Professor Tim Groseclose of U.C.L.A. recently created a Category 5 hurricane of controversy when he announced his resignation from his university’s admissions committee. Groseclose, who teaches political science, believes that the school is using a “holistic” admissions policy as a way of circumventing California’s ban on racial preferences and chose to resign when the administration refused to give him the data he needed to thoroughly research the question.
The idea behind “holistic” admissions is that college officials should evaluate each applicant as a whole person, considering not just demonstrated academic ability, but also family life, potential for leadership, and other intangible factors. (Whether or not it is really possible to evaluate college applicants on these subjective factors is another matter.)
Groseclose has released a lengthy report explaining his views. In a key passage, he writes, “It was obvious that the admissions staff was under intense pressure to admit more African Americans. It was also obvious that the main purpose of the holistic system was to facilitate that goal, by allowing all readers to learn the race of applicants who reported their race on personal essays.”
Under state law, universities are not allowed to use race as a criterion in making admission decisions to state universities. After seeing a large increase in the percentage of African-American students admitted to UCLA for the current academic year, Groseclose came to the conclusion that the “holistic” system was merely a back-door method of allowing race to be taken into account.
Under the UCLA system, two readers independently evaluate students who apply, considering SAT scores, high school grades, their personal essay, and individual circumstances. That makes it possible for admissions personnel who want to increase the percentage of students from specific groups to put a “thumb on the scales” for students they are inclined to favor. University policy states that the readers are to be told to disregard race, but there is no way to enforce that admonition.
The big losers in this system, Groseclose argues, are students of Asian ancestry, especially Vietnamese who usually come from families that have not been in California long and are comparatively poor.
That isn’t surprising. There is strong evidence that Asian students face discrimination in admission at top universities. For one thing, Asians are not a politically powerful voting block. For another, even though many Asian students are extremely strong academically, that actually works against them. Writing in the September 1, 2008 Weekly Standard, Jennifer Rubin says, “Asians are in essence battling against each other and the stereotypical view that they are boring, insular, only interested in math, shy, and excessively bookish.”
Wouldn’t it be awful if a school had too many students like that?
A large percentage of college admissions officials would say “yes.” To them, it is far more important to assemble a student body that is supposedly “interesting” than to assemble one that includes as many intellectually bright kids as possible. Better to add some students from “underrepresented minorities” than to add more “boring” and “bookish” ones. It is simply assumed that having certain ancestry makes a student more valuable in the “mosaic” the admissions people imagine they’re constructing. But as Thomas Sowell commented in his book Inside American Education,
“What will look ‘rich and interesting’ to superficial people can of course differ greatly from what scholars who are masters of their respective intellectual disciplines will find to be students able to plumb the depths of what they have to offer. Dull-looking nerds can revolutionize the intellectual landscape and produce marvels of science, even if their life stories would never make a good movie or television mini-series.”
Imagine that Albert Einstein were applying to American universities today. Of course he would be accepted somewhere – the desire for paying customers is so strong that no student who is even remotely qualified is kept out of our higher education system entirely. The question is whether he’d be accepted at any of our elite universities. Admissions officers would be apt to look at his application and think, “So what if this kid looks like a whiz in math and science, he’s so geeky! Put him on the wait list.”
Professor Groseclose has performed a public service by focusing attention on university admissions policies that are contrary to both good sense and the law.