In order to get rid of the stereotypes that follow disadvantaged minorities who are admitted to college through race-conscious affirmative action, admissions policies would have to hold the disadvantaged group to higher standards than their more advantaged peers.
So argue a pair of University of California, Berkley law professors in a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper titled “Affirmative Action and Stereotypes in Higher Education Admissions.”
The professors — Prasad Krishnamurthy and Aaron S. Edlin — concede “such a perverse double standard is clearly unacceptable.”
However, the purpose of the paper is not to call for the actual implementation of such a double standard, but rather to probe the degree to which admissions policies should be tailored to achieve what the professors describe as the elusive balance between equal representation and the curtailment of stereotypes.
“If stereotyping is a concern, the appropriate question to ask is not whether it can be eliminated, but how much an admission policy should target stereotypes relative to pursuing other goals,” the paper states.
In a paper laden with complex statistical formulas, the professors claim to show that when stereotypes are a result of social disadvantage, “they can persist even if schools adopt group-blind admissions.”
“Eliminating stereotypes requires a school to adopt higher admissions standards for students from disadvantaged groups in such cases,” the paper states.
