Affirmative Action and Similiar Programs Must End NOW

[BlackVision]

Frankly it absolutely sickens me that lower qualified candidates are always selected over higher qualified candidates simply on the premise of race. I will use UCLA Medical School as an example.

Click link below:
http://home.sandiego.edu/~e_cook/vault/medical/losangeles/ucla-med-98.html

Average White/Asian GPA: 3.8
Average Hispanic/Black GPA: 3.32

Average White/Asian MCAT: 11.6
Average Hispanic/Black MCAT: 9.5

White/Asians applications accepted: 4%
Hispanic/Blacks applications accepted: 9.5%

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?[/color]

 

[arildno]

Well, GWB jr. was accepted as a student solely on basis of GWB sr.'s merits;
IMHO, it is more important to take away such standard selection criteria for the privileged than the affirmative action criterion.

 

[BlackVision]

Well, GWB jr. was accepted as a student solely on basis of GWB sr.'s merits;
IMHO, it is more important to take away such standard selection criteria for the privileged than the affirmative action criterion.

I agree that one shouldn't be able to buy his way into a school and that's a separate problem that should be dealt with.

But I simply do not like the idea of whether or not you get accepted, coming down to what race you are.

 

[Moonbear]

More to the point, if the medical school is accepting a class with an average MCAT score of around 10, I think I'll avoid any physicians graduating from there. MCAT scores in the 30s are typically required to get into medical school and 45 is the maximum. Those are also 1998 data, according to your link. What's the standard error of the mean?

 

[hitssquad]

The three stigmata of the MCAT

More to the point, if the medical school is accepting a class with an average MCAT score of around 10, I think I'll avoid any physicians graduating from there. MCAT scores in the 30s are typically required to get into medical school and 45 is the maximum.

The UCLA scores quotes are averages of the Bio, Phys, and Verbal sections, each of which has a maximum score of 15 (10 is competitive nationally and 9 "http://www.bestpremed.com/MDprof.php 11.4, 11.0, and 9.0, respectively.

Those are also 1998 data, according to your link. What's the standard error of the mean?

Do you mean "standard deviation"? La Griffe's analysis of the (similar) 1997 (from Jerry Cook's website - the website linked to above by Blackvision) data says "0.9 standard deviation separated admits from the two groups."

• MCAT score distributions have a standard deviation of about 2. In 1997, UCLA admitted blacks and Hispanics with average scores of 9.8. Their Asian and white counterparts averaged 11.6. About 0.9 standard deviation separated admits from the two groups.

 

[Njorl]

Frankly it absolutely sickens me that lower qualified candidates are always selected over higher qualified candidates simply on the premise of race.

A-L-W-A-Y-S is a funny way to spell rarely. Your hyperbole indicates racially induced hysteria.

The effects of affirmative action are small compared to the traditional racial preferences given to whites. The only whites affected are those vying for the last places in average to poor schools. In better schools, legacy programs give unearned advantages to white students by more than a 4 to 1 ratio over black students.

At UCLA, the question is, do you give the last few places on your admissions list to people who perform badly who have had every advantage? Or, do you give it to people who have performed somewhat worse, but who have had far fewer advantages?

All other things being equal, the last ones admitted are always going to fail. That is why universities make sure that for the last ones admitted, all things are not equal. Yes, by skewing the admissions system, there is a chance that the last ones admitted will do spectacularly poorly, but there is also an increased chance that they will do well.

Njorl

 

[selfAdjoint]

At UCLA, the question is, do you give the last few places on your admissions list to people who perform badly who have had every advantage? Or, do you give it to people who have performed somewhat worse, but who have had far fewer advantages?


This is just as slanted a way to express the issue as blackvision's was. Nobody who makes it to the final cut has performed badly. We're talking about somebody who has performed well, and is white, versus someone who has performed less well, and is black. Prior Advantage is a shallow CONCLUSION. Some of these blacks are as middle class as any of the white candidates, and some of the whites have fought up from blue collar environments.

 

[BlackVision]

More to the point, if the medical school is accepting a class with an average MCAT score of around 10, I think I'll avoid any physicians graduating from there. MCAT scores in the 30s are typically required to get into medical school and 45 is the maximum. Those are also 1998 data, according to your link. What's the standard error of the mean?

UCLA has one of the top medical schools in the entire country. Ranked #14 in the US by http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/med/brief/mdrrank_brief.php . It beats out several key medical schools.

Now as for the MCAT, hitsquad already seemed to have explained it so I suppose I don't really have to say much. You seemed to have combined the 3 MCAT Bio, Phys, and Verbal together. While the statistics I showed are for just one so 15 would be max.

 

[BlackVision]

The effects of affirmative action are small compared to the traditional racial preferences given to whites.

So why do asians get absolutely no affirmative action benefits?

All other things being equal, the last ones admitted are always going to fail. That is why universities make sure that for the last ones admitted, all things are not equal. Yes, by skewing the admissions system, there is a chance that the last ones admitted will do spectacularly poorly, but there is also an increased chance that they will do well.

The absolute best candidates should always be selected. If you get 5,000 applications and you have 800 slots to select. You choose the best 800 based on MERITS. That is after all the whole point of a university. Your academic ability. Not what race you belong in.

 

[BlackVision]

The question is, is it fair that a black/hispanic student that averages half of a whole grade point below and several MCAT points below the university's average still get over twice the probability of being accepted as other students?

The acceptance rate for blacks/hispanics was 9.5% while for whites/asians it was 4%. Even though there is a wide gap in credentials between these two groups.

 

[TENYEARS]

Why did we keep black people in chains for a few hundred years? Why do people kill each other? Why do people do stupid things? Should you give a crap what school you go to? Maybe you should maybe you shouldn't. If competition is what matters or what someone else has and that you do not. You are lost. Real education and I do mean real will come from the desire within you. That desire will be fulfilled no matter what school you go to. If you want to keep up with the Jones, change you name to Jones. Real learning creates a mindset for life. There will never be a perfect relative expression of all things in a symetry of action, but your understanding may get there.

 

[BlackVision]

Why did we keep black people in chains for a few hundred years?

Are blacks in America today in chains? What relevance does this have? Should the Chinese of today also get compensation for their horrible treatment during the building of the railroads? Should the Polish deserve special treatment in education also because the Germans kept trying to take them over repeatedly?

Real education and I do mean real will come from the desire within you. That desire will be fulfilled no matter what school you go to.

There's a difference between Harvard University and a community college, let's not kid ourselves.

 

[Njorl]

So why do asians get absolutely no affirmative action benefits?
.

Remind me again in which states asians were enslaved. The bigotry exercised against asians has been small compared to the systemic oppression of blacks in the US.

