The Case Against the Case Against Affirmative Action

The Chronicle of Higher Education
September 09, 2009, 01:00 PM ET

By Kevin Carey

Crossing the Finish Line, the new book from former Princeton president William Bowen, former Macalaster College president Michael McPherson, and Matthew Chingos, is getting a lot of coverage today. (The Chronicle here, the Times here). I haven't read it yet (no review copy, ahem), but it looks very interesting. The authors tracked 94,000 students who entered 21 flagship public universities in the fall of 1999. They found major differences in graduation rates among different student groups, with minority students less likely to finish on time. This is consistent with other research.
Bowen and McPherson have also come out swinging against the so-called "mismatch" theory of why affirmative action is supposed to be bad for minority students. The mismatch theory states that student are ill-served by attending a college that is more academically challenging than they would otherwise have attended, particularly if the students weren't academically stellar to begin with. Crossing the Finish Line found the opposite to be true: black men who had less than a 3.0 grade point average in high school were more likely to graduate from the most selective flagship universities than from less selective institutions.
They also cite programs at institutions like the University of Maryland--Baltimore County where a combination of high academic expectations and high levels of academic support produce positive graduation outcomes for black students. Unfortunately, such programs are few and far between. Why? They cost money, of course, but lots of things that colleges do cost money. This is a matter of priorities. Why isn't helping minority students earn degrees more important than, say, fielding a really good basketball team?

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