Jenna Kyle is quite distressed by the ramifications the increase
in UCLA’s academic standards will have on ethnic diversity.
She wrote that her “invaluable UCLA education” taught
her to look further into the story. Laudable initiative, but let me
try to go a step further in the same vein.
Kyle notes that “the search (to ensure that all University
of California students receive a quality education) has been
halted” by the GPA increase proposal. In point of fact, this
proposal is aiming for exactly that quality education.
School resources are traditionally measured per
“ADA,” that is, how many dollars are being spent per
student in average daily attendance. If the amount of money in the
pie does not increase, one cannot increase the number of students
and maintain the level of education. It’s only a two-variable
equation. To the extent that funding affects quality of education,
the schools must increase spending or reduce attendance.
The initially proposed increase in eligibility requirements will
result in eligibility reductions between 1 percent and 3.7 percent
for (from smallest to largest reduction) Latinos, blacks, whites
and Asians.
However, Kyle notes the current eligibility rates are not
equitable: 31.4 percent of graduating Asian students, 16.1 percent
of white students, 6.5 percent of Latino students and 6.3 percent
of black students are UC-eligible. As a percentage of the
already-small presence of black or Latino, Kyle notes these
populations will be disproportionately affected. This lies in
“direct opposition with the prevailing idea that this GPA
increase will affect all ethnic groups equally.”
I wasn’t actually aware that this was the prevailing idea.
Allow me to formalize what I believe Kyle attempts to say: Equality
of opportunity does not necessarily ensure quality of results. The
closer you arrive at a pure meritocracy, the more obvious this
becomes.
With respect to ethnic “equality,” the NBA springs
to mind. So, I’m not sure, first, why people would assume
that a standards increase would affect all populations equally, or,
second, why Kyle believes that this matters. She says the disparate
effect is “cause for alarm.”
This seems to be putting things a little too strongly, surely.
The admissions process has a sort of triage aspect to it: some
applicants are shoo-ins, some are clear rejects, some are
borderline. Depending on how many of the shoo-ins decide to accept
their offers, many of the borderline cases will or will not be
admitted. Having been admitted, however, there is no intuitively
obvious reason that they should be afforded any sort of protection
of their status based on ethnicity.
The notion that ethnic diversity be the foremost criterion
certainly strikes me, at least, as counter-intuitive. How about
judging people not on the color of their skin, but on the content
of their … academic records (my apologies to Dr. King)?
Melodrama aside, nobody is being denied “higher
education.” At issue is where students will receive that
higher education. Which students will be sent to pursue their
educations at schools that rank somewhat lower in reputation, like
the California State University system. I vote that this is a
decision not made with an eye toward any artificial view of what
the racial makeup of a campus should look like, but instead with
direct application of relatively objective standards such as GPA,
which provide a pretty useful measure of student capability and
past diligence.
If we can’t all fit in the boat (and we could do an entire
newspaper on just why we can’t) then it’s the most
borderline cases, in a color-blind analysis, that should step down
to the next lower tier. This is not to say that they are being
denied a higher education.
Kyle finishes her article with a series of “imagine the
message we’re sending” statements. Rather than treat
these as purely rhetorical, let me suggest a few answers.
“Imagine what we will be telling future applicants of
color if we close the door of opportunity.” How about we tell
them that four Bs and a C (2.8 GPA) is not good enough for
admittance to some of the top academic colleges in the country? How
about we tell them to tell their younger brothers and sisters that
they’d better study hard in high school if they want to get
into UCLA, or Berkeley, or Hastings, because it’s tough,
competitive and over 30 percent of their Asian counterparts are
meeting some very tough standards? How about we tell those Asian
students that their hard work will not be sacrificed at the altar
of diversity?
One could make the NBA a model of diversity by artificially
enforcing racial quotas on each team. Would that be more
“fair”? This might fit the social engineering agenda
that is often found in academia, but it would certainly do no
benefit in the search for excellence.
How about we tell them that while diversity is wonderful, when
it goes heads-up against excellence, it’s excellence that we
are choosing to make our highest priority. This, in fact, would be
the “radical message” that Kyle seems to think would be
made by making diversity the ultimate benchmark. In fact, it is
increased standards that would be the most radical departure from
the trajectory of American education.
Oakes is a first-year law student.