The absolute best candidates should always be selected. If you get 5,000 applications and you have 800 slots to select. You choose the best 800 based on MERITS.
.

Why? Anyone who thinks they've earned something by being the 800th best deserves to be frustrated and disillusioned.

That is after all the whole point of a university.
.

No it isn't. The whole point of a university is to make money, or serve the interest of the state. Or have proffessors started working gratis since I went? The finer the reputation, the more they can charge for tuition. Universities have decided that racial diversity is an asset, enhancing reputation. You believe that a university should diminish itself just to accommodate a few marginally qualified applicants?

Njorl

 

[BlackVision]

Remind me again in which states asians were enslaved. The bigotry exercised against asians has been small compared to the systemic oppression of blacks in the US.

Ah so you agree then that Hispanics shouldn't have affirmative action benefits as they haven't been enslaved. Asians were discriminated far more against than Hispanics historically. Hell Asians were even banned from immigrating to the US for a long stretch of period, while that same ban was never in place for Hispanics. And Jews. Don't get me even started there. So you agree that Jews should have affirmative action benefits since they have been horribly treated throughout history correct? Oh but wait, they already overacheive in academics, so your bias will not allow such a thing.

After you're done with this notion, you might want to ask yourself what relevance does the treatment of your great great great great great great great grandparents have any direct relation to who YOU are today.

Why? Anyone who thinks they've earned something by being the 800th best deserves to be frustrated and disillusioned.

If you think the 1500th best deserves the 800th slot rather than the 800th best that is "disillusioned" And 800th best would be quite impressive in many universities. 2,000th best would even be impressive in many universities.

The finer the reputation, the more they can charge for tuition.

Since Harvard University has slightly lower tuition than many many private universities, this fails right off the bat.

Universities have decided that racial diversity is an asset

And this same "asset" doesn't apply to the Hollywood industry that is over 60% Jewish? Or law firms, and writers that are also overwhelmingly Jewish. Or how about the NBA, NFL, that is overwhelmingly black. How about mathematical and science fields where Asians are heavily overrepresented? Should every occupation have to PERFECTLY correlate to the ethnic makeup of a population? Or should the best candidates be selected regardless of what the end result of the ethnic makeup is?

You believe that a university should diminish itself just to accommodate a few marginally qualified applicants?

How is a university diminishing itself? Did you mean improving itself? Yes it would be improving itself. Having better candidates, whether for a university, a job, the NBA, or anything, is certainly better than having a worser candidate.

 

[Nereid]

What do the social science studies into students' university performances show re the relationship between GPA and MCAT scores (as entrance criteria) and things like dropout rates, further university study, salary a year/five years from graduation, etc? How do those who come to university with disadvantages - of any kind - compare with those with manifest advantages? What sorts of differences are there among subjects/disciplines/universities?

If the objective of "affirmative action" is to give some of those who are socially disadvantaged a bit of help, then such programs could be criticised for not being particularly well focussed (if indeed they ignored kids from poor or rural families, or those with physical disabilities, for example).

On the other hand, if the objective is a commercial one (as Njorl suggests), then a social science (or business studies?) research program to test the success of affirmative action should be fairly easy to define. Have such studies been done?

But what if the objectives of university admissions policy include the admission of students who will, by the time they graduate, have acquired a mastery of their chosen fields of study? That might lead at least some universities to consider including criteria such as age and work experience (those with several years’ experience in ‘the real world’ may make far better students – no matter their GPA or MCAT – than those without). Or, they may allow huge numbers into their first year classes, only to cull >50% at the end of that year (on the grounds that, for example, GPAs and MCATs are such poor predictors of suitability for university studies as to be almost meaningless).

This thread is in the Social Sciences sub-forum, but to this non-American it looks for the world like a Politics and World Affairs topic; why is it here?
Just curious.

 

[TENYEARS]

You don't get it do you. Harvard? Two year for year five year tenyear. I place my knowledge against any human on the planet. I know what I know. There is a difference. It is because of desire. What are you searching for that you need this school rather than another? You won't be successful in another, you will not self actualize? These are ideas to you and nothing more. If you used the instincts you have you would know better and not post the way you do because your understanding would disolve the issue.

There cannot be loss without gain and there cannot be gain without loss.

 

[Moonbear]

I tried posting yesterday, and the site seemed to have a hiccup, so I'll try to recap my points.

First, the ranking of UCLA as #14 among med schools was based on their research, which roughly translates into NIH dollars. This has to do with the graduate program and the graduate faculty, and not much to do with the medical students other than the handful of MSTP students who will be earning the joint MD/PhD degree. It ranks somewhat lower for primary care, around 23 or 24 (I had looked it up yesterday, so now I'm trying to remember the numbers without retracing all my steps). Of course that has a lot more to do with the physicians employed by the university, the remainder of the hospital staff, and the quality of the residents they attract, and again, not a whole lot to do with the med students until they reach their 3rd and 4th year and start doing clinical rotations.

So, how do we measure the success of medical students? Scores on medical boards and placements for residencies. I wasn't able to locate this information (it might be available in the section of the US News and World Report that only subscribers can access; I don't have a subscription).

Also, there is a lot more to being a successful medical student and physician than just grades and scores. I've run into 4.0, or nearly 4.0, students who do well on standardized testing but have very limited social skills, or who have not been involved in anything other than focusing on academics. Physicians need good bedside manner, med students need to juggle a demanding schedule, so evidence of ability to interact socially and balance studying with multiple other activities are also important in the admissions decision.

Another issue when offering acceptances to students that is rarely publicized, is trying to gauge whether they will actually accept the offer of admission. The very best students are going to get offers at all the best schools they apply to, which means if you're even a little way down the list of top-ranked med schools, they are still likely to attend another school. Or, a student that would be in the middle of your class might be near the top of a lower-ranked school that gets less applicants and may choose the lower-ranked school because they will qualify for fellowship support at that one, or tuition may be lower without the fellowship support. Also, there are fellowship programs based on things other than scores, such as those that will pay tuition if a student agrees to work in an area with a physician shortage for a number of years after completing their residency. These areas have physician shortages because they are not very popular places to live, so as long as someone has a reasonable chance of success in medical school, if they are willing to commit to working there, then that improves their desirability as a candidate.

And one last point: Since UCLA is ranked among at least the top 25 medical schools, they must be doing something right in selecting their incoming classes or else they wouldn't be able to maintain their reputation of excellence. Physicians do need to treat all patients, not just those of one ethnic group, so exposing medical students to greater diversity during their training will make them more comfortable with different ethnic and cultural issues important for being better physicians to the patients with those issues.

