Last week I traveled to Washington, D.C. with President Fenves,
student leaders, and other supporters to hear oral arguments at the
Supreme Court in the case of Fisher v. The University of Texas. It was a
momentous day as we defended the educational benefits of diversity and
our holistic admissions policy at our nation’s highest court.
Unfortunately, much of the great discourse was overshadowed by a set of
remarks made by Justice Antonin Scalia. “There are those that contend
that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the
University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them
go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do
well.” Continuing, he would later assert that based upon a brief filed
in the case, Black scientists in this country don’t come from schools
like the University of Texas and that they come from lesser schools
where they aren’t in classes that are “too fast for them.”
As you
can imagine, and have likely read, his comments have drawn national
attention. Although he makes no direct mention to it, his queries appear
to allude to a concept known as the mismatch theory. The mismatch
theory argues that non-academic preferences, such as extracurricular
activity, socio-economic status, and race, harms the beneficiaries, as
they would be better served to attend a less selective college on par
with their academic performance.
Although this theory on its face
seems plausible, the research used to make the assertion has been
invalidated by dozens of social scientists. And not only that, research
has proven that in reality, the exact opposite is true – that minority
students who attend more selective universities earn higher grades and
leave school at lower rates than others.
On the UT campus, our
Gateway Scholars Program is a perfect example of this achievement. The
program, which is made up of approximately 600 students mostly from
low-income and first generation college backgrounds, have an average
first-year GPA of 3.24 with a first-year retention rate of 96.4%, higher
than the university overall.
Furthermore our Intellectual
Entrepreneurship pre-graduate internship program, which pairs
undergraduates with a graduate student and faculty mentor, illustrates
that succeeding at research and gaining admittance to highly selective
graduate schools is also attainable for students from all backgrounds.
In recent years, more than 75 African-American IE program alumni have
enrolled and graduated from the likes of Harvard, Columbia, Yale, and
Stanford, schools no one would deem “less advanced.”
The brief
Justice Scalia cites also makes mention that historically black colleges
and universities (HBCUs) produce a high percentage of African-Americans
graduating with natural science and engineering degrees, theorizing the
reason being that students are not grouped at the bottom of their
classes, as they would be at more selective universities. This ignores
the history of HBCUs, which have been graduating Black scientists and
engineers since the late 1880s. Many students that are accepted into our
nation’s most selective universities choose to attend Howard, Spelman,
Prairie View A&M and others because they understand they’re entering
into a legacy that no other research institute in the nation could
match.
It also ignores the fact that the nation’s top 50
universities producing African-American science and engineering
doctorates is comprised of either top research institutes or HBCUs –
there is no “lesser school” in the list. And if you dig deeper, when
examined proportionately, some of our nation’s top research institutes
including Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, as well as UT Austin –
which falls in the top 50 and has its own proud legacy of producing some
of the nation’s prominent African-American scientists including Neil
deGrasse Tyson and Stephanie Wilson, the second African-American woman
to go into space – lead the nation in producing African-American
scientists, further debunking Justice Scalia’s statement.
Earlier in
the hearing, Chief Justice John Roberts questioned the benefit of
having a minority perspective in a physics class. Like the remarks made
by Justice Scalia, not only are they incorrect, but I believe they can
be chilling. If we begin asking our students to justify their presence,
be they admitted due to academic performance, athletic or musical
talent, or even superior civic leadership, we are failing them. As
educators we cannot adhere to theories that conclude that our students
would rather drop out or prefer less-advanced schools, rather than
persevere, just as we cannot favor one student over another due to
institutional bias. No matter how slow we roll forward, we must never
roll back.
Dr. Gregory J. Vincent
Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement
Professor of Law
W. K. Kellogg Professor of Community College Leadership
Dr. Vincent is preparing a longer scholarly article to more fully address this issue.
