The Continued Marketization of UW-Madison

Last year, I wrote extensively about efforts led by former Chancellor Biddy Martin and her administration, donors, and alumni to privatize (or at least semi-privatize) the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  That effort was partially successful, for while Martin and colleagues failed to separate Madison from the rest of the UW System, or gain authority over tuition setting, they did succeed in getting Madison the authority to redesign its human resources system.  This new "flexibility" was praised by many on campus, including staff, faculty, and students, who recognize that the current bureaucracy is not working, especially for those outside of administration.

So, this year the Human Resource Design Project has been advertised as a tremendous opportunity, hard won, and far better than the alternative -- the status quo.  Perhaps.  But few reforms are without consequence, and the recommendations recently offered by the working teams in HR Design suggest this case is no exception.  In fact, the potential long-term effects of this redesign process may result in an very different university culture, one that is far less progressive than Madison has historically been known for.  Instead, the recommendations will likely aggressively speed-up Madison's transformation (I'd say descent) into a market-driven institution focused first and foremost on serving its paying customers.

Some specifics of the recommendations have been discussed over at Sifting and Winnowing and so I direct you to read the details there.  For example, the recommendations include combining the currently unionized classified staff and academic staff into one.  As severals members of the HR working teams point out, this has significant implications for the protections held by unionized workers: "If the state legislature does not amend these statutes, the combining formerly classified staff–the custodians, the office secretaries, financial specialists–into the employee category academic staff will take away the few remaining collective bargaining rights that they have fought and bargained for about 50 years."  Both the classified staff and the academic staff object to this recommendation.

Another recommendation focuses on the distribution of employee pay based on labor market analyses. As members of the Wisconsin University Union point out, this can mean many things-- some resulting in even lower pay for UW-Madison workers.  "There is no standard labor market for any group or individual occupations (with the exception of building trades). There are often valid arguments to be made for or against choosing one group over another. However, choice of a particular labor market as the standard will frequently determine the result."  Crucially, the current recommendations say nothing about providing cost of living increases to all employees, nor is there any consideration of years of experience with good performance.

Furthermore, the proper implementation of these recommendations will likely grow the size of central administration -- not reduce it.  National studies indicate that growth in central administrations are the source of much of the increasing costs of college attendance, so we need to pay special attention here.  According to Joel Rogers, professor of Sociology, “Done properly, the task of specifying the real human capital requirements of hundreds of UW job titles; identifying jobs with the same requirements in external labor markets; collecting all relevant data on their compensation from private employers; and doing all this continuously enough to capture relevant changes, job titles, compensation practices, and labor market boundaries and participants is a massive amount of work."

Finally, despite promises to the contrary, these recommendations involve cuts to employee compensation.  Specifically, academic staff will see their vacation benefits reduced.  As ASEC has pointed out, "newly employed academic staff will lose nearly 52 hours of vacation/personal time under this proposal. Children attending MMSD have 16 days of vacation that do not coincide with the UW’s current holiday schedule, which means a single parent would have four days of vacation left (after caring for her/his child when local schools are not in session)."  And yet UW claims that employees will not move backwards under the new Design?

Now, to UW's credit, this has been a somewhat transparent process.  Many public forums have been held, and there are many ways to provide input.  The 11 working groups on this effort involved many people-- however, a closer look indicates that the vast majority (perhaps 2/3rds) are people currently in HR in the administration--in other words there were not many faculty or union-represented workers involved.  Furthermore, participation among those on the work groups has been reportedly hampered by meeting times occurring early in the morning (e.g. before childcare begins) and during work hours.

