Floating at Different Academic Levels

SEARCH BLOG: AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Educators are struggling with Michigan's Proposition 2 that prohibits the use of racial factors in the admissions process. In today's Detroit News, Dr. Douglas Kahn, professor of the University of Michigan Law School, argued that new admission standards should not be delayed because:

There has been no hue and cry that there is a basic unfairness in applying different standards for different times during the existing rolling admissions process. The situation with applying the ban on racial preferences is no different in principle.

Besides, there is no reason that the same admissions standard must apply to one year when different standards are applied to different years.

Students who are admitted this year will be judged on a different standard from those who apply for next year's class. Once students enroll, they become integrated into the student body, not all of whom were admitted on the same standards.

I think I understand this to mean that taking the top 10,000 students each year is just as unfair as banning racial preferences because what is "the top 10,000" may be different, academically, from year to year.

But then he seems to say that since the basic process is unfair, that we might as well ban racial preferences as well.

It is difficult to determine if he is arguing that the admissions process, in general, is unfair... or that we have to accept the fact that standards have variability... or that we might as well kill off racial preferences which are good because the whole system stinks. In any case, I would argue this:

All incoming students, under the new law, would compete on a single standard. Presuming 10,000 available slots, the top 10,000 would be admitted. If the academic achievement of the entire incoming group was slightly lower than those selected during the prior year, the selection would still be unbiased because the process remained consistent. To say that someone denied entry the prior year was harmed by someone allowed entry the current year is not logical. To say that someone denied entry during the current year by someone previously accepted and at a different stage of the curriculum and using different university resources also makes no sense.

Arguing that adjusting standards as the annual population changes justifies having different standards within that annual population, is like saying that judging boats seaworthy allows some to float at different levels at the same time... because, as the water level changes, they all floated at a different levels at a different times.

I'm not sure if that is what he meant or not... the intent of what he wrote is ambiguous.

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