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Originally posted by jon-nyc:

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Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
The funny part is that the conservative members of SCOTUS want admissions to be race-neutral.

But not gender-neutral, because female candidates, on average, have better objective qualifications. Nope, can’t have the women with better grades and test scores squeezing out the underqualified white men.

What makes you say that? I'm not aware of any cases that have come before them on the subject, or any hints of such a view from things they've said.

I believe they've explicitly referred to race-based admissions and not gender-based admissions.

But that’s the case that’s before them.

From Jon:

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does your institution think of certain races as protected classes rather than race itself

I'm struggling to understand this question, and it may be because I'm stuck too far into the weeds. In terms of this particular situation (the SCOTUS case about admissions), then we don't use race as a basis for admission. As a public university that survives based on student tuition with minimal state funding, as long as a student wants to enroll and meets minimum academic qualifications, we'll likely accept them. I acknowledge but don't want to get into the SES/race overlay on "meets minimum qualifications." We also recognize that we have a mission to serve all students and, as we're based in a city, our student body tends to look different than the ones down the road that are basically in college towns. We don't get as many straight from high school, moving into the dorm students as they do. I'm only bringing this up to explain that we aren't typical.

As far as your implied (or maybe explicit) question about race including whites, of course you're correct. But again, not particularly relevant in our particular instance. Regarding gender, the participation of women in the workforce, and as students in higher education, has outpaced men for several years now as a national average. I'm not sure why that is, but you'd have to convince me that it's due to some societal disadvantage we've suddenly started to place onto men.

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Regarding gender, the participation of women in the workforce, and as students in higher education, has outpaced men for several years now as a national average.

Isn't this still highly field-specific though? It's my understand that men still outnumber women in STEM programs, and post-graduation, men outnumber women in positions with higher salaries. Is this understanding out of date?

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I'm not sure why that is, but you'd have to convince me that it's due to some societal disadvantage we've suddenly started to place onto men.

With regard to schooling, I seem to remember reading about this and that it's connected to gendered expectations of good behavior and the ways that K-6 reward kids who can sit still?? And that the impacts of this go far beyond elementary/primary grades....

My memory is fuzzy though...

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Originally posted by Piano*Dad:

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Regarding the argument that the beneficiaries of AA at elite institutions are affluent people of color . . . We also hear that the beneficiaries aren't prepared and wash out.

We also hear from whom? Mostly people who haven't bothered to dig into any facts. Graduation rates at elite institutions don't vary much by race or SES. These schools are very well resourced, and those resources largely ensure that student from marginalized communities do quite well.

Just curious, because I'm not in the elite institution realm--what do graduation rates from these schools look like? My first thought was that perhaps graduating rates (and its predecessor, passing grades) are inflated because it looks better for the school--one of the reasons why IPEDs is now requiring outcome-based measures--how many students were employed within X years of graduation (with different flavors attached).

I should add that I'm multitasking, waiting for a virtual doc appt - so my posts might seem a bit disjointed.

Schools with the highest 4-year graduation rates

Top Publics: Six-year graduation rate

At most of the top performing schools, freshman retention is the driver of ultimate graduation rates. If you can get a student to come back after the first year, they're likely to finish.

I was a freshman at the University of Michigan in 1973, and my first semester there, my roommate was a girl from inner city Detroit who I think of as one of the very first casualties of affirmative action.

She was deeply and obviously unprepared for college--we were in some of the same classes--and had been thrown into an environment that was confusing, challenging, and painful for her.

She flunked out almost immediately because she was caught plagiarizing her final paper for our philosophy class.

I felt that affirmative action was deeply unfair to her. She needed a lot of support that just was not there.

So, there's your one anecdote of how AA failed a young woman of color.

Now, had she been a brilliant, mad talented mind like CindySphinx who never would have been my roommate but for AA, I'd be telling a different story.

I think we have to adjust to the reality of the times. In 1973, it didn't matter how mad talented you were, if you were a person of color you were not going to be admitted to plenty of institutions. This is no longer true.

