Affirmative action and law schools
(wsj.com) Three years ago, UCLA law professor Richard Sander published an explosive, fact-based study of the consequences of affirmative action in American law schools in the Stanford Law Review. Most of his findings were grim, and they caused dismay among many of the champions of affirmative action — and indeed, among those who were not.
Easily the most startling conclusion of his research: Mr. Sander calculated that there are fewer black attorneys today than there would have been if law schools had practiced color-blind admissions — about 7.9% fewer by his reckoning. He identified the culprit as the practice of admitting minority students to schools for which they are inadequately prepared. In essence, they have been “matched” to the wrong school.
No one claims the findings in Mr. Sander’s study, “A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools,” are the last word on the subject. Although so far his work has held up to scrutiny at least as well as that of his critics, all fair-minded scholars agree that more research is necessary before the “mismatch thesis” can be definitively accepted or rejected.
Unfortunately, fair-minded scholars are hard to come by when the issue is affirmative action. Some of the same people who argue Mr. Sander’s data are inconclusive are now actively trying to prevent him from conducting follow-up research that might yield definitive answers. If racial preferences really are causing more harm than good, they apparently don’t want you — or anyone else — to know.
[…]
Supporters of race-based admissions argue that, despite the likelihood of poor grades, minority students are still better off accepting the benefit of a preference and graduating from a more prestigious school. But Mr. Sander’s research suggests that just the opposite may be true — that law students, no matter what their race, may learn less, not more, when they enroll in schools for which they are not academically prepared. Students who could have performed well at less competitive schools may end up lost and demoralized. As a result, they may fail the bar.
Specifically, Mr. Sander found that when black and white students with similar academic credentials compete against each other at the same school, they earn about the same grades. Similarly, when black and white students with similar grades from the same tier law school take the bar examination, they pass at about the same rate.
Yet, paradoxically, black students as a whole have dramatically lower bar passage rates than white students with similar credentials. Something is wrong. (more…)
August 30th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
My question is: What is the difference? Contract law taught at Harvard should be the same as contract law taught at Depaul. Core college courses not matter the subject are pretty much the same. college algebra is college algebra no matter where it is taught. If law schools are teaching criminal law differently from school to school, than we have a problem in the way we educate lawyers. if a person is lost in any law school, they should pursue another profession. I would like to see how many Harvard or Yale law school graduates Black or white who have failed the Bar. I think this professor’s research highlight some troubling facts about how black people are being used on both side of the issues. I am black and don’t anybody to give me anything insofar as my intellectual abilities are concern. Affrimative Action is a problem when you use it to discredit black people. In my opinion there are to many people applying to law schoool black and white who skill set are not comparable of being a lawyer.