Moreover, there has also been a continuation of last spring's approach in communicating with campus members-- administrators tell us what's "important" and "smart" without providing hard facts about the evidence on why.  Where does this proposed structure of titles come from? Where is the data regarding the effects of this sort of market-driven approach versus alternatives?  There is very little data given anywhere to back up the contentions in the recommendations, despite the very expensive contributions made by the Huron Consulting firm, hired under Martin to assist with this work.  The rhetorical approach is led by Robert Lavigna, who speaks about the importance of ensuring that the new system can attract and retain "the best talent."  He utilizes the language of "flexibility", "efficiency," and "effective."  He promises a "greater connection between compensation and performance."  In other words he talks a lot like Biddy Martin, and others like her who are bringing business practices to education.

Thus, one key thing that the new HR Design highlights is that the neoliberal politics embodied in Biddy Martin were not hers alone, and that her efforts were indicative of a broader market-driven culture amongst those who surrounded and hired her, which continues to prevail in today's UW-Madison (and indeed globally).  These recommendations were issued, and are being systematically advanced, despite her departure.  That is something we all must pay close attention to, as these political maneuverings will likely continue to shape the next stages in Madison's development- especially the upcoming chancellor search.  Who will be in charge there? What "facts" will we be provided? What role will faculty, staff, and students play, relative to the roles played by WARF, donors, alumni, and administrators?

A thoughtful approach to considering the desirability of the marketization of Madison requires our entire community think about (1) What are the full set of alternative options under consideration? (2) What evidence is being presented about the likely intended and unintended consequences of each option? and (3) Who exactly stands to benefit, and in what ways, from each option?

Notably, these are not the kinds of questions Huron (our highly-paid consultant) is known for asking and answering. Instead, Huron emphasizes a one-directional model in which administration directs the activities of faculty and staff.  Laura Yaeger, VP at Huron, has said that "universities are getting a better understanding of what activities add value to students and stakeholders while  providing clearer guidelines for staff and faculty about which programs and activities should be supported."   Does that sound like shared governance to you?  Who are those stakeholders?

We are repeatedly being told that our backs are against the wall, and this is our only choice.  Don't listen to talk like that-- you are too smart.  This new Design is neoliberalism at its finest, justifying marketization as a form of self-defense, redefining all interactions within the educational institution as essentially business relationships. We, the faculty and staff and our traditional protections, are being identified as the obstacle to market-based efficiencies.  The ultimate goal is to make UW-Madison less dependent on us.  This gives private investors greater opportunities to profit from state expenditures, while influencing the form and content of education. And it makes business and university administrators the main partnership, redefining student-professor relations.

It is imperative that educators and students across UW-Madison begin to understand and draw attention to how funding priorities, public-private partnerships, tuition and fees, cost-benefit analysis, performance indicators, curriculum changes, and new technologies change the content of academic work and learning, and how they collectively arise from global efforts to discipline academic labor for capital. The changes to Madison's human resources system, and to its operations more broadly, are intimately linked to employment opportunities in Dane County and elsewhere, and to the kinds of education and services we deliver to the state.  If we are going to be market-driven in how we educate and serve Wisconsin, what we provide will be undoubtedly more unequally distributed.  Everyone should have something to say about that. As Lavigna has said "This system will affect everyone on this campus."  He's serious. You need to pay attention.

PLEASE: Send your feedback on HR Design to hrdesign@news.wisc.edu

Our Students Aren't Customers

At Monday's Faculty Senate meeting, I'll deliver the annual report from the Committee for Undergraduate Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid (CURAFA). I have chaired that committee for several years, and while it is not usually something I discuss on this blog, I want to address a comment I made at the last meeting.

At that meeting, my colleague Adam Gamoran delivered a report from the committee on faculty compensation, and as part of that report suggested that the university raise more funds to pay faculty by increasing the overall number of undergraduates from out-of-state (OOS). He was not suggesting we decrease the number of in-state (IS) students, but rather that we grow the total number of undergraduates by enrolling more OOS students.

