Posts
Walter Williams: Black students too
often recruited above abilities
STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Sep 03, 2008 @ 12:01 AM
Which serves the interests of the black community better: a black
student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard, Stanford
or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks
out, or cannot pass the bar examination, or a black student admitted
to a far less prestigious law school, performs just as well as his white
peers, graduates and passes the bar? I, and hopefully any other
American, would say that doing well and graduating from a less
prestigious law school is preferable to doing poorly and flunking
out of a prestigious one.
Professor Gail Heriot, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights commissioner
and member of the University of San Diego law faculty, addresses
academic mismatch in her article “Affirmative Action in American
Law Schools,” in The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues (2008).
Citing UCLA law professor Richard Sander’s research, professor Heriot
says that at elite law schools 52 percent of black students had first-year
grades that put them in the bottom 10 percent of their class as opposed
to 7 percent white students. Black students had a higher failing and
dropout rate, 19 percent compared to 8 percent for white students. Only
45 percent of blacks passed the bar exam on their first try compared
with 78 percent of whites. Even after multiple attempts, only 57 percent
of blacks succeeded in passing the bar.
Continue Reading ....
student admitted to a top-tier law school, such as Harvard, Stanford
or Yale, and winds up in the bottom 10 percent of his class, flunks
out, or cannot pass the bar examination, or a black student admitted
to a far less prestigious law school, performs just as well as his white
peers, graduates and passes the bar? I, and hopefully any other
American, would say that doing well and graduating from a less
prestigious law school is preferable to doing poorly and flunking
out of a prestigious one.
Professor Gail Heriot, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights commissioner
and member of the University of San Diego law faculty, addresses
academic mismatch in her article “Affirmative Action in American
Law Schools,” in The Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues (2008).
Citing UCLA law professor Richard Sander’s research, professor Heriot
says that at elite law schools 52 percent of black students had first-year
grades that put them in the bottom 10 percent of their class as opposed
to 7 percent white students. Black students had a higher failing and
dropout rate, 19 percent compared to 8 percent for white students. Only
45 percent of blacks passed the bar exam on their first try compared
with 78 percent of whites. Even after multiple attempts, only 57 percent
of blacks succeeded in passing the bar.
Continue Reading ....
