On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” Columbia University President Lee Bollinger argued that “it would be a misjudgment” to respond to the “tragedy” of the Supreme Court striking down racial preferences in college admissions by getting rid of legacy admissions, because doing so won’t lead to more diversity, but standardized test scores “are a way of reinforcing inequality rather than overcoming it.”
Bollinger stated, “I think we have to start out with the sense that this is a very serious change, and, from my point of view, a tragedy in the efforts of this country and of higher education to try to deal with racial discrimination that has, of course, been part of our history and continues in various forms.”
Host Andrea Mitchell then said, “One thing that students have raised is — and activist groups have raised is the legacy issue. If you got rid of legacies, you would eliminate, in some cases, 15% of the class, which represents generations of privilege that gets handed down. And it does certainly increase endowment to have longstanding families who have accumulated wealth, in contrast to many of the minority families.”
Bollinger responded, “I wouldn’t accept that number. Universities vary in the degree to which they take account of the fact that the parents of the applicant have gone to the college or the university. So, the legacy issue is important and I think really worthy of serious discussion and debate, itself very complicated. But I think it would be a misjudgment here to think that the way to grapple with what the court has now set the country — the course it set the country on by getting rid of legacy, it’s not — that is not going to work. You’re simply not going to get more racial and ethnic diversity through elimination of legacy. It’s just not going to have that kind of effect. So, that’s, I think, a misdirected concern.”
Mitchell then cut in to ask, “What about standardized tests?”
Bollinger answered, “So, here is where I think we have to concentrate, and where I think there is a very important moment. So, we know that standardized test scores were introduced many decades ago with the idea that they would help achieve equality of opportunity for students all across the country. It wouldn’t connect — wouldn’t depend upon connections, the wealth of your family, etc. You could take the test, and if you did better than people who were well-connected and wealthy, you could get in. So, that was the idea of standardized tests. Increasingly, in the past decade or so, it’s become fairly clear to everybody that standardized test scores are a way of reinforcing inequality rather than overcoming it. … And we may have arrived at a judgment that standardized test scores should be given much less significance in the admissions process.”
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