As CURAFA had not been told this suggestion was forthcoming, and I had not read his committee's entire report for the meeting (my fault), this took me by surprise.  In keeping with my scholarly work on higher education policy, I was aware of the likely reaction from students and the public to a proposal that could easily be read as an effort to put on onus on students and families to fund salary increases. Of course, Adam meant that this was needed only because the state wasn't doing its job of funding the university, but it was also clear right away that this wasn't the media message that would carry.  Further, the idea of increasing enrollment among OOS students was something CURAFA had discussed several times with the Office of Admissions, and it was clear from those conversations that this strategy was much easier said than done.

That is because the percent of OOS who enroll at Madison after being accepted is quite low. That "yield rate" is just 22% for domestic non-residents (this excludes Minnesota) -- lower than the national averages for public universities.  The large gap between applications and enrollments among OOS students is a function of many things-- many students apply to large numbers of institutions to improve their odds of admissions or odds of getting multiple offers that can be negotiated, and also many OOS students expect to be offered a nice merit scholarship to induce their attendance.  Yield is thus a far better indicator than applications of how many students truly prefer UW-Madison and can afford to attend it without scholarships.  The latter shouldn't matter generally, but in the case of OOS students, if we have to heavily discount their costs then we will not generate enough revenue to fund the growth in compensation the faculty desire.  Recent trends indicate that discounting is beginning to fail as a mechanism for attracting students, more of whom seem put off by the higher tuition charged for OOS students at public institutions, and private institutions more generally.  Moreover, UW-Madison is unique is being among a handful of public universities bucking the trend of shifting most financial aid from need-based to merit-based-- giving out relatively few scholarships to freshmen (scholarships to upperclassmen are another matter).

A few more specifics. Over the last ten years, UW-Madison's yield rate among domestic non-residents dropped from 26%  to 22%, even as applications for that group doubled.  During the same period, the yield among international non-residents dropped from 37% to 20%, as applications for that group increased sixfold.  But during that time the yield among Wisconsin residents grew from 60 to 62%, while the number of applications remained steady.   That yield among Wisconsin residents is very high, much higher than the national average, and is likely indicative of demand for more seats among Wisconsin taxpayers.

So the punchline is this:  demand among OOS students for enrollment at UW-Madison simply isn't very strong. That's what I honestly intended to say to the Faculty Senate in my remarks. Accomplishing what Adam's committee was suggesting therefore requires shifting (a) the distribution of merit-based aid, and/or (b) the admissions standards for OOS students.  Right now admissions standards appear to be applied similarly for IS and OOS students, on average.  Unless merit-based aid is used to increase the yield substantially, and unless that discounting is actually successful, growing the number of OOS students would require accepting more OOS students-- and this likely means digging deeper into the application pool.  It is an open and important question as to whether UW-Madison, its faculty, and its constituents want to have differential admissions standards based on residency.  That discussion should be had upfront and publicly, and should not be secondary to (or disguised behind) questions about whether the strategy will generate money.  That has been my point all along, and one I am admittedly quite emotional about since it's my view that UW-Madison's greatest strength is its commitments to high-quality education and service to the state, and its longstanding tradition (including among faculty) of putting those things ahead of monetary concerns.   Ours is not a culture rife with showy displays of consumption; instead we dig in and we focus on our students and our research.

Sadly, I failed in my remarks to make these points.  Moved to respond quickly and without time to gather myself sufficiently, instead I erred in suggesting that the applicant pool of OOS students was weaker academically than that for in-state students. The publicly available evidence (presented in terms of group averages) does not show this to be true, and I regret that I was not better prepared to state my concerns about the yield rate better, or able to discuss why I have some reservations about the data we do have available.  In the future I hope CURAFA and committees making recommendations related to admissions and financial aid will communicate better, so that we can all be better equipped to respond on the spot to proposals and questions at Senate.

Now, I know that some will contend we can simply increase the yield of high-achieving students with better recruitment. I disagree, mainly because this will require substantial additional resources for our relatively small admissions office (eating up the projected revenues from the new students), our Badger Alumni are already doing yeomen work, and because we are losing high-achieving OOS students to places we simply cannot and arguably should not be competing with.  For this group, our yield is just 15% -- 35% go to private institutions like Northwestern, 23% end up staying in-state, and 19% go to another out-of-state institution.   To capture the latter two groups, we have to spend more money through effective discounting -- recruitment alone won't do it.