 

[Moonbear]

Tenyears, very good point. My experience has been that only students at Harvard are particularly concerned with Harvard's reputation. Someone with the drive to learn, thirst for knowledge, and the independence to truly be successful will thrive at absolutely any university. Those who need an extra push to get them to that point will thrive at a smaller university with more direct contact with their professors. Faculty who enjoy teaching more than research tend to apply for jobs at smaller colleges than major research universities, so the undergraduates at those smaller schools get a much better classroom experience. Often they can also find more opportunity for research experiences too because the labs are smaller and more willing to take risks on bringing in an undergraduate who will require more supervision than hiring a post-doc who can work independently.

My overall experience, though, has been that you're going to learn pretty much the same stuff in your classes at any university. Some larger universities can offer more variety in the upper level classes, so if you're still figuring out what field you like best by then, it's good to have those options. But, it's the things you do outside of the classroom that determine how much you will get out of your university experience. These are the things that don't get taught that are incredibly important for success. Can you manage your time? Can you multi-task? Have you developed leadership skills? Can you communicate your thoughts to people with a range of different learning styles, points of view, cultural backgrounds? Note, while many people will jump to the conclusion that cultural background refers to ethnic background, that's not necessarily the case. There are very different cultures in the Northeastern US than in the Southern US or Midwestern US. If you're a scientist or physician, you need to interact with people who are not just scientists or physicians. When you run a research lab, you need to also manage or work with secretaries, business and grant administrators, and need to communicate your findings not only to other scientists, but also to the general public and media. When you are a physician, you will have patients coming to your office who are from every walk of life: construction workers, custodians, homemakers, children, lawyers, students, bus drivers, etc. You also need to manage an office staff of receptionists, bookeepers, secretaries, nurses, medical assistants, cleaning staff. Harvard arrogance won't get you very far with them.

 

[BlackVision]

What do the social science studies into students' university performances show re the relationship between GPA and MCAT scores (as entrance criteria) and things like dropout rates, further university study, salary a year/five years from graduation, etc?

The dropout rate among affirmative action students is substantially higher than the university average as are GPA averages. I do not recall the exact statistics but I do remember there is a wide gap. I will see if I can find it again.

 

[BlackVision]

You don't get it do you. Harvard? Two year for year five year tenyear. I place my knowledge against any human on the planet. I know what I know. There is a difference. It is because of desire. What are you searching for that you need this school rather than another? You won't be successful in another, you will not self actualize? These are ideas to you and nothing more. If you used the instincts you have you would know better and not post the way you do because your understanding would disolve the issue.

Desire aside, there is a difference between Harvard and a lower class university. First, the brightest professors will be teaching there. Even if you're learning the same criterias, this does have an impact. Second, you will be surrounded by students that will on average rank enormously high on the academic scale. This will also have an impact.

 

[loseyourname]

So, how do we measure the success of medical students? Scores on medical boards and placements for residencies. I wasn't able to locate this information (it might be available in the section of the US News and World Report that only subscribers can access; I don't have a subscription).

I'd be careful with this. The top two schools in terms of students getting their first choice of residency, are the University of Washington and the University of Oregon (and they are ranked 1 and 2 in US and World News because of it). The reason isn't so much the quality of the training or the quality of the students as it is the fact that these are regional schools, designed to get these students placed at regional hospitals. In fact, one of the major considerations taken into account by their admissions offices are where the students come from geographically and where they plan on practicing once they are licensed.

About the research rankings, it's true that the schools are pretty much ranked based on how much money they receive each year, but this is an important factor if you want to take part in research while in med school. The more money they receieve, the better your chances of being funded.

 

[loseyourname]

But back to the topic of this thread. Any preference given by the government to a student based on race, religion, sexual preference, gender, or national origin is violative of equal opportunity laws and is a transgression against human rights. What a private university wants to do with its money is its business, but the same cannot be said of taxpayer-funded universities.

 

[Njorl]

Ah so you agree then that Hispanics shouldn't have affirmative action benefits as they haven't been enslaved.

No. Slavery is only the most egregious form of racial discriminatoin. Asians suffer very little from racial discrimination presently. Blacks and hispanics, on the other hand, are hated by a significant percentage of the people who have power in this country. Large minorities are always more hated than small ones.

Asians were discriminated far more against than Hispanics historically.

No they were not. See, you say one baseless thing, and I baselessly contradict it.

Hell Asians were even banned from immigrating to the US for a long stretch of period, while that same ban was never in place for Hispanics.

That is laughable. Much of the country belonged to the Hispanics and was taken away from them. I'd say that was worse

And Jews. Don't get me even started there. So you agree that Jews should have affirmative action benefits since they have been horribly treated throughout history correct? Oh but wait, they already overacheive in academics, so your bias will not allow such a thing.

In the US? There has been much bigotry against Jews in the US, but nothing compared to blacks, hispanics or even asians for that matter.

After you're done with this notion, you might want to ask yourself what relevance does the treatment of your great great great great great great great grandparents have any direct relation to who YOU are today.

Why don't you add another dozen greats? You seem to think Slavery ended in 1750. Legal slavery ended less than 150 years ago, so 3 greats would be appropriate. Slavery continued into the 1950s with abusive sharecropper laws and Jim Crow. Though it was unconstitutional, it was sanctioned by individual states. These same states denied blacks legal recourse to ameliorate the state sponsored oppression they inflicted by denying them the vote.

If you think the 1500th best deserves the 800th slot rather than the 800th best that is "disillusioned" And 800th best would be quite impressive in many universities. 2,000th best would even be impressive in many universities.

I don't think 800th or 2000th best deserve anything. My point is the university does what it wants to do. You seem to have missed this.

Since Harvard University has slightly lower tuition than many many private universities, this fails right off the bat.

Is that supposed to have any meaning? Lots of people ike to pay more for inferior products. Also, some people will pay more for products tailored just for their needs. It does not mean that the product is better, just more expensive.

And this same "asset" doesn't apply to the Hollywood industry that is over 60% Jewish? Or law firms, and writers that are also overwhelmingly Jewish. Or how about the NBA, NFL, that is overwhelmingly black. How about mathematical and science fields where Asians are heavily overrepresented? Should every occupation have to PERFECTLY correlate to the ethnic makeup of a population? Or should the best candidates be selected regardless of what the end result of the ethnic makeup is?

Where the hell is this coming from? I certainly never made this argument. I suppose it gets difficult for you when your interlocuter does not follow the script.

How is a university diminishing itself? Did you mean improving itself? Yes it would be improving itself. Having better candidates, whether for a university, a job, the NBA, or anything, is certainly better than having a worser candidate.

You have tunnel vision. The people running universities might know what they're doing. If you know better, open your own and put them out of business.
Njorl

 

[Moonbear]

The reason isn't so much the quality of the training or the quality of the students as it is the fact that these are regional schools, designed to get these students placed at regional hospitals. In fact, one of the major considerations taken into account by their admissions offices are where the students come from geographically and where they plan on practicing once they are licensed.

