Affirmative action policies hurt black law students more than they help, according to a new study by a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Richard H. Sander's study, which will be released in this month's Stanford Law Review, says that affirmative action bumps black law school applicants to higher-ranked schools, increasing the likelihood that they will earn poor grades, drop out of school and fail state bar exams.
Decreasing the significance of racial preferences in admissions would increase the number of black lawyers because it would help ensure that students attend law schools where they are more likely to succeed, he argues.
Sander's argument is based on the rates at which applicants passed bar exams between 1991 and 1997, according to the Law School Admission Council, and data from 20 law school students in 1995. He saw a wide gap between Caucasians' and minorities' grades and test scores out of the 27,000 students who entered law school in 1991.
"Forty-five percent of blacks passed the bar exam on the first attempt, meaning 55 percent of blacks were having difficulty," Sander said.
The Washington College of Law, the AU law school, does not have statistics on student grades or how many pass bar exams, said Andrew F. Popper, a WCL professor who chairs its committee on admissions. "Bar passage data is specific to each state - and our students take bar exams in many states," he said in an e-mail.
WCL "has a deep and long-term commitment to diversity," he said, and in 2004, 32 percent of WCL's entering class were minorities, down from 33 percent last year.
"Our policy is to review every file individually, taking into account both academic potential as well as various other factors unique to each applicant," said Popper, who has served on the admissions committee for most of his 26 years at the college.
Despite his findings that indicate affirmative action hurts black students more than it helps, Sander said he is not in favor of "tossing" racial preferences, but supports an open debate on the drawbacks and benefits of affirmative action. He said he feels that knowing "the possible benefits of racial preference" would help people better understand where affirmative action works and where it hurts minority students.
"[It just] hasn't got enough attention," he said.
The study has created mixed feelings among students and college officials.
Aarati Doddanna, a law student at the historically black Howard University, said that a lot of schools are not required to show graduates' rates of passing bar exams. At predominantly black colleges, it is easier to look at these rates and draw conclusions about blacks because a majority of the student population is black, she said.
Four years ago, two University of Michigan law professors, David L. Chambers and Richard O. Lempert, concluded in their own study that "minority students who graduated from Michigan's law school between 1970 and 1996 were just as successful in their careers as their white peers, even though they started with significantly lower law school grades and standardized test scores," The Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Sander said that many of the facts of the Michigan study were obscured and its findings are "propaganda." He added that the study focused exclusively on University of Michigan students.
"[There is] zero evidence if you went to another school," Sander said.
Sander said he also found that black students received lower income in their careers.
"Career success is incredibly important, and employers are about both grades and [passing bar exams]," he said.
According to The Chronicle, Chambers, Lempert and two other researchers plan to publish a reaction to Sander's study in the May Stanford Law Review.
"Sander's article is premised upon a series of statistical errors, oversights, overgeneralizations, and several implausible (and at times internally contradictory) assumptions," the statement said. "Consequently, his estimates of a post-affirmative action world are wildly optimistic."
AU's chapters of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and NAACP plan to have a forum on affirmative action Tuesday night in the Gianni Lounge, Mary Graydon Center 200.
