How Coerced Race-Consciousness Hurts Blacks at George Mason Law
You may have read this piece a couple of months ago in the Wall Street Journal detailing how the American Bar Association has pressured the George Mason University School of Law to accept more minorities at lower standards, even threatening to revoke the school's accreditation.
Well, GMU Law had no other choice but to begin to comply, and the results, as we see in other affirmative action programs, were not so hot. My friend Andy Guess over at Inside Higher Ed wrote a very good (yet sad!) article about what happened to GMU Law upon being forced to accept less than qualified minorities. Excerpt (emphasis mine):
The “mismatch” theory, as it’s been called, posits that some African-American students have struggled and at times dropped out of highly competitive law schools even though they might have thrived at lower-ranked or less rigorous institutions, and gone on to pass the bar exam. The article concluded that without affirmative action, black students would be better “matched” with institutions that meet their qualifications, and that disparities in failure rates would disappear.
Now, an organization that opposes race-conscious admissions policies asserts that it has found data from one particular institution illustrating the sort of dynamic the study would predict. According to data obtained through a public records request, from 2003 to 2005 some 45 percent of African-American students at George Mason University School of Law, outside of Washington, had grade-point averages below 2.15, defined as “academic failure.” For the rest of the student body, however, the figure was 4 percent.
Insane, isn't it?
Gail Herot, author of the WSJ piece I linked above, adds in her blog:
The pity is that, as Richard Sander's research suggests, some of these who failed at GMU might have succeeded at less competitive schools and had a greater chance of ultimately passing the bar. Because somebody at the ABA thought that it was more important for George Mason's student body to look like America, a number of students have now wasted a year of their lives and saddled themselves with debt with little or no chance of ever practicing law.
A pity indeed.
Paul Ibrahim
in Race, Law, Academia, George Mason University
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Reader Comments (1)
It is unfortunate, law schools hold the results of the law school admissions exam as the main criteria for acceptance into law school. It has been proven that a large number of students that score high on this exam become poor lawyers, if at all.
I myself attended a midwest law school in the 4th tier with aspirations of becoming a 1st tier school. I performed well in the class and understood the information. The politics of law school lead to my demise. I was not a proper fit as some of the professors boasted. I remember the isolation and the attempts to undermine my confidence and my abilities.
All this really didn't have an affect on my performance, however some law schools have ways to encourage some and discourage others. I found myself being placed out side of study groups in which valuable information was passed along in regards to the final.
It is this type of behavior which should be controlled, because my tuition was the same as everyone else; yet I didn't receive the same quality education as those who were accepted and groomed by the school and placed into study groups.
It is my opinion that the focus should be taken away from the numbers and look at talent, desire, and the ability to become an attorney that cares about the law and people.