Actually, most med schools use this same criteria of considering geographic origins of their class. Pre-meds are advised quite strongly to apply to schools primarily within their own state and a few neighboring states for this reason.

About the research rankings, it's true that the schools are pretty much ranked based on how much money they receive each year, but this is an important factor if you want to take part in research while in med school. The more money they receieve, the better your chances of being funded.

If they are interested in research, then it really isn't very relevant to look at overall rankings so much as to look at the individual department rankings to find the schools with strong research programs in the specific area you're interested in conducting research.

 

[Moonbear]

Desire aside, there is a difference between Harvard and a lower class university. First, the brightest professors will be teaching there.

Take a look at where Harvard's faculty got their degrees. For the most part, it wasn't Harvard. In addition, those who excel at research and obtaining grant funding do not necessarily teach well.

 

[BlackVision]

No. Slavery is only the most egregious form of racial discriminatoin.

Ah yes. Worst than the genocide against Jews. Did over half the black population get wiped out by anyone at any point? You're going to sit there and tell me that slavery is worst than genocide?

No they were not. See, you say one baseless thing, and I baselessly contradict it.

Wow good job stating absolutely no reasons to refute my fact. *claps hands* United States consistently allowed Hispanic immigration but Asians were banned with the immigration act of 1924. And Asians were greatly well treated during WWII weren't they?

That is laughable. Much of the country belonged to the Hispanics and was taken away from them. I'd say that was worse

And allowed to remain in the country? And consistently allowed Hispanic immigration? Whereas Asians were banned? Yeah I would say this is worst.

In the US? There has been much bigotry against Jews in the US, but nothing compared to blacks, hispanics or even asians for that matter.

Oh please. There were so many lobbyists trying to prevent any Jewish immigration whatsoever into the country. And when they first arrived in the country, they were living in the poorest of neighborhoods. They themselves worked themselves out of it. Without any sort of "special aid" and pity assistance. Jews have been the most hated ethnic group in history. Yes more so than blacks. And the simple fact is that if they were underacheiving, you would use their past discrimination as an excuse to give them affirmative action benefits. But since they are overacheiving, you think they shouldn't. Just another great example of your hypocrisy.

Why don't you add another dozen greats? You seem to think Slavery ended in 1750. Legal slavery ended less than 150 years ago, so 3 greats would be appropriate. Slavery continued into the 1950s with abusive sharecropper laws and Jim Crow. Though it was unconstitutional, it was sanctioned by individual states. These same states denied blacks legal recourse to ameliorate the state sponsored oppression they inflicted by denying them the vote.

And?

The Jews genocide has far more atrocity and is more recent in history than black slavery. Not to mention you still fail to get one simple point. None of this is relevant. Are you a slave? Is any black in Ameica right now a slave? You find a black in America that is a slave and we will give him affirmative action benefits. But trying to give someone compensation for what happened to their ancestors hundreds of years ago goes beyond ridiculous.

Would you like to explain exactly how Kobe Bryant's kid is suffering from the slavery of his great great great great great great great grandparents?

I don't think 800th or 2000th best deserve anything. My point is the university does what it wants to do. You seem to have missed this.

Affirmative action breaks the "equal protection law" so actually they're not suppose to use affirmative action. Somehow this failed in the US Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote. Even though it was successful in lower courts. One more vote and none of this would even be a discussion anymore. Affirmative action would be banned like it's suppose to be. Everyone will have equal protection under the law. And we can all move on with our lives. But that one swing vote has caused an enormous problem to continue. I expect that once the US Supreme Court gets a change and fresh new faces, affirmative action will be banned as it should be.

Is that supposed to have any meaning? Lots of people ike to pay more for inferior products. Also, some people will pay more for products tailored just for their needs. It does not mean that the product is better, just more expensive.

You were trying to state that a reputation simply means they can charge more for tuition. Harvard has the best reputation of any university in America. Did I say America? In the world. Your logic fails here. That was the only point.

Where the hell is this coming from? I certainly never made this argument. I suppose it gets difficult for you when your interlocuter does not follow the script.

Ah so you believe affirmative action should exist in universities to achieve "diversity" but that the same shouldn't apply to any field where minorities consist of the majority. You might want to look up the word "hypocrisy" in a dictionary.

You have tunnel vision. The people running universities might know what they're doing. If you know better, open your own and put them out of business.

Alrlght. Then all the organizations pre MLK Jr. That banned blacks from certain schools. Banned blacks from playing professional baseball. They also knew what they were doing correct? And if blacks knew better, they should of opened up their own baseball league instead of fighting for equality in the professional league. Ah I see now.

 

[BlackVision]

Some additional questions for Njorl...And anyone else that wants to answer.


Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Indians consist of 50% of the US Asian population. But over 90% of Asians in universities. Asian groups like Filipinos and Vietnamese have the same academic credentials and GPA and SAT averages as Hispanics. But since the entire Asian group does not benefit from affirmative action, a Filipino and Vietnamese has a substantially lower chance of getting into a university. Do you think Southeast Asians should have affirmative action benefits?

Middle Easterners and Arabs are considered "White" in America. They are not overrepresented in US Universities. But since they are classified as Whites, they do not get affirmative action benefits, do you believe they should?

The "Jews overacheive in academics" stereotype is actually really Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardi Jews do not overcheive. Should Sephardi Jews get affirmative action benefits from past discrimination against Jews but Ashkenazi Jews shouldn't?

Should Kobe Bryant's kid get affirmative action benefits but a white trailor trash from the Midwest should not?

How much ancestry of a race do you believe is enough to justify affirmative action? 90%? 50%? 25%?

 

[Njorl]

Ah yes. Worst than the genocide against Jews. Did over half the black population get wiped out by anyone at any point? You're going to sit there and tell me that slavery is worst than genocide?

Ah. I see the problem. I live in the USA. You must live in Germany. I can see how it must be confusing for someonemoving from Germany to deal with afirmative action in the US.

I will not continue. You are intentionally ignorant as a debating tactic. You are not worth my time.

Njorl

 

[BlackVision]

Ah. I see the problem. I live in the USA. You must live in Germany. I can see how it must be confusing for someonemoving from Germany to deal with afirmative action in the US.

Ah so Germany has affirmative action for Jews? When did this happen?

Jews didn't face heavy discrimination during their mass immigration to America?

And why is it that Asians in America do not get affirmative action benefits for the way the Chinese were discriminated against? And for the way the Japanese were during WWII? And for the whole Asian immigration ban of 1924? You can pretend all you want that Hispanics faced the god awful discriminations Asians did but the reality is Asians were far more discriminated against historically than Hispanics were. Hispanics were never banned from immigrating to the US and were often times welcomed to come.

