Nearly all American colleges and universities have succumbed to the diversity mania; namely, the belief that they simply must have enough student “representatives” of all major racial and ethnic groups. Thus, looking at the student’s ancestry becomes more important than his or her academic ability. Inevitably, many of those admitted due to group preferences are substantially weaker than the majority of their classmates.
In today’s Martin Center article, spurred by a recent Manhattan Institute study on the evidence for mismatch, I look at the mismatch issue. Robert VerBruggen, the author of that study, writes, “The research is mixed but generally consistent with a framework in which mismatch can be a problem but is not always, depending on such factors as how severely a student is out of step with his peers and how demanding his academic program is.”
He examines quite a few studies that looked at various aspects of the mismatch argument. Some, particularly Richard Sanders of UCLA, find that mismatch has a strong negative impact on minority students admitted to fill diversity slots. Others have downplayed it, but don’t find that it has no adverse effects at all. One notable paper found that preference students tend to avoid more demanding majors in STEM fields and prefer easier ones in the social sciences and “identity” studies.
I add some observations about mismatch from professors who have seen it first-hand. Professor John Ellis of UC-Santa Cruz, for example, has written about the way racial preferences caused a steady decline in standards at his university.
To me it is clear that, when higher-education leaders decided to go into the social-engineering business with racial preferences, they set on a course that has had bad consequences for everyone except the people who now have jobs as “diversity” administrators — jobs that need not exist.