Comments on "Racial Segregation Patterns in Selective Universities"

Peter Arcidiacono of Duke University has been publishing a steady stream of papers examining the role of race in college admissions, with a particular focus on the effects of affirmative action.  I've discussed his work on this blog before, and given the substantial attention that generated, I'm sharing thoughts on another relatively new piece.

In the new paper, Peter and his colleagues suggest that friendships among students attending selective universities are no more likely to be interracial in composition than friendships in high school.  Of persistent racial segregation, they write:

"This is particularly true for blacks where on average their share of friends who are of another race is no higher in college than in high school despite their colleges having a much smaller share of black students than their high schools. However, the extent of interracial friendships, both before and during college, vary significantly depending on academic preparedness. The percentage of black friendships that are same-race is lower for those with SAT that are relatively low given the college they attend. Ordered probit estimates of the number of friends of different races show that, within a college, increasing one's own academic preparation makes inter-racial friendships with blacks less likely while increasing friendships with whites and Asians.

The multiple waves of friendship reporting ... tell a story of substantial racial isolation among blacks that slightly increases over time. Despite only comprising eight percent of the Duke student body, Black students report on average that 68% of their friends are black during their freshman year, a number which increases to 72% in their senior year. Ordered probit results again suggest that friendships with other races are more likely to occur the more similar one's academic preparation is to those of other races.

Taken as a whole, our results suggest that similarity in academic background is an important
determinant of interracial friendship formation. That black friendships are no more diverse in college
than in high school, despite blacks being substantially less-represented in their colleges, points
to a potential cost of a ffirmative action. Namely, by introducing a mismatch between academic
backgrounds of di fferent groups, interaction between these groups is discouraged."

I have several concerns with how the authors reach their conclusions and the policy implications they draw.

1. Their assumption seems to be that where educational settings have fewer black students, those students will be more likely to have interracial friendships.  Why expect this and not the opposite?Couldn't scarcity lead to a survivalist instinct to focus on key friendships among people who might seem to come from similar places?

2. The (very modestly) increasing isolation of the black students at Duke could be due to any number of factors, including campus racial climate. In this paper there are no tests for competing explanations other than academic mismatch. And the authors make nothing of the increasing segregation of white students from black friends as well- the % of white students with black friends as freshmen falls from freshman to senior year.  Moreover, the biggest increases in isolation are among Asian students-- as freshmen, 41% of their friends are Asian, but by senior year that is up to 48%.

3. There is no evidence that the observed relationship between academic "mismatch" and friendship composition is causal. It is quite a leap to suggest that racial segregation of friendships directly results from affirmative action.  In other words, there is little overlap between the empirical tests in this paper and the policy conclusions.  The authors conclude the paper with some words that suggest they know this-- and yet they make the policy statement in their opening abstract with direct and inflammatory language, stating that affirmative action plans "drive a wedge between the academic characteristics of different racial groups" creating problems for friendships.

4. The authors do not explain what their intended alternative policy might be.  Without affirmative action there would be fewer minority students on campus at all-- given their concern with friendship integration, what would the authors suggest happen then?

The Resource Costs of UW-Madison Diversity Programs: A Response

This morning, Emeritus Professor of Economics Lee Hansen released a WISCAPE paper about the "resource costs of minority and disadvantaged student programs at UW-Madison" and in about an hour he will host a brownbag on the topic in the Wisconsin Idea Room at the School of Education.  I am on a flight to LA and thus will miss it; therefore I offer my perspective here.

I have a wide range of experience that I can bring to bear on these issues, having analyzed the reports of UW-Madison and UW System myself for nearly a decade, chaired the Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions and Financial Aid shared governance committee for many years, and engaged in numerous analyses of the costs and benefits of higher education programs throughout the nation. I also know Lee, both personally and professionally.  As I offer these thoughts, I want to note the sincere belief that he seeks to improve the ways in which we serve minority and disadvantaged students in this country, and does not seek to exclude them from opportunities.  However, on the most effective and appropriate  mechanisms through which this should be achieved, he and I disagree sharply.

There are 5 things you should keep in mind in reading his report.

1. It is imperative that more faculty at UW-Madison and UW System get involved in analyzing the practices of our institution.  We are key shareholders, the most important and long-standing actors, the educators, and we are smart, critical, and essential.  We should support Lee's demands that we be provided with data to facilitate a closer look at how resources are used.  There is abundant evidence that they are not being used well.

