My (belated) take on the university affirmative action debate

Last updated on: April 29, 2014 at 11:14 pm by Jane the Actuary

My (belated) take on the university affirmative action debate 2014-04-29T23:14:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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I seem to be pretty good at coming up with things to say on the Issues of The Day, roughly a week after the fact, and this is no different.

There’s an element of affirmative action-based admissions to highly-selective universities that no one’s really discussing: the “why” of it. What’s the benefit, to a student, of gaining admission to the University of Michigan by means of “plus” factors, rather than attending, say, my alma mater Michigan State University*, also a perfectly respectable school?

My feeling is that a substantial part of the motivation is the belief that getting into a highly-selective university is like winning the lottery; students and prospective students believe that, solely by virtue of attending that university, due to the ability to put that university’s name on their resume, they’ll improve their future career prospects. On top of this, there’s also a certain “brand name”/status component to it.

And if that’s all there was, it would not be unreasonable to demand some affirmative action-type measures. If the benefits are somewhat arbitrary, and in their own way, “unfair,” then maybe it’s appropriate to say they be doled out in proportion to each group’s population.

Perhaps there’s also a more immediate financial benefit. Tuition and fees U of M is $13,142 (for freshmen), plus another $9,996 for room and board. Charges at MSU are nearly identical – $12,908 tuition and fees and $8,856 room and board. That’s in-state: out of state it’s $40,392 at U of M and $33,796 at MSU – which I imagine means that there’s a supply-and-demand difference here, and U of M charges significantly more for out-of-state students relative to MSU because they can do so without any loss of out-of-state applicants. In any case, it surprises me that in-state tuition is so nearly-identical; I had remembered U of M being significantly more expensive – so perhaps the revenue from out of state students at U of M (and their proportion of the student body has grown considerably since I was in college) helps them hold town tuition for in-state students.

The U of M website is snazzier than MSU’s in promoting its message that they dole out massive quantities of institutional financial aid, and they even provide a comparison of “average net price for 2011-2012” on their site. (http://www.admissions.umich.edu/affordable/images/finaidchart.png), and, according to this, their average net price is somewhat higher than MSU’s, $14,490 vs. $13,836, but both of these are lower than the lower-priced Western Michigan. Even so, U of M claims that they are the only public university to meet 100% of a student’s demonstrated need, so it’s possible, that the demographics of U of M and MSU mean that U of M draws relatively more upper-middle-class students who don’t qualify for aid, so that a higher average number masks a greater subsidy level for poor/lower-class students, due to the practice of using a portion of the tuition money from the full-pay students on subsidies for others. (“Tuition set-asides” — a gripe of mine as a future parent of college students who saves enough that I know we’ll be the subsidizers, not the recipients.)

So in a way that feels like a fair gripe — that a student could pay less to go to the more prestigious school than the less prestigious school. And beyond this, the revenue from the greater proportion of out-of-state students presumably means that U of M students, on average, get more value for the money, if the university plows that money into enhanced programs.

All of which is pretty far afield from the real purpose of selectivity: that, in principle, the U of M ought to offer greater rigor and enhanced learning opportunities (such as the opportunity to work with professors more closely), so that they should limit admissions to those students who can succeed despite the increased rigor, and for the good of the state, should prioritize those students who can best take advantage of the greater opportunities, to help build up the state’s economy after graduation.

To argue for affirmative action is to say that U of M doesn’t have a level of rigor that’s distinctly different from other universities, and that students with a measurably lower academic ability can do just fine, and that the opportunities offered there provide benefits whether or not you’re top caliber. But if that’s true, what’s the point of being selective? Why not just admit based on a lottery?

And that’s what I have to say about that.

(* Don’t get me started on the attitude of U of M and U of M-bound students towards Michigan State. If I had a nickel for every time I was asked why I was going to MSU rather than U of M, even by people who knew I had a major scholarship I’d have been a fool to turn down . . . Besides, MSU treasured its top students and offered us access to, not just Honors classes but priority registration.)

UPDATE: thinking about this some more. The out of state students (and in-state financial aid-ineligible students) are profitable for the university, and more than cover their costs. If there’s not an intrinsic reason to accept only the most qualified (due to a high degree of rigor or special programs that provide relatively greater benefit for the most talented), then admissions would seem to be driven by the business case: if kids who are not the top talents are admitted, it dilutes the brand; on the other hand, if the full-pay kids are looking for lots of “diversity” then the admissions office should pursue that.

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