sarcasm-I am laying it on pretty thick here.)

Kevin Leonard, Sr. Program Coordinator at Michigan State University, at 8:40 am EDT on October 9, 2008

Underlying issue?

Could the increased cost of higher education coupled with economic woes be part of the underlying problem? When grants and loans don’t cover the full cost of education and the parents are in danger of losing their home, do some forego college?

I’d say there is a multitude of contributing factors, but the trick is finding the ones that will cause a turnaround in the shortest amount of time. I don’t think everyone should go to college, but I don’t like the trend of fewer going to college than before.

Befuddled, at 9:55 am EDT on October 9, 2008

Missing the obvious

Talk about missing the obvious. Given the large boom in adult education over the last decade, of course those aged between 24 and 29 have earned fewer than those over 30. Those over 30 have had longer to earn them. The only fair comparison would be how many of those over 30 had their degrees by the time they were 29. Also since minorities are more likely to earn thier degrees through adult education, their numbers are not particularly telling either. This report is nothing but a bad use of statistics used to scare people.

R Sweo, at 11:50 am EDT on October 9, 2008

Whites need affirmative action

So, educational attainment among whites is about 25 percentage points below that of Asian Americans. This must be the result of “institutionalized racism” and “discrimiation.” What else could it possibly be? Clearly we need affirmative action and other programs to close this gap!

Prof Challenger, at 12:10 pm EDT on October 9, 2008

Such a large portion of students who are lumped into the “Asian” category are international students (who, OF COURSE, among all races tend to have relatively high graduation rates because they come here for college) that the figure presented here is hardly indicative of the graduation rates for Asian AMERICANS...or Southeast Asian Americans, who likely are still graduating from college at rates lower than Whites and the overall population.

Response to Professor Challenger, Think a Little More Critically about the Word Asian Please, at 2:05 pm EDT on October 9, 2008

“While white and Asian American young people are outpacing previous generations, the gaps for other minority groups are large enough that the current generation is, on average, heading toward being less educated than its predecessor.”

So let’s see, the white and Asian victims of affirmative action are doing better and the beneficiaries of racial preferences are doing worse. Is it possible that legally-sanctioned racial discrimination does more harm than good for those it purports to help?

Curious, at 3:25 pm EDT on October 9, 2008

Declining enrollments due to declining value?

Many comments here have made good points, but I feel that too little attention is being paid to the question of whether more higher education is really worth what it costs, from the point of view of either the individual or the government.

The president of ACE tells us that “alarm bells should be going off” if we diverge from our “historical patten” of successive generations outperforming one another. Of course, ACE “seeks to...influence [higher ed] public policy through advocacy, research, and program initiatives,” according to its mission statement, so we might take a deep breath before succumbing to high anxiety over these reported findings. Could it be that too many higher ed degrees just aren’t worth their cost? And if that’s the case, what should the remedy be? (ACE, one infers, will not be happy until everyone goes to college—and then what new heights shall the next generation scale in order to “outperform” their parents?)

Calculating costs and benefits of education is hard and controversial, but the literature on it is interesting; one highly plausible conclusion is that “rates-of-return have typically been overstated, perhaps by a factor of three, and that once quality is taken into account the results indicate that ‘deepening’ schooling by increasing quality has a higher social rate of return than ‘broadening’ schooling by increasing quantity” (http://www.heritage.org/research/Education/ bg2179.cfmw). Meaning: If a state wants to improve its return on investments in education, it will do better to increase quality, not increase access and number of graduates.

In an economy where information, and even a fair amount of expertise (spreadsheet templates, etc.), are available online, I’m trying very hard to understand what value can be added by school? If I (and my institutional employers) can significantly improve a young person’s earnings over the next few decades, then we’ll probably continue to find customers, the more so as our value to them is clearly demonstrable. Likewise, if our graduates are in fact more productive by virtue of the education we provided them, then politicians will eventually support policies friendly to our welfare. But when I walk into my classrooms, I sure do feel adrift.

Rod Bell, Adjunct Professor at College of DuPage, at 4:55 am EDT on October 10, 2008

Value? Or values?

I know it’s not fashionable to ascribe any of these discrepancies to culture, but the longer we behave as though culture doesn’t matter, the worse these discrepancies will get.

It’s not just, or IMO even, racism or flawed public policy that has African-American young men headed to college at lower rates than their elders these days — it’s the culture that surrounds too many of them. It’s teachers who refuse to set the bar high and parents who either can’t help them meet it when it’s set high or don’t care one way or the other. It’s images in pop music that glorify the “get rich or die tryin’” ethos without connecting it to honest effort (whether in a job or by applying one’s own talents to some creative project) and the false equation of this ethos with “racial authenticity.” It’s the absence of care and concern that has Bill Cosby up in arms at his fellow African-Americans. If we do not address these, we can have “diversity” and “affirmative action” and funding out the wazoo and the numbers won’t get any better.

Not that it should make a difference, but since it will to someone, I’m African-American myself.

Sandy Smith, at 10:35 am EDT on October 14, 2008