You are not worth my time.

Is this your way of saying that you can't answer my questions? Well whatever works.

 

[loseyourname]

Middle Easterners and Arabs are considered "White" in America. They are not overrepresented in US Universities. But since they are classified as Whites, they do not get affirmative action benefits, do you believe they should?

I'd like to chime in here and point out that I have many Armenian friends, most of whom are recent immigrants with very little money who experience a great deal of discrimination, and they receive absolutely nothing. Any system that treats these people as part of a privileged majority is a flawed system.

 

[hitssquad]

Ohsu

The top two schools in terms of students getting their first choice of residency, are the University of Washington and the University of Oregon (and they are ranked 1 and 2 in US and World News because of it).

There hasn't been a University of Oregon Medical School since 1981. Oregon now has an http://www.ohsu.edu/about/history.html, which previous to 2001 was called Oregon Health Sciences University.

 

[London Kngiths]

Race and social status should have no bearing on how things are done. The problem is that you can't make everyone happy anymore.

Take away affirmative action and all the racial activists will start spouting off about the disadvantages of growing up black (or any other race I may use black most often as it is the most commonly referred to minority, but I am in no way trying to imply anything specifically against blacks) and how everything is so much harder.

Put it in and then people will complain that it is unfair that people are getting an unfair advantage.

Personally I lie in the category of thinking affirmative action served its purpose when there was more of a need to "make up" for previous injustices but now I think that the program is obsolete. To play up the racial card on getting a post secondary education this removed from the major difficulties with race to me is in itself a form of racism. To give people an advantage based on their skin colour changes the competition for education. You are separating the requirements for people to get in based on their skin colour or their nationality which is in itself a form of racial profilling.

 

[loseyourname]

There hasn't been a University of Oregon Medical School since 1981. Oregon now has an http://www.ohsu.edu/about/history.html, which previous to 2001 was called Oregon Health Sciences University.

I know. It's still the same university, still part of U of O.

 

[Loren Booda]

A reasonable compromise to a large part of the "affirmative action" debate may be realized through "academic action," the consideration of the college bound (or secondary school graduates in general) for their past public educational opportunities. Concerning this, the major measurable educational determinant under government influence and responsibility is academic history - in particular, those benefits local public school districts provide from varying qualities of education. Whatever the demographics, it should be clear to both sides of the affirmative action debate that redress for opportunities lost in education can most effectively and immediately be accounted for by considering the student's past educational opportunities, or lack thereof, promised equal under the law.

In my sophomore year at Yale I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (thus joining one of our nation's more exclusive and reviled minorities), effectively encouraged never to return. Ours is a problem rarely addressed by affirmative action, but I believe that everyone can benefit from retroactively resolving the differing advantages that government bestows upon individuals, particularly by assessing the inequities in their public education. This will have the effect of making fair education everyone's concern, and eliminating the need for affirmative action.

Education is the major indicator of one's vocational future. It is the responsibility of our democracy to protect and ensure the rights of all individuals, including facilitating access to similar public institutions, especially education, from birth onward. All else being the same, how would most of us have thrived in a school system like those of city slums, rather than where we did graduate?

 

[Moonbear]

Loren, very well stated! I very much agree with your ideas of addressing inequalities of educational experience at the root of the problem rather than with blanket categorizations that often times miss the mark.

The college I attended had what I thought was a pretty good way of making admissions decisions. They had certain criteria of GPA and SAT scores that if you were above that, you got a definite acceptance, and then scores that if you fell below it, the application was rejected, and then a range in between where the scores alone indicated there was a weakness, but not so bad that they had no chance of succeeding at that college, so then they considered each of those individually, reading the essays and letters of recommendation and any other supporting material to determine if there was an explanation for those borderline scores, something adverse the student had to overcome, or if there was something that demonstrated a better likelihood of success. For example, if someone had bounced around foster homes half their life, that could be considered as mitigating the low grades, or if the student was involved in tons of extracurricular activities or was working a part-time job through high school, that might help explain that they didn't have as much time to devote to studying, or an exceptional essay might suggest those grades aren't fully reflecting the student's abilities. On the other end, if nothing stood out about the student, or they had every privilege growing up, then those borderline scores may reflect the best that student is able to do, or lack of effort in achieving their full potential.

 

[krzywicki]

LBJ once said " you cannot take the chains off a black man who had been enslaved for hundreds of year, and put him on the starting line with all the others, and say "GO" and expect this to be fair." The fact of the matter is, nothing is fair in grading kids, SAT's, and GPA's are favorable to the rich community b/c they can afford the better classes and prep courses. Affirmative action is a Must! and sadly, some people cannot see it.

 

[BlackVision]

LBJ once said " you cannot take the chains off a black man who had been enslaved for hundreds of year, and put him on the starting line with all the others, and say "GO" and expect this to be fair."

So it's a slavery issue now? So why do Hispanics get affirmative action? Why do Pacific Islanders? Why does every single race except Whites and Asians get affirmative action?

And there's quite a number of black immigrants today from countries that never had slavery. You agree then that they shouldn't get affirmative action? Even though blacks who do not have any slavery in their ancestry do not perform any better than blacks who do have slavery in their ancestry.

Greeks were enslaved by the Romans. Should White Greeks also get affirmative action?

The fact of the matter is, nothing is fair in grading kids, SAT's, and GPA's are favorable to the rich community b/c they can afford the better classes and prep courses.

Studying for the SAT will only marginally raise your SAT score. College board reports that studying over 50+ hours for the SAT, will raise your SAT score by less than 40 points. And after 50+ hours there is no increase at all. Average increase of 13 points for verbal. And 18 points for math. Only 5% of people who took the SAT multiple times, raised their score by over 100 points.

Affirmative action is a Must! and sadly, some people cannot see it.

Sadly there are a lot of racists out there wanting to give special racial preference points. All you have to be is be born the right race correct?

 

[franznietzsche]

Ah. I see the problem. I live in the USA. You must live in Germany. I can see how it must be confusing for someonemoving from Germany to deal with afirmative action in the US.

Ah so Germany has affirmative action for Jews? When did this happen?

lmao


THAT made me laugh.

I'd like to chime in here and point out that I have many Armenian friends, most of whom are recent immigrants with very little money who experience a great deal of discrimination, and they receive absolutely nothing. Any system that treats these people as part of a privileged majority is a flawed system.

HINT: Liberal politicians don't care about equality. They care about votes. By giving immoral benefits to "disadvantaged minorities" (read: People lacking a culture of integrity, hard work, and self-improvement through one's own abilities) they can help gaurantee their place in political power. Thats all affirmative action really is. Power politics.

