Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action - Reason Foundation

24dents—i.e. it has increased the rate at which theyearn honors and decreased the rate at which theywind up in academic jeopardy.Take, for example, the case of the University ofCalifornia at San Diego (“UCSD”)—a highly selectiveinstitution, but not quite as selective as theUC’s Berkeley campus. Amici have firm data onUCSD. In 1997, only one African-American studentat UCSD had a freshman-year GPA of 3.5 orbetter—a single African-American honor student ina freshman class of 3,268. In contrast, 20 percentof the white students had such a GPA. Failurerates were similarly skewed. Fully 15 percent ofAfrican-American students and 17 percent of AmericanIndian students at UCSD were in academicjeopardy (defined as a GPA of less than 2.0), whileonly 4 percent of white students were. Other under-representedminority students hovered close tothe line. 7 See Gail Heriot, The Politics of Admissionsin California, 14 Academic Questions 29(2001).This was not because there were no other African-Americanstudents capable of doing honorswork at UCSD. The problem was that such studentswere often at Stanford or Berkeley, where oftenthey were not receiving honors. Similarly,white students were not magically immune fromfailure. But those who were at high risk for it hadnot been admitted in the first place. Instead, they7 Since UCSD didn’t keep separate statistics for those minoritystudents who needed a preference in order to be admittedand those who would have been admitted regardless, it is impossibleto say exactly how high the failure rate was for preferencebeneficiaries in particular.