And I hope it is also no longer true that people like my ex-roommate get tossed into situations that will destroy their self-confidence for the rest of their lives just because they are Black.

Maybe it is time to get rid of AA and go to an economic needs-based model.

Another down side of AA--back when I was in grad school, in the late 1980s, if you were a minority in a prestigious program, people automatically doubted your qualifications because the assumption was you would not be there if you were white, you were only there because you were a minority. That's a really unfortunate assumption--that people of color didn't really earn their position or their place with the elite, but it was handed to them--and that could be utterly refuted by making admissions color blind.

Another washout story--a very good friend of mine was among the first Native Americans to be accepted to Dartmouth. He *was* valedictorian of his high school class, and a basketball star. But the pressures of being plunked down in an Ivy League setting after being a star back home on the reservation nearly destroyed him.

He was caught burglarizing a local store and was expelled from Dartmouth, sent home in shame. He says he just did not have the support he needed to survive in a foreign environment.

He did redeem himself, however, he got his sh!t together back home, got readmitted, and got his B.A. in geography at Dartmouth, abeit a few years late.

He ended up becoming a state senator. I met him when I was sent by Audubon Magazine to do a profile of him.

During one of our many visits over the course of six months, he came back East to visit an Indian girl from his tribe who he had helped placed in a prep school in Vermont. This was a program he had helped found, to give tribal children the foundation they needed to go to an elite college--get them into private prep schools so they would be ready. I met him at the Hartford airport and we drove up to Putney together and talked the whole way there and back about how to get native American children the education they deserved.

He's Crow, btw. The grandson of one of the tribe's greatest leaders and chiefs. Now teaches at MSU.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

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Regarding gender, the participation of women in the workforce, and as students in higher education, has outpaced men for several years now as a national average.

Isn't this still highly field-specific though? It's my understand that men still outnumber women in STEM programs, and post-graduation, men outnumber women in positions with higher salaries. Is this understanding out of date?

I think you’re both right. The share of men in university is much below their proportion in the population, but it’s highly field-specific and some fields have far more male interest than female, and vice-versa. As a first approximation, the more people-oriented the field the more female participation, the more object-oriented the more male. I’m not totally sure how the salaries net out (among the recent grad cohort that is) since two very-well paying professions, medicine and law, now have quite a bit more females than males in them.

(Though in sub-specialties you’ll see big differences too - I’ll bet men still outnumber women in radiology and surgery, for example. Whereas pediatrics and obgyn are female dominated.)

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Originally posted by jon-nyc:
But that’s the case that’s before them.

Indeed.

But there's dicta. And that can indicate the direction in which they are headed.

It is also true that, in the current environment, universities provide a LOT more support services to flailing students than when I was in school. Those services are there for anyone, and there are particular services for those with particular needs. They may be more or less accessible at particular institutions.

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universities provide a LOT more support services to flailing students than when I was in school.

We certainly do!! And there are tons of ... what do you call them? Safety checks? There are all kinds to processes we use to catch students before they fall too far. We are super hands on with advising as well. And my uni has something called "academic forgiveness" as well, which was not a thing when I was an undergrad. A student can have up to two classes "forgiven" after the fact, which means that the class is removed from the set of classes which determine a student's GPA. The credits also get removed of course, so if it's a required class, it has to be retaken. But basically, you could fail, or get a D in, two classes and not have that affect your GPA. The courses stay in your transcript, so they act like Ws.

But the point is, my uni basically says, we'll catch you if you fall, and make sure you can get back on your feet.

I think it's great.

There are definitely areas that tend to lean more toward men or women, but those barriers are breaking down in many cases. Biology, for example, is now majority female nationally. Engineering is still predominantly male nationally. Education, nursing, social work remain predominantly female. But if you take a big picture view, and look at historical trends, it's clear that there are more women attending college now (as a % of the total) than are men.