A Top College Admission Can Turn a Strong Student Into a Struggling One
Economist Thomas Sowell argues the problem is not talent but fit, and he blames race-based admissions.
Hoover Institution · Thomas Sowell on the Myths of Economic InequalityWhen economist Thomas Sowell, who once taught at Cornell University, went to check test scores, he was trying to solve a puzzle. He said he "found a half the black students at Cornell were on some kind of academic probation." Yet the average Black student there had scored at the 75th percentile on the SAT, the college entrance exam. That is better than three out of four test takers.
Sowell's explanation is about fit. He argued that students with strong qualifications can still be mismatched with a school whose standards they cannot meet, even though they "may meet the standards of 80 or 90% of the colleges in America." Sowell blames race-based admissions for creating that mismatch. Critics of that view dispute that admissions preferences are the cause.
As evidence of the gap, Sowell pointed to figures published in Harvard's student newspaper for the class of 2019. The average scores were 2,149 for Black students, 2,218 for white students, and 2,300 for Asian students.
At Cornell at that time, Sowell said, the typical liberal arts student scored in the 99th percentile, the top one percent. He said that "when you're teaching students like that, you teach at a pace that most people of any race cannot keep up with." Describing his own class, Sowell said students complained that he assigned a great deal of reading, but he defended it on the grounds that he was teaching students in the top one percent who could handle it.
Peter Robinson, a journalist, put the result this way, that Cornell "was taking very talented black kids and spending four years teaching them to feel inadequate." Sowell replied, "Yes and succeeding at that." In Sowell's argument, the takeaway is that the problem was not talent but placement in the most demanding classroom rather than one matched to the students' preparation.
Questions people ask
What happens to similar students who go to less selective schools?
That is the claim made by supporters of the mismatch hypothesis, an idea Sowell helped popularize and that other researchers have studied. Other researchers dispute it, arguing that attending a more selective school still helps disadvantaged students graduate and earn more, and that the evidence for mismatch is mixed.
Does this mismatch problem affect only Black students?
No. Researchers who study mismatch say any student admitted with much lower academic preparation than classmates can struggle, whether the preference is for athletes, children of alumni, or students from underrepresented groups. Sowell focuses on Black students because he says race-based admissions create the pattern on a large scale.
What does being on academic probation actually mean?
Academic probation is a formal warning when a student's grades fall below a minimum, usually a C average. A student on probation must improve quickly to stay enrolled, and can face loss of financial aid, trouble getting into a major, and lower chances for graduate school.