2. The debate over the public and private benefits of higher education is far from resolved. Lee has staked out one side of that debate for many decades; in fact he led the charge nationally in the late 1960s, along with Milton Friedman, for a move to the private financing of higher education-- with financial aid distributed in the form of vouchers to facilitate choice.  We have Lee to thank, in part, for today's system in which students and families bear 2/3rds or more of the costs of attendance, while government picks up an ever smaller fraction.  His beliefs in this regard are reflected in the questions he raises about whom the benefits of diversity programming accrue to-- who should pay, he thinks, depends on who benefits. And, he thinks, educational benefits can and should be evaluated in this way too.  I sharply disagree-- education is a citizen's right, it is (unfortunately) America's only real effort to ensure equality of opportunity for a decent life-- and as such it should be publicly supported.  It has been a political choice to devote little time and resources toward documenting the public benefits of higher education, instead allowing the focus of labor economists like Lee to hammer on the private benefits over and over again.

3. The type of cost-benefit analysis undertaken in the paper gives the aura of science when in fact it is art.  Like all social scientists, Lee is relying on numerous assumptions about what should and shouldn't count when accounting for all of the costs. He is including ingredients in his model that obviously the accountants at UW-Madison and UW System left out-- on both side those are choices, but there is no clear right or wrong here.   Thus, it is merely political rhetoric on Lee's part to claim that UW has failed to be transparent in its accounting-- the Legislature itself failed in clearly specifying its expectations.

4. The timing of this report release and brown bag reeks of political motives as well, coming just weeks or even days before the pending Supreme Court ruling on Fisher vs Texas, in the midst of UW's diversity planning, and right after UW System was taken to task for another accounting "snafu."

5. The report repeatedly cherry picks evidence on the benefits and costs of diversity, ignoring entirely the recent paper issued by other UW-Madison economists, Bobbi Wolfe and Jason Fletcher, on the consequences of racial diversity.

All that said, I do think Lee is providing one important service: asking us to take a hard look at our activities beyond admissions.  As Doug Massey has written, affirmative action programs come in three flavors-- the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The best ones generate compositional diversity and leverage that diversity to improve the learning environment for everyone.  The bad ones do the former and not the latter. The ugly ones don't succeed at either.

We are currently in the ugly category at Madison.  We bring students to campus and throw resources at them but fail to give leaders in this area sufficient stature and power to effect real change.  We have segregated classrooms and living spaces, and we tokenize our racial-ethnics.

Since this report is now in the public eye, I make the following recommendations:

1. UW-Madison and UW System should take seriously the contention that faculty, staff, and students deserve greater access and involvement in how resources are spent. I think that a cabinet of social scientists advisors should supplement the UC, and that incoming Chancellor Blank should convene this group. This group should have methodological, disciplinary, and substantive heterogeneity and expertise.

2.  A discussion of costs and benefits should be undertaken for all sorts of programs on campus, including Athletics, Greek Life, faculty professional development etc.  Minority programming is not our only expense, nor our most expensive.

3. This report should not be merely ignored or dismissed as nonsense by Administration.  Use the opportunity to have a conversation about diversity and how we can do better in utilizing it to enhance our educational experiences.  Also leverage this chance to have a discussion about public and private goods.  A report I will make to the Faculty Senate on Monday about the characteristics of incoming students, developed by CURAFA, should help move that conversation forward.


I wish you all well at today's brownbag, and look forward to hearing about the discussion.

Obama's 2nd Term: NOW is the Time

" Mitt Romney will LOSE this election," says CNN....

We worked hard for this moment. Now, let's make it worthwhile.

Agenda #1:  This is not a post-racial era. This is a highly racist era. It's time to deal with it.

Agenda #2:  Education is not a business, and teachers are not mid-level managers.  Treat them like their partners in raising the nation's children. They deserve it.

Agenda #3:  Families can't succeed if they can't work. Raise taxes dramatically on the Romneys of the world and provide tax breaks only if they create significant numbers of good jobs paying living wages to Americans.

Agenda #4: End housing segregation, now. Poverty isn't quite so detrimental when it isn't concentrated.

Agenda #5: Make college affordable by recognizing our democracy's need for postsecondary education. Two quality years for free-- minimum. Now.

That's just a start.  ON.