Author: mopress

Duke

University has affirmative action and legacy admissions. What prevents Texas A&M from the same?

Perhaps the public nature of the university is a consideration, but if Aggie alumni wanted to follow

the Duke plan by restoring legacy and affirmative action, who can doubt their political abilities in

Texas? State Senator Jeff Wentworth suggests that the Ten Percent Plan is raising enough complaints to

attract the legislature’s attention. But here’s the question, is Aggie hostility to affirmative

action greater than their political desire to continue a legacy program. And if hostility to

affirmative action exceeds alumni loyalty at Texas A&M, what does that say about the temperament of

Aggie Culture when it comes to race?

[Published at TheBatt, Jan. 27,

2004]

In one paragraph, Columbia professor Samuel G. Freedman congratulates Gates for bringing

“intellectual honesty” to the admissions debate. In another paragraph, Freedman says that although

Gates asks the right questions, he gives the wrong answers. See the paragraphs below. Is Gates

honestly confused? [Quote:] Gates of Texas A&M asked the right questions, even if he gave the wrong

answers. He recognized that the college admissions system is profoundly flawed. He erred in continuing

to trust standardized tests and thinking that, without racial or legacy considerations, the playing

field would be level.

It never can be perfectly level, and we should operate on that

assumption. If we give up the notion that merit can be measured by a test, and if we acknowledge that

many variables contribute to an applicant’s prospects and to his or her ultimate value to a college,

we can bring integrity and sanity back to the admissions process.

Diversity should be a

plus; so should legacy, high grades and many other factors. Once we unshackle ourselves from this

belief in statistical objectivity – once we plainly say that admissions decisions are an art, not a

science – we can lay to rest the merit-vs.-race argument and save millions of high school kids and

their parents from the collective nervous breakdown that applying to college has

become.

I know this new way can work, because I have experienced it. As a faculty member

at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, I have operated in just such an

unapologetically subjective system for a dozen years. Our program consciously has refused to require

standardized tests because of our conviction that they largely tell us who had enough money to pay for

Princeton Review or Kaplan courses.[end quote, USA Tdoay, Jan.

22]

But whatever the outcome of Texas A&M’s decision, Duke administrators say the children of

Blue Devils will continue to receive special consideration during the admissions process. [Chronicle of

Higher Education Onlline, by Cindy Yee, Jan. 22, 2004.]

A few more paragraphs clipped

below…
“As a broader educational or public policy issue, this is a fairly new subject,” [Duke

director of undergrad admissions Christoph] Guttentag said. “In the Texas A&M case, a tie was made

between legacy admissions and affirmative action. I’m not sure that they should be so closely tied,

but I think that the reason some people are paying greater attention to legacy admissions now is that

it has to do with a renewed interest in issues of affirmative action.”…

In fact,

[Provost Peter] Lange said, by establishing alumni loyalty through policies like the legacy admissions

policy, the University is able to fund other programs that actually increase diversity. “Among private

universities, the loyalty of alums is very important to a whole range of things we can offer, including

the kind of funding that makes Duke a great university and offers substantial amounts of money for

financial aid,” Lange said. “You can’t pull out one thread and ignore other ways of promoting

diversity. Need-blind financial aid is one of the biggest ways to achieve this

goal.”…

Even after Texas A&M announced its decision to abolish legacy admissions

preferences, some complained that taking this step to diversify the student body was like treating a

broken bone with a Band-Aid–the concept, they said, was admirable, but the decision will ultimately

have a negligible effect.

It looks like that’s what Texas State Senator Jeff Wentworth is saying

to El Paso Times Reporter Darren Meritz in a Jan. 23 report on the “Princeton

Study.”

Could it be, that Texas politicians would prefer affirmative action over the

ten percent plan?…
[Quote:] One problem that state Sen. Jeff Wentworth sees in the Top 10

Percent Plan is a lack of consideration of which of three high-school curricula — minimum, recommended

for college, or advanced — a student completes upon graduation.

Wentworth also said

that the 10 percent plan might not be necessary because it was created to help increase minority

enrollment at Texas universities before the Supreme Court ruled this year that race can be considered a

factor in university admissions.

“There are a lot of problems with the Top 10 Percent

rule, and it needs to be repealed,” said Wentworth, R-San Antonio. The rule “has energized and

infuriated both students and parents alike.” [end quote El Paso Times Jan.

23].

Wentworth says the ten percent plan is no longer needed, now that affirmative

action has been restored, and the legislature will repeal the 10 percent plan if it gets a chance in

April.

But does that mean the state will also ask its universities to practice

affirmative action in admissions?

This is interesting news, since the ten percent plan

is sometimes viewed as a politically more popular measure than affirmative action. Stay

tuned.

[For more on the Princeton Study, see News Archives and links, BTW the El Paso

Time headline, “Top 10% plan has improved diversity at top Texas colleges” should be taken with

caution.]