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In recent years, the use of race in college admissions
has been vigorously contested in several states and in the  courts.
In 1996, a federal appeals court in New Orleans, deciding the
Hopwood vs. Texas case, declared such a race-sensitive policy
unconstitutional when its primary aim is not to remedy some specific
wrong from the past. Californians have voted to ban all consideration
of race in admitting students to public universities. Surprisingly,
however, amid much passionate debate, there has been little hard
evidence of how these policies work and what their consequences
have been.
To remedy this deficiency, we examined the college
and later-life experiences of more than 35,000 students—almost
3,000 of whom were black—who had entered 28 selective colleges
and universities in the fall of 1976 and the fall of 1989. This
massive database, built jointly by the schools and the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation, for the first time links information such
as SAT scores and college majors to experiences after college,
including graduate and professional degrees, earnings and civic
involvement. Most of our study focused on African Americans and
whites, because the Latino population at these schools was too
small to permit the same sort of analysis. What did we discover?
Compared with their extremely high-achieving white
classmates, black students in general received somewhat lower
college grades and graduated at moderately lower rates. The reasons
for these disparities are not fully understood, and selective
institutions need to be more creative in helping improve black
performance, as a few universities already have succeeded in doing.
Still, 75 percent graduated within six years, a figure well above
the 40 percent of blacks and 59 percent of whites who graduated
nationwide from the 305 universities tracked by the National Collegiate
Athletic Association. Moreover, blacks did not earn degrees from
these selective schools by majoring in easy subjects. They chose
substantially the same concentrations as whites and were just
as likely to have difficult majors, such as those in the sciences.
- Bowen, William G. and Bok, Derek. Race Relations: Opposing Viewpoints.
Greenhaven Press, Inc. San Diego, CA, 2001.
The article above contains foundational information. Articles below contain optional updates.
Personal
Reflection Exercise #4
The preceding section contained information about the results
of race-based policies. Write three case study examples regarding
how you might use the content of this section in your practice.
Online Continuing Education QUESTION
18
According to Bowen and Bok, what did their study discover
about the performances of African-American college students as
compared to their white classmates? Record the letter of the correct
answer the .
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