Take away affirmative action and all the racial activists will start spouting off about the disadvantages of growing up black (or any other race I may use black most often as it is the most commonly referred to minority, but I am in no way trying to imply anything specifically against blacks) and how everything is so much harder.

Ineptitude makes life harder too. We should give affirmative action to the inept...oh wait, that's why they wanted to legalize marijuana, nevermind then.

LBJ once said " you cannot take the chains off a black man who had been enslaved for hundreds of year, and put him on the starting line with all the others, and say "GO" and expect this to be fair." The fact of the matter is, nothing is fair in grading kids, SAT's, and GPA's are favorable to the rich community b/c they can afford the better classes and prep courses. Affirmative action is a Must! and sadly, some people cannot see it.

Favorable to the rich community...So let's help blacks and hispanics!

Its a rather non-sequitur conclusion. Helping the poor and disadvantaged...ok...helping racial subdivisions just because they are in those racial subdivisions irrelevant of the real circumstances...no. Read the post on the Armenian immigrants. If you're going to help the disadvantaged, you can't say well give all the blacks aid. Not all of them are disadvantaged. not all whites are privileged. Picking based on raced is a political fad that helps certain politicians get elected. It has nothing to do with fairness. Picking based on actual social disadvantage, you can make an actual case for, but for picking based on race, you cannot.

 

[FZ+]

So it's a slavery issue now? So why do Hispanics get affirmative action? Why do Pacific Islanders? Why does every single race except Whites and Asians get affirmative action?

No it is not. The issue is white discrimination towards black minorities, which is still prevalent. In fact, the presence of this post, and several similar ones is evidence of its prevalence. If we still see by black and white, clearly we still need help.

 

[shonagon53]

Frankly it absolutely sickens me that lower qualified candidates are always selected over higher qualified candidates simply on the premise of race. I will use UCLA Medical School as an example.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?[/color]

There's nothing wrong.

Affirmative action was invented by society's most brilliant minds.

They know it's in the interest of all people (that includes you, a genius, no doubt), to integrate people who've had fewer chances.

The integration of the weaker into society benefits the stronger. It benefits them more than when the weak are excluded. Think about why this would be so.

Intelligent people understand the deep reasons behind affirmative action.

 

[BlackVision]

So you honestly believe someone that scores academically worst should still have over 3 times the chance to get accepted to a university simply on the premise of race?

 

[shonagon53]

Yes indeed.


But you know what, I'm a bit tired of your racist rant. It's simply too infantile. You must urgently try to get a life. Or get an education of some sort. Oops! What am I saying, as I understand it, you didn't make it through the selection process. Thank God they put some disempowered black person first.

Anyway, I'm going to ignore most of your posts. You're a senseless individual with only one chord on your piano.

 

[FZ+]

So you honestly believe someone that scores academically worst should still have over 3 times the chance to get accepted to a university simply on the premise of race?

If it is suggested that this is not due to ability, then yes. Academic scores are not the most reliable factors out there. Once we achieve more equality of opportunity, then affirmative action may be phased out.

Shonagon, being so automatically hostile is not very helpful.

 

[hitssquad]

Predicting academic achievement

So you honestly believe someone that scores academically worst should still have over 3 times the chance to get accepted to a university simply on the premise of race?

If it is suggested that this is not due to ability, then yes.

So public universities should base acceptance on IQ?

Academic scores are not the most reliable factors out there.

This statement is missing information. What is it you might be trying to reliably predict?

• SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT[/size]
  
  The purpose of the first "intelligence" test, devised by Binet and Simon in 1905, was to assess elementary school children and identify those most likely to fail in the regular instructional program. These children would learn better with more specialized and individualized instruction suited to their belowaverage level of cognitive development. Since Binet's invention, there have been countless studies of the validity of mental tests for predicting children's scholastic performance. The Psychological Abstracts contains some 11,000 citations of studies on the relation of educational achievement to "IQ." If there is any unquestioned fact in applied psychometrics, it is that IQ tests have a high degree of predictive validity for many educational criteria, such as scores on scholastic achievement tests, school and college grades, retention in grade, school dropout, number of years of schooling, probability of entering college, and, after entering, probability of receiving a bachelor's degree. With equality of educational opportunity for the whole population increasing in recent decades, IQ has become even more predictive of educational outcomes than it was before the second half of this century.
  
  The evidence for the validity of IQ in predicting educational variables is so vast and has been reviewed so extensively elsewhere [11] that there is no need to review it in detail here. The median validity coefficient of IQ for educational variables is about +.50, but the spread of validity coefficients is considerable, ranging from close to zero up to about .85. Most of the variability in validity coefficients is due to differences in the range of ability in the particular groups being tested. The less the variability of IQ in a given group, of course, the lower is the correlation ceiling that the IQ is likely to have with any criterion variable. Hence we see an appreciable decrease in the average validity coefficient for each rung of the educational ladder from kindergarten to graduate or professional school. Several rungs on the educational ladder are the main junctures for either dropping out or continuing in school.
  
  The correlation of IQ with grades and achievement test scores is highest (.60 to .70) in elementary school, which includes virtually the entire child population and hence the full range of mental ability. At each more advanced educational level, more and more pupils from the lower end of the IQ distribution drop out, thereby restricting the range of IQs. The average validity coefficients decrease accordingly: high school (.50 to .60), college (.40 to .50), graduate school (.30 to .40). All of these are quite high, as validity coefficients go, but they permit far less than accurate prediction of a specific individual. (The standard error of estimate is quite large for validity coefficients in this range.)
  
  Achievement test scores are more highly correlated with IQ than are grades, probably because grades are more influenced by the teacher's idiosyncratic perceptions of the child's apparent effort, personality, docility, deportment, gender, and the like. For example, teachers tend, on average, to give higher course grades to girls than to boys, although the boys and the girls scarcely differ on objective achievement tests.
  
  Even when pupils' school grades are averaged over a number of years, so that different teachers' idiosyncratic variability in grading is averaged out, the correlation between grades and IQ is still far from perfect. A strong test of the overall relationship between IQ and course grades was provided in a study [12] based on longitudinal data from the Berkeley Growth Study. A general factor (and individual factor scores) was obtained from pupils' teacher-assigned grades in arithmetic, English, and social studies in grades one through ten. Also, the general factor (and factor scores) was extracted from the matrix of intercorrelations of Stanford-Binet IQs obtained from the same pupils on six occasions at one- to two-year intervals between grades one and ten. Thus we have here highly stable measures of both school grades and IQs, with each individual's year-toyear fluctuations in IQ and teachers' grades averaged out in the general factor scores for IQ and for grades.
  
