2. Is affirmative action luring minority members who are almost certain to fail in their educational program with massive debt with little benefit?

This is a bigger possible concern.

Let the student worry about it. Their adults, responsible for their own decisions, anf Black folks (who, in the end, are the subject of all this) REALLY HATE paternalism.

It is certainly true that most white and Asian students bumped out of an elite institution by affirmative action tend to end up in a slightly less elite institution. The negative effect on them in incremental at the elite end.

Likewise, the students who are getting into elite schools that they wouldn’t have gotten into otherwise as a result of affirmative action are by and large people who could have gotten into some school. Often students bumped into more elite schools do so dramatically. But, again, there is a big difference between getting into one school v. another, and getting into a school or not.

The place where the affirmative action debate really matters intensely to those impacted is in the marginal schools, not the Yale and Harvard and Michigan Law Schools of the world, but the Ohio Northern Universitty Law Schools of the world. The key questions are:

1. Is affirmative action preventing marginal white and Asian students from getting a higher education at all?

What little data I’ve seen seems to indicate that this doesn’t happen. There are more law schools that want more minority law students, than they are minority college graduates interested in going to law school. Minority law students, like all prospective law students, tend to choose more prestigious schools, and so there is little squeeze out from the profession at the bottom of the law school prestige pile.

2. Is affirmative action luring minority members who are almost certain to fail in their educational program with massive debt with little benefit?

This is a bigger possible concern. It isn’t mismatch that concerns me. I suspect that your choice of school has only a modest impact on your chance of passing or dropping out in most cases, especially in cases like law school where there is an external exam at the end of the road. But, the “set up for failure scenario” is a worry. Is it ethical to admit students with very low GPAs and LSATs (for law students) if you know that students with that background have a less than 5% chance of passing the bar exam, but a 90% chance of being out $90,000 in tuition and fees and room and board (not even considering the income lost from not going and getting a job)? Is there, at the very least, a duty to provide a clear warning to the student that this is a huge financial risk for them, and wash them out if they fail dismally in their first year, so they don’t end up paying for two more? Does this happen much?

I simply don’t have enough hard facts to resolve the second question. I have no doubt that it happens, but it is hard to tell if it is prevailant. Anybody who can actually graduate from college and doesn’t drop out of law school first semester, is probably not truly hopeless, so I have doubts about this being a common event.

In commenting on Universities Record Drop In Black Admissions, Molotov says:

We predict that the black graduation rate will significantly increase, because of the better match between schools and students' abilities. Affirmative action costs blacks in future income, because unqualified folks at certain elite schools drop out when they would have done well at other academic institutions.

This is absurd. Harvard or UVa teaches nothing other colleges don't. The skills needed are the same. And frankly, competition is less valuable than education as a marker of success…those that pass the course work are qualified, and any number of people who were rejected outright would have passed the course work. The comment is apparently based on a preliminary draft of an article Richard Sanders, a law professor at UCLA. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a good overview of the arguments Sandler presents.

His study, "A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools," found that: After the first year of law school, 51 percent of black students have grade-point averages that place them in the bottom tenth of their classes, compared with 5 percent of white students. "Evidence suggests that when you're doing that badly, you're learning less than if you were in the middle of a class" at a less-prestigious law school, Mr. Sander says. [P6: And yet this

Two of the authors -- David L. Chambers, an emeritus professor of law, and Richard O. Lempert, a law professor, both at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor -- are no strangers to the affirmative-action debate. In 2000 they published a study that found that minority students who graduated from Michigan's law school between 1970 and 1996 were just as successful in their careers as their white peers, even though they started with significantly lower law-school grades and standardized-test scores.

shows evidence suggests those particular indicators just aren't a good gauge.] Among students who entered law school in 1991, about 80 percent of white students graduated and passed the bar on their first attempt, compared with just 45 percent of black students. In a race-blind admissions system, the number of black graduates passing the bar the first time would jump to 74 percent, he says, based on his statistical analysis of how higher grades in less competitive schools would result in higher bar scores. Black students are nearly six times as likely as whites not to pass state bar exams after multiple attempts. Ending affirmative action would increase the number of new black lawyers by 8.8 percent because students would attend law schools where they would struggle less and learn more, earn higher grades, and have better success on the job market.

All specious as hell from the student's perspective.

Kathy Hart, a 2003 Harvard Law School graduate who is now working for a law firm in Boston, says racial preferences are not the issue. "The problem is not so much the entry; it's what happens while you're there," says Ms. Hart, who is black. As a minority law student, "you're more likely to feel isolated and marginalized, and feel like 'nobody gets my experience.'" That, in turn, can undermine a student's confidence, she says.

And since when does struggling less mean learning more? His last point i found especially interesting

With the exception of the most-elite law schools, good grades matter more to employers than the law school's prestige.

…because we are, after all, talking about the very most-elite law schools he admits are the exception. A technical response to Sanders' article is available …I figure since Sanders leaked his article before publication, leaking the reply is cool. But I personally want to note a couple of things. First of all, it's obvious what the elite schools provide that makes attending one a valuable experience: connections. And since we know from Prof. Chambers and Lempert's work the success of one's education is not totally reflected by the grade markers in use (and we know this as regard women as well), since we know stereotype threat is a real problem because it transcends both race and gender, I would think we need more research along the lines of Factors Affecting the Completion of Undergraduate Degrees in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics for Underrepresented Minority Students, done for California State University, or Work in Progress – Cognitive, Affective and Social Factors Contributing to the Success in Undergraduate Computer Science and Engineering Education, proposed at the 34th annual Frontiers in Education conference. Research that finds those additional factors for success so they can be used across the board.