Bell Curve

474 Living Together Affirmative Action in Higher Education 475has been described anecdotally by a number of observers, black andwhite alike.41The Population's Eye View of People with College DegreesThe other vantage point to take into account is the view of the publictoward minority and white college graduates. The college degree-whatit is and where you got it-packs a lot of information in today's America,not just as a credential that employers evaluate in hiring but as abroad social signal. One may lament this (people ought to be judged ontheir own merits, not by where they went to school), but it also has apositive side. Historically, that little sentence, "I have a [solid degree]from [a well-regarded university]," jolted you loose from any number ofstereotypes that the person you encountered might have had of you.The reason it did so was that a well-regarded college had a certain setof standards, and its graduates presumably met those standards. No matterwhat one's view is of "credentialing" in theory, the greatest beneficiariesof credentialing are those who are subject to negative stereotypes.One of the great losses of preferential affirmative action has been to dilutethe effects of the university credential for some minorities. Todaythe same degree from the same university is perceived differently if youhave a black face or a white one. This is not a misguided prejudice thatwill be changed if only people are given more accurate informationabout how affirmative action really works. On the contrary, more accurateinformation about how affirmative action really works confirmssuch perceptions.This unhappy reality is unnecessary, There is no reason that minoritygraduates from any given college have to be any different from whitecollege graduates in their ability or accomplishments. Restoring thevalue of the credential is easy: Use uniform procedures for selecting,grading, and granting degrees to undergraduates. Some difference in thecognitive distributions among college graduates would still remain, becauseeven if individual schools were to treat applicants and studentswithout regard to race, we could expect some cognitive difference in thenational distributions of graduates (since a group with disproportionatelyfewer high-scoring students would probably gravitate to less competitiveschools; they would graduate, but nonetheless have lower meanability), But within schools, the group differences could be as close tozero as the institution chooses to get. America's universities are insteadperpetuating in the ranks of their graduates the same gap in cognitiveability that separates blacks and Latinos from whites in the general population.As we saw in the data on law and medical schools, there is noreason to think that the gap shrinks as people move further up the ed.ucational ladder, and some reason to think it continues to grow.Some will argue the gap in ability is an acceptable price to pay forthe other good things that are supposed to be accomplished by aggressiveaffirmative action. Our judgment, in contrast, is that in trying tobuild a society where ethnicity no longer matters in the importantevents in life, it is crucially important that society's prestigious labelshave the same or as close to the same meaning as possible for differentethnic groups. In the case of one of these key labels-the educationaldegree-policymakers, aided and abetted by the universities, have preventedthis from happening.We will trace some of the consequences in the next chapter, whenwe turn to affirmative action in the workplace and present at morelength our assessment of how the double standard embedded in affirmativeaction affects society. For now, we will observe only that the seedsof the consequences in the workplace and beyond are sown in collegesand universities. To anticipate our larger conclusion, affirmative actionas it is being practiced is a grave error.A POLICY AGENDAWe urge that affirmative action in the universities be radically modified,returning to the original conception. Universities should cast awide net in seeking applicants, making special efforts to seek talentwherever it lives-in the black South Bronx, Latino Los Angeles, andwhite Appalachia alike. In the case of two candidates who are fairlyclosely matched otherwise, universities should give the nod to the applicantfrom the disadvantaged background. This original sense of affirmativeaction seems to us to have been not only reasonable and fairbut wise.What does "closely matched" mean in terms of test scores? We haveno firm rules, but as a guideline, admissions officers might aim for an admissionspolicy such that no identifiable group (such as a racial minority)has a mean that is more than half a standard deviation below therest of the student body.'421 This guideline is by no means demanding.In effect, it asks only that the average minority student is at the 30thcentile of the white distribution. Perhaps experience would prove that