cali universities have had a no racial preference admission policy for years. that apparently isn’t the case anymore. in a nominal bid to increase black and hispanic admission, they’re changing the rules. they’re dropping the rule that states applicants must take 2 SAT subject tests. but here’s what’s really gonna happen:
Remarkably, though, the university’s own projections indicate that the plan will do almost nothing to expand black enrollment and will be of very modest benefit to Hispanics. Even more remarkably, the prime beneficiaries of the changes will be non-Hispanic whites, whose share of total enrollments is predicted to rise by 20–30 percent. And the big losers will be Asian Americans, whose numbers will be reduced by 10–20 percent. The net effect will thus be to make the University of California substantially “whiter” than it has been.
nice. gotta love those whiter ppl. they get to pat themselves on the back for being progressive on minority rights, and they get to stick it to those pesky asians who just don’t understand that they’re supposed to be nice and give up their spots to unqualified whites, oops i mean blacks and hispanics, who won’t graduate b/c they can’t understand the material.
EDIT: commenter AL47 posits that test taking ability may not properly gauge what makes a good college student. that’s certainly possible. but according to this (credit to half sigma for the link), the UC system already knows what better predicts college performance b/c of a study they themselves conducted back in 2001.
Achievement tests (ed. note: achievement tests are the subject tests) did slightly better than the SAT in predicting freshman grades. High school grade point average, SAT scores, and achievement test scores were entered into a statistical equation to predict the grade point that applicants achieved during their freshman year in college. The researchers found that achievement tests and high school grade point each had about the same independent role—that is, each factor was, by itself, an equally accurate predictor of how a student will do as a college freshman.
But the SAT’s independent role in predicting freshman grade point turned out to be so small that knowing the SAT score added next to nothing to an admissions officer’s ability to forecast how an applicant will do in college—the reason to give the test in the first place. In technical terms, adding the SAT to the other two elements added just one-tenth of a percentage point to the percentage of variance in freshman grades explained by high school grade point and the achievement tests.
here’s the kicker.
But what about the students we’re most concerned about—those with high ability who have attended poor schools? The California Department of Education rates the state’s high schools based on the results from its standardized testing program for grades K–12. For schools in the bottom quintile of the ratings—hard as I found it to believe—the achievement tests did slightly better than the SAT in predicting how the test-takers would perform as college freshmen.
so the data is there. eliminating tests may actually be useful, but the UC system is eliminating the wrong test. they’re choosing to eliminate the test which better predicts college performance even for kids from the worst schools. oh yeah, gotta love it.
