The Center for Equal Opportunity released three studies on Tuesday that indicated a strong bias towards Black applicants at the University of Michigan. Critics immediately slammed the organization for attempting to influence next month’s referendum on affirmative action with a flawed analysis ignorant of the admissions process.
The center received data for 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2005 from UM’s undergraduate, law and medical programs and analyzed the gaps in academic qualifications among admitted students and the number of non-Black students who were rejected even though they had better academic qualifications than the Black students.
In all four years, UM rejected more than 8,000 Hispanics, Asians and Whites who had higher SAT or ACT scores and GPAs than the average Black enrollee. In 2005, the average Black enrollee’s SAT score was 1160. Hispanics scored 1260, Whites scored 1300 and Asians scored 1400. Black enrollees also had lower LSAT and MCAT scores than the other three ethnic groups.
“It is clear that, left to their own devices, universities will not end the racial discrimination that [former U.S. Supreme Court] Justice O’Connor said she expected to end in 25 years,” says Roger Clegg, the center’s president.
But critics have been quick to point out that the studies only tell part of the story.
“Hundreds of schools have found that test scores and grades are not the only measure of who can succeed,” says Robert Schaeffer, public education director at FairTest. “Simply showing that minority applicants have lower test scores does not prove anything.”
Lani Guinier, the Bennett Boskey Professor of Law at Harvard University, agrees that LSAT scores do not predict success in law school.
