The "Right" Take on Higher Ed

Yesterday, National Review Online launched a blog to discuss issues in higher ed, Phi Beta Cons. While I can imagine that I won't agree with their conclusions all that often, hopefully they'll have thought-provoking things to say.

To piggyback off the post below, and the issue of economic barriers to higher ed, NRO starts right off by arguing that racial preferences in admissions don't benefit poor minority students. If you've got a subscription to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, the article NRO references is definitely worth a read.* If you don't subscribe, go take a look at the powerpoint presentation for the Kahlenberg study.

This issue's an interesting one that concerns people across the political spectrum. Besides Kahlenberg's work, Lani Guinier has brought attention to the high percentages of Black Harvard undergrads who are not poor US-born students (the generally assumed beneficiaries of affirmative action programs) but middle and upper-middle class immigrants and children of immigrants.

In contrast to NRO's proposed abandonment of race for SES as a preferencing criterion in admissions, Guinier's conclusion is that selective universities should revisit their admissions systems:

"For me, the key point is not whether you should be admitting immigrants or native-born people of color," Guinier said. "The key point is the schools should be reconsidering their reliance on a set of predictors that don't measure the potential outcome of the students."

It's always interesting when a general agreement on what the problem is (in this case, the exclusion of academically-qualified low income students from higher ed) leads to two totally different policy solutions.

*The Chronicle's Kahlenberg Op-Ed was actually presented as a debate. Interestingly enough, NRO used Kahlenberg's research as evidence, instead of Greg Forster's typically conservative argument that poor kids aren't in college at higher rates because they're just not adequately prepared.