  The correlation between the general factor for grades and the general factor for Stanford-Binet IQ was +.69. Corrected for attenuation, the correlation is +.75. This corrected correlation indicates that pupils' grades in academic subjects, although highly correlated with IQ, also reflect consistent sources of variance that are independent of IQ. The difficulty in studying or measuring the sources of variance in school grades that are not accounted for by IQ is that they seem to consist of a great many small (but relatively stable) sources of variance (personality traits, idiosyncratic traits, study habits, interests, drive, etc.) rather than just a few large, measurable traits. This is probably why attempts to improve the prediction of scholastic performance by including personality scales along with cognitive tests have shown little promise of raising predictive validity appreciably above that attributable to IQ alone. In the noncognitive realm, no general factor, or any combination of broad group factors, has been discovered that appreciably increases the predictive validity over and above the prediction from IQ alone.
  
  Although IQ tests are highly g loaded, they also measure other factors in addition to g, such as verbal and numerical abilities. It is of interest, then, to ask how much the reported validity of IQ for predicting scholastic success can be attributed to g and how much to other factors independent of g.
  
  The psychometrician Robert L. Thorndike [13] analyzed data specifically to answer this question. He concluded that 80 to 90 percent of the predictable variance in scholastic performance is accounted for by g, with 10 to 20 percent of the variance predicted by other factors measured by the IQ or other tests. This should not be surprising, since highly g-loaded tests that contain no verbal or numerical factors or information content that resembles anything taught in school (the Raven matrices is a good example) are only slightly less correlated with various measures of scholastic performance than are the standard IQ and scholastic aptitude tests, which typically include some scholastic content. Clearly the predictive validity of g does not depend on the test's containing material that children are taught in school or at home. Pupils' grades in different academic subjects share a substantial common factor that is largely g. 14
  
  The reason that IQ tests predict academic achievement better than any other measurable variable is that school learning itself is g-demanding. Pupils must continually grasp "relations and correlates" as new material is introduced, and they must transfer previously learned knowledge and skills to the learning of new material. These cognitive activities, when specifically investigated, are found to be heavily g loaded. It has also been found that various school subjects differ in their g demands. Mathematics and written composition, for example, are more g-demanding than arithmetic computation and spelling. Reading comprehension is so g loaded and also so crucial in the educational process as to warrant a separate section (p. 280 ).
  
  The number of years of formal education that a person acquires is a relatively crude measure of educational attainment. It is quite highly correlated with IQ, typically between +.60 and +70. 15 This correlation cannot be explained as entirely the result of more education causing higher IQ. A substantial correlation exists even if the IQ is measured at an age when all persons have had the same number of years of schooling. Validity coefficients in the range of .40 to .50 are found between IQ at age seven and amount of education completed by age 40. [16]

(Arthur Jensen. The g Factor. pp277-279.)



In other words, not everyone who has the same amount of schooling, and even attains the same grades, has learned the same amount; and the amount that a person both has learned, and will learn in the future, is most highly correlated with g. Since the academic records of students applying for college are largely based on the whims of their teachers, g remains a better predictor of college-level educational-attainment than pre-college academic record.

 

[BlackVision]

"So you honestly believe someone that scores academically worst should still have over 3 times the chance to get accepted to a university simply on the premise of race?"

Yes indeed.

Wait who's the racist here again?

You must urgently try to get a life.

Ah you mean like the one where someone constantly rants about the "white man" keeping one down? That kind of life? Please describe this wonderful "life" that you are experiencing.

Oops! What am I saying, as I understand it, you didn't make it through the selection process. Thank God they put some disempowered black person first.

I attend UCLA currently. Which is certainly one of the more prominent universities in the US. Although if I simply marked the "black" box, I most certainly would have been accepted to Harvard. But it's well assuring to know that the average black student in Harvard is as smart as the average white student in a lesser university.

We'll lower the bar for you and your "people" since blacks couldn't get into universities any other way correct?

Anyway, I'm going to ignore most of your posts.

Well of course since I debunked your off the wall statements so easily and you never have any ability to refute whatsoever. It isn't a surprise that you will run and hide.

 

[BlackVision]

If it is suggested that this is not due to ability, then yes. Academic scores are not the most reliable factors out there. Once we achieve more equality of opportunity, then affirmative action may be phased out.

Actually academic scores such as SAT have consistently been considered the most reliable in every study done next to IQ scores. If you have a more accurate measure please share it among us. What exactly do you mean by more equality of opportunity. It is already equal at this point. I take that back. Blacks, hispanics have a much larger advantage and more of an opportunity than whites and asians. Nonetheless the numbers for both in the university level is staggering low. But to somehow blame this on the "white man" or on the "system" is counterfactual and is equivalent to blaming the "black man" and the "system" for the extraordinary lack of white and asian basketball players in the NBA.

Shonagon, being so automatically hostile is not very helpful.

Shonagon is a black who is a racist. Certainly all of his comments stated on this board if directed toward any other race other than "white" would have caused an uproar.

 

[BlackVision]

• SCHOLASTIC ACHIEVEMENT[/size]
  
  The purpose of the first "intelligence" test, devised by Binet and Simon in 1905, was to assess elementary school children and identify those most likely to fail in the regular instructional program. These children would learn better with more specialized and individualized instruction suited to their belowaverage level of cognitive development. Since Binet's invention, there have been countless studies of the validity of mental tests for predicting children's scholastic performance. The Psychological Abstracts contains some 11,000 citations of studies on the relation of educational achievement to "IQ." If there is any unquestioned fact in applied psychometrics, it is that IQ tests have a high degree of predictive validity for many educational criteria, such as scores on scholastic achievement tests, school and college grades, retention in grade, school dropout, number of years of schooling, probability of entering college, and, after entering, probability of receiving a bachelor's degree. With equality of educational opportunity for the whole population increasing in recent decades, IQ has become even more predictive of educational outcomes than it was before the second half of this century.
  
  The evidence for the validity of IQ in predicting educational variables is so vast and has been reviewed so extensively elsewhere [11] that there is no need to review it in detail here. The median validity coefficient of IQ for educational variables is about +.50, but the spread of validity coefficients is considerable, ranging from close to zero up to about .85. Most of the variability in validity coefficients is due to differences in the range of ability in the particular groups being tested. The less the variability of IQ in a given group, of course, the lower is the correlation ceiling that the IQ is likely to have with any criterion variable. Hence we see an appreciable decrease in the average validity coefficient for each rung of the educational ladder from kindergarten to graduate or professional school. Several rungs on the educational ladder are the main junctures for either dropping out or continuing in school.
  
  The correlation of IQ with grades and achievement test scores is highest (.60 to .70) in elementary school, which includes virtually the entire child population and hence the full range of mental ability. At each more advanced educational level, more and more pupils from the lower end of the IQ distribution drop out, thereby restricting the range of IQs. The average validity coefficients decrease accordingly: high school (.50 to .60), college (.40 to .50), graduate school (.30 to .40). All of these are quite high, as validity coefficients go, but they permit far less than accurate prediction of a specific individual. (The standard error of estimate is quite large for validity coefficients in this range.)
  
