Word Salad

This post won't really have anything to do with Obama's constant word salad-ing. I just really like that phrase.

Actually, I wanted to discuss the idea of race-based preferences and how they hurt the very people they're supposed to help. There has been a lot of research lately on what actually happens to the students who are admitted with lower credentials. A minority student is much more likely to graduate on time and with better grades, if they attend less competitive school. Many who attend more competitive schools because colleges or high schools want to appear more diverse, are setting themselves up for failure. Now, OBVIOUSLY, there are many minority students who are very deserving of a spot in the most competitive of colleges, etc, just like there are many non-minority students who could never cut it in a competitive school. So, why force it? Isn't it better for any student to graduate, rather than drop out. With a high school or college diploma from any school, a person is much more likely to find a job and being a to support a family than if they fail or drop out.

Check out Professor Richard Sander's research regarding the perfermance of students in law school:

Not surprisingly, such a gap leads to problems. Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.

The reason is simple: While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.

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.

This is a quote from Gail Heriot, The Wall Street Journal

I just don't understand how this helps.