The Perfect and the Free

Why the segregation "glass" is half full

Ed Glaeser and I released our second decennial report on the state of racial segregation in American cities yesterday.  In some coverage of the issue, our views are contrasted with those of some other giants in the literature on segregation -- Doug Massey, John Logan et al.

Allow me to point out why our take on the issue is different from theirs.  Whip out your dog-eared copy of Massey and Nancy Denton's American Apartheid and turn to page 64.  They show that dissimilarity declined by about 4 points in Northern cities between 1970 and 1980, and by seven points in the South.  If you glance at my work with Ed, you see our numbers show a decline of about 10 points over the same time period. We use the same data.  What gives?

The difference is all in the weighting.  The big segregated cities of the rust belt have declined in population while the less segregated cities of the sun belt have grown.  So, while it is true that there are some cities where segregation has declined only a little over the past 40 years, a shrinking proportion of the population lives there.  Think about Detroit and St. Louis, two very segregated places where the population is less than half what it was in 1950.  Then think about Atlanta, a city much less segregated than the others and also a place where more than a million African-Americans have moved in the past few decades.  Focusing on the Rust Belt cities gives you an inaccurate portrait of true social trends over the past half-century.

 

The great race & GPA dustup

My Duke colleagues Peter Arcidiacono and Ken Spenner have been getting a lot of attention lately for their unpublished study documenting differences in behavior among Duke undergraduates.  In case you haven't been paying attention, the study examines patterns of persistence within a student's intended major, and outcomes such as GPA.  The controversial aspect of the study is its finding that African-American students are significantly more likely to switch away from majors such as science and engineering (and economics) and towards subjects in the "softer" social sciences and humanities.  Somewhere along the line these majors were labeled as "easier," which is unfortunate.  For many, including myself, parsing Foucault is more difficult than taking a derivative.  A more accurate, and possibly less controversial, way to describe the difference between the "hard" and "soft" majors is that students tend to receive better grades in the latter. For example, consider unsung Duke basketball alum Nick Horvath, who famously double-majored in English and Physics.  The odds are that a student like Horvath would have a higher GPA in English courses than in Physics courses.

What brought the Arcidiacono/Spenner study to light, of course, was a reference in an amicus curiae brief for an affirmative-action related case.  So naturally there are deeper points to think about than just the study at hand.  Affirmative action is utilized primarily because most of the other admissions criteria we use in the selective-higher-education business make it tough for disadvantaged students to compete (the choice of terms is intentional -- these days, it is pretty easy for affluent families of any race to find their children a spot in a selective college).  Not to mention the fact that we have these enormous sticker prices that scare many otherwise qualified but poor applicants away.

Universities like Duke are giving an unfortunate meaning to the concept of an "elite" college.  There are notoriously few students from low-to-moderate income families on our campus.  You might respond by saying students from these families are less likely to be qualified to attend, but the counterpoint would be exactly why do we think that the University's highest purpose is served by focusing admission decisions on those with near-perfect GPAs and test scores?

The University's mission should be to admit those students for whom the education they stand to receive will make the greatest difference.  This does mean we need to pay attention to whether students are ready for the rigors of the education we provide.  But think about the typical son or daughter with two professional parents who attended a private high school or a public school in a district serving houses so expensive that it may as well have been private.  Is it going to make much difference in their lives if they attend Duke rather than a somewhat less prestigious alternative?  Given the advantages they have already enjoyed in life, the best bet is that they will be fine either way.  In other words, a Duke-caliber education will make very little difference to them in the long run.

In the end, I don't think there is any evidence of erroneous thinking in the Acridiacono and Spenner study.  The erroneous thinking arises from the presumption that "elite" colleges should admit those who have already found their way to the top, rather than those for whom our education might actually show the way.