The group Center for Equal Opportunity did a study of admissions at UNL's College of Law and found that the college is discriminating against white applicants and favoring Hispanic and black applicants. Basically the group looks at undergraduate grade point averages and LSAT scores - and compares and contrasts the various racial groups. The study can be found here.
The dean of the law college responded in this letter.
This all comes as Nebraska approaches a vote on Initiative 424 which aims to end gender and racial preferences.
I must admit that my first reaction is to side with the college on this - I have faith in the admission process and that it is done with a general good faith effort. But I also read the CEO's report (which is obviously designed to support anti-affirmative action) which seemed valid on at least some levels.
I know you all are fairly savvy when it comes to political issues and we don't talk much about affirmative action or gender or racial preferences - so I thought I'd throw this out there for discussion. Also, I know that some of you are better at statistical analysis than I am and was wondering if you could attest to the report's statistical findings.
Thanks for looking this over and adding your thoughts.
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2 comments:
I think this is a really interesting subject and hits very close to home for me. I've been told by many, many people that my "demographic background" isn't helping me with med school admissions.
Philosophically, I think the argument comes down to whether or not you believe that all people regardless of their background are on an equal playing field in regard to their preparation and fitness for higher education. I think the answer is a big "no" but I'm not sure that the inequalities exist strictly along racial and gender lines. I would like to see similar comparisons using income percentiles. I think class in America today trumps everything.
As far as the stats go, I just gave the report a quick glance but my initial reaction is that 442:1 is a ridiculous number. (More specifically, it seems ridiculous to me because if you ever saw an odds ratio like that in the medical world whatever was producing the number would be stopped immediately because it is so huge. It just seems unnaturally large.) More importantly, it's only one way of representing this data. And, as we all know, stats are all about how you represent the data. I'm going to look at it more closely later and hopefully be able to pull out some data so I can do my own analysis.
I'd agree (theoretically) that class trumps everything, but (in reality) I don't think that race and class can ever be completely disassociated.
When it comes to an admissions committee choosing applicants, I would suspect they think that a visually diverse group is at least as meaningful as a group chosen for their relatively unseen class status. Just a thought though--I didn't even bother to look at the stats. I can't/don't read numbers.
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