  Achievement test scores are more highly correlated with IQ than are grades, probably because grades are more influenced by the teacher's idiosyncratic perceptions of the child's apparent effort, personality, docility, deportment, gender, and the like. For example, teachers tend, on average, to give higher course grades to girls than to boys, although the boys and the girls scarcely differ on objective achievement tests.
  
  Even when pupils' school grades are averaged over a number of years, so that different teachers' idiosyncratic variability in grading is averaged out, the correlation between grades and IQ is still far from perfect. A strong test of the overall relationship between IQ and course grades was provided in a study [12] based on longitudinal data from the Berkeley Growth Study. A general factor (and individual factor scores) was obtained from pupils' teacher-assigned grades in arithmetic, English, and social studies in grades one through ten. Also, the general factor (and factor scores) was extracted from the matrix of intercorrelations of Stanford-Binet IQs obtained from the same pupils on six occasions at one- to two-year intervals between grades one and ten. Thus we have here highly stable measures of both school grades and IQs, with each individual's year-toyear fluctuations in IQ and teachers' grades averaged out in the general factor scores for IQ and for grades.
  
  The correlation between the general factor for grades and the general factor for Stanford-Binet IQ was +.69. Corrected for attenuation, the correlation is +.75. This corrected correlation indicates that pupils' grades in academic subjects, although highly correlated with IQ, also reflect consistent sources of variance that are independent of IQ. The difficulty in studying or measuring the sources of variance in school grades that are not accounted for by IQ is that they seem to consist of a great many small (but relatively stable) sources of variance (personality traits, idiosyncratic traits, study habits, interests, drive, etc.) rather than just a few large, measurable traits. This is probably why attempts to improve the prediction of scholastic performance by including personality scales along with cognitive tests have shown little promise of raising predictive validity appreciably above that attributable to IQ alone. In the noncognitive realm, no general factor, or any combination of broad group factors, has been discovered that appreciably increases the predictive validity over and above the prediction from IQ alone.
  
  Although IQ tests are highly g loaded, they also measure other factors in addition to g, such as verbal and numerical abilities. It is of interest, then, to ask how much the reported validity of IQ for predicting scholastic success can be attributed to g and how much to other factors independent of g.
  
  The psychometrician Robert L. Thorndike [13] analyzed data specifically to answer this question. He concluded that 80 to 90 percent of the predictable variance in scholastic performance is accounted for by g, with 10 to 20 percent of the variance predicted by other factors measured by the IQ or other tests. This should not be surprising, since highly g-loaded tests that contain no verbal or numerical factors or information content that resembles anything taught in school (the Raven matrices is a good example) are only slightly less correlated with various measures of scholastic performance than are the standard IQ and scholastic aptitude tests, which typically include some scholastic content. Clearly the predictive validity of g does not depend on the test's containing material that children are taught in school or at home. Pupils' grades in different academic subjects share a substantial common factor that is largely g. 14
  
  The reason that IQ tests predict academic achievement better than any other measurable variable is that school learning itself is g-demanding. Pupils must continually grasp "relations and correlates" as new material is introduced, and they must transfer previously learned knowledge and skills to the learning of new material. These cognitive activities, when specifically investigated, are found to be heavily g loaded. It has also been found that various school subjects differ in their g demands. Mathematics and written composition, for example, are more g-demanding than arithmetic computation and spelling. Reading comprehension is so g loaded and also so crucial in the educational process as to warrant a separate section (p. 280 ).
  
  The number of years of formal education that a person acquires is a relatively crude measure of educational attainment. It is quite highly correlated with IQ, typically between +.60 and +70. 15 This correlation cannot be explained as entirely the result of more education causing higher IQ. A substantial correlation exists even if the IQ is measured at an age when all persons have had the same number of years of schooling. Validity coefficients in the range of .40 to .50 are found between IQ at age seven and amount of education completed by age 40. [16]

(Arthur Jensen. The g Factor. pp277-279.)



In other words, not everyone who has the same amount of schooling, and even attains the same grades, has learned the same amount; and the amount that a person both has learned, and will learn in the future, is most highly correlated with g. Since the academic records of students applying for college are largely based on the whims of their teachers, g remains a better predictor of college-level educational-attainment than pre-college academic record.

I agree that IQ scores should have considerable weight in college admissions. IQ have been shown to have enormous correlation to one's ability and has a better correlation than either SAT score or GPA. But since IQ is prevented from being used in admission, we go with the next best thing which is SAT and GPA.

 

[BlackVision]

Good news! For people for racial equality and that are against affirmative action. Michigan, the state where that whole controversy started that went all the way to the US Supreme Court, is placing a proposition on the November ballot to ban affirmative action throughout the state.

Latest poll in Michigan show that 52% support an affirmative action ban while 39% opposes it. Several states have already banned affirmative action. Such as Washington, Florida, Texas. And no doubt even more states will soon also.

How ironic it would be for University of Michigan to spend millions of dollars on lawyers and legal fees and go all the way to the US Supreme Court to try and keep affirmative action, only for it to be banned a year later by the voters of Michigan.

Links:
http://www.freep.com/news/education/affirm13_20040113.htm
http://www.legaled.com/michiganvote.htm
http://www.detnews.com/2003/metro/0312/14/d01-7369.htm

 

[shonagon53]

Again, blackvision, have you ever thought about the initial reasons behind affirmative action? I have no problem with you being against it, but I really doubt it whether you understand what it's all about.

It can be in the interest of an entire community to include the weaker and even promote them, at the expense of an extremely small minority within that same community.

You can even approach this from an economic, utilitarian point of view: in total and in the long run, more people will benefit from affirmative action than when you would have a simple exclusivist model.

Again, affirmative action was an idea launched by the brighter minds in American society.

 

[BlackVision]

Again, blackvision, have you ever thought about the initial reasons behind affirmative action?

If you studied affirmative action at all, you would know that the initial goal of affirmative action was to eliminate "racial preference" not practice it. Affirmative action was introduced by President Johnson as a way for race, gender, to be a non issue. The current definition of affirmative action is certainly completely the opposite of the original definition and use.

It can be in the interest of an entire community to include the weaker and even promote them, at the expense of an extremely small minority within that same community.

In that case, please allow weaker shorter asian players in the NBA. Let's see some affirmative action here.

Again, affirmative action was an idea launched by the brighter minds in American society.

If you are referring to the initial and original affirmative action policy, you are correct.

"Affirmative action" was first used in President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive Order 11246 which requires federal contractors to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin."