New research about law schools’ affirmative action conducted by professors from Princeton University and the University of Toronto seeks to evaluate the “mismatch” hypothesis, a theory that claims affirmative action could actually be detrimental to its would-be beneficiaries.
This hypothesis, explained Jesse Rothstein, Princeton University assistant professor of economics and public affairs, claims that affirmative action lets minority students, specifically black students, into schools that are too difficult for them, causing them to perform poorly and drop out. The research, conducted by Rothstein and Albert Yoon, University of Toronto professor of law, aimed to evaluate this theory using data from students who entered law school in 1991.
“We found that there’s not very much evidence that would tend to support the mismatch hypothesis,” Rothstein said. “If you compare black students that attend very selective schools to ones that attend less selective schools but look like they could have attended very selective schools, students in more selective schools do better on every measure” including graduation rates, bar exam pass rates and job placement.
Rothstein said his research also sought to evaluate another tenet of the hypothesis that claims affirmative action at law schools actually reduces the number of black lawyers.
“We find that the exact opposite is true: We find that if you got rid of affirmative action, the number of black lawyers would fall dramatically,” Rothstein said. “It turns out that there are no ‘unselective’ law schools. The first effect of getting rid of affirmative action is that there are a lot of black students who go to law school now who would not [otherwise] get into any law school.”
Here at the University, Law School Dean Paul Mahoney said he could not articulate what diversity at the University’s Law School would be like without affirmative action without having the same information from other law schools across the country.
“We are able, as currently standing, to attract every year a group of African-American students whom we feel good about, whom we feel are able to succeed at the University of Virginia,” Mahoney said. “Whether that would be the case or not under some other system would really depend on how it looked at every other school, on what other schools’ policies were.”
Mahoney added that the University has not done any specific study as to the performance of students by race, but noted the Law School only accepts students who admissions officials believe will do well.
“We do take race and other forms of diversity into account in admissions,” Mahoney said, “but we do not admit any student who we think cannot do the work and succeed at our Law School.”
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