|
study being released today by the Center for Equal Opportunity finds
strong evidence of racial and ethnic discrimination in the admissions
policies of five state medical schools: the Medical College of Georgia,
Michigan State College of Human Medicine, University of Oklahoma
College of Medicine, State University of New York (SUNY) Brooklyn
College of Medicine, and University of Washington School of Medicine.
The study is posted on CEO's website, www.ceousa.org.
Under any interpretation
of the civil-rights laws, these schools are in likely violation.
The study finds that racial and ethnic considerations are much more
than a mere tiebreaker or "plus factor." Blacks and Hispanics
are consistently admitted with significantly lower academic qualifications
than whites and Asians.
For instance,
the relative odds of admission for a black applicant over an equally
qualified white or Asian applicant at SUNY Brooklyn in 1996 were
23 to 1. At Michigan State in 1999, the average black admittee had
a science grade-point average that was 0.7 lower than his white
counterpart's: a 2.9 rather than a 3.7. At Georgia in both years
studied, there was a 6-point MCAT gap (out of 56 possible points)
between blacks and whites. And so forth.
So, if you
had applied for admission to the 1999 entering class at the Oklahoma
College of Medicine, and you had a mean MCAT of 9.0 and an undergraduate
GPA of 3.5, what was your probability of admission? It all depends
on your skin color and ancestry. If you were white or Asian, your
chances were only about 50-50. If you were black, Hispanic, or American
Indian, then your chances were better than eight in ten.
The story for
the 1999 entering class at the University of Washington is the same.
For example, if you had a total MCAT of 40 and a science GPA of
3.75, your probability of admission was 67 percent if you were Hispanic
— and only 28 percent if you were Asian.
Or look at
it this way: Considering only in-state applicants at just four of
these schools in just the two years analyzed by the study, over
3,500 individual nonblack students were rejected despite having
better MCAT scores and undergraduate grades than the median black
students accepted. Multiply this by the number of medical schools
in the country, add in out-of-state residents who were also discriminated
against because of their race, and multiply that times all
the years that these preferences have been awarded — and you conclude
that there have been a lot of victims of discrimination.
The study relies
on information obtained from the schools themselves through freedom-of-information
requests. And it comes on the heels of another CEO study, released
in April, that found strong evidence of preferences for African
Americans in admissions at the University of Maryland School of
Medicine.
"We now
have evidence of discrimination at six medical schools — in the
Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, and West Coast,"
says CEO president Linda Chavez. "This is a national problem."
Never mind
that today's study also indicated no cultural bias in the correlation
between MCAT scores and passing the U.S. Medical Licensing Examination
(USMLE): Proponents of medical-school admissions discrimination
still argue that we need more black doctors to improve the medical
care for African Americans. But if there is a shortage of doctors
in some communities, there are better and more direct ways of dealing
with it than by assuming that all African Americans, and only African
Americans, can and will be doctors for African Americans.
Chavez also
noted that today's study found that students preferentially admitted
with lower academic qualifications were less likely to take and
pass the USMLE. She said: "Lowering medical school admission
standards jeopardizes the quality of medical care for everyone,
including racial and ethnic minorities." As Sally Satel — author
of PC,
M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine —
points out, we need good doctors for poor neighborhoods.
Chavez called
on the American Medical Association to address the issue of med-school
admissions bias. Coincidentally, the AMA is having its annual meeting
next week in Chicago. Well, all right: The timing of the study's
release is not a complete coincidence.
The authors
of the 88-page report are two independent consultants, Drs. Robert
Lerner and Althea Nagai. In addition to their studies of the six
medical schools, CEO has also published reports by Lerner and Nagai
that uncovered strong evidence of admissions discrimination at a
variety of undergraduate schools, including California, Colorado,
Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington
State, as well as the service academies at West Point and Annapolis.
CEO, Lerner, and Nagai are working on reports about a number of
law schools as well.
The proponents
of admission preferences frequently argue (1) that race and ethnicity
are mere pluses or tiebreakers among candidates with essentially
equal qualifications and, relatedly, (2) that the students who are
preferentially admitted will do just as well as the other students
who are admitted. Today's study shows that neither of these two
assertions is true. Those admitted according to skin color and ancestry
are significantly less qualified when they start out, and they are
significantly less likely to finish as successfully, too.
|