I'll close with some final words about the overall strategy of using OOS students to increase revenues. It sounds too good to be true because it is.  Yes, it seems efficient and even equitable--if you support redistribution among students).  But as Christopher Newfield has pointed out, the "market-smart and mission centered" approach has a thin empirical evidentiary basis (in fact  more examples of market failures than market successes surround us these days) and brings with it some slippery-slope unintended consequences.  Here's one we are all familiar with: over time, UW-Madison has begun to feel more and more elite-- to both the faculty and to the state.  John Wiley spoke of this concern when he was chancellor, and commissioned a study to look at whether in fact family income among UW-Madison students was increasingly out-of-step with Wisconsin family incomes.  The answer in short is that the reason it feels this way is because of the increasingly high family incomes of OOS students.  The growing proportion of students from wealthier families on campus changes the feel of the place in ways both large and small-- they drive demand for more luxurious accommodations and services (witness Lucky!), enjoy clothing and other aspects of conspicuous consumption that make it harder than ever to "keep up with the Joneses,"and utilize their extensive networks and connections to take on powerful positions help lead votes to charge higher tuition and increase spending, so that UW-Madison will look like the private institutions where their friends attend.  Some even use the higher graduation rates of these more-advantaged OOS students to suggest (without any empirical evidence) that they graduate faster because they pay more.   Sure, they bring greater income and geographic "diversity" to some degree (though the real underrepresentation continues to be among students from below the poverty line) and some will say it broadens the horizons of all student-- but at the same time these changes make the flagship feel less and less like it's part of Wisconsin.  And therein lies the long-term problem.

Madison is not an island. It cannot hover into space, pulling apart from its land. Madison is Wisconsin.  And decisions about changing the degree to which it remains Wisconsin should be make democratically and discussed publicly, openly, and frequently and in arenas that separate these important questions about educational quality and climate from the ever-present, neo-liberalizing discussions about markets and revenue.  Treating our students as students, and not paying customers, is the very least we owe them.

Think Outside Your Box

It is often said that access/diversity and affordability in higher education can only come at the expense of quality. Thus, it is all-too-common for critics to cast those in favor of broadening college access as socialists who simply want to destroy high-quality educational institutions. They promote a false dichotomy that has been kept alive for decades by the consistent retelling of the "tragedy of the commons." The tragedy, we're told, is that people will always strive to maximize their private benefits, and that eventually these will necessarily come at the expense of common goods.  Garrett Hardin famously laid this out for us in 1968.

Sadly, far too many people seem to think the tragedy of the commons is a problem that can't be solved. The "iron triangle" model dominating decision-making in higher education confirms this-- since "we know" that spending leads to quality (thus less spending leads to less quality), and that increased access (e.g. more people) requires more money, then it follows that more access means less quality. Right?
Well, no, not really.  First, the link between spending and quality is notoriously weak -- maybe because there's too little variation in spending and/or quality to detect an effect, but maybe not.  Second, just because money is spent on access does not mean that money isn't also creating more quality (especially if diversity is one measure of quality). And third, it's possible to spend less money on quality and yet produce more quality by increasing productivity.

But you can't produce more productivity without greater compensation since people will only respond only to cash, right?  You can't get hard work without inequality-- and inequality is good since a rising tide lifts all boats. Right?? Well, again, no.  It is possible to solicit great effort from humans with other motivators, including security, community, and self-esteem.  Higher education is terrible at distributing these things; it's a climate where professors are said to be "independent contractors," always trying to one-up each other, and it's the very rare administrator who takes time to commend or praise her faculty's hard work.  But places do exist, whole departments even, where people get along, and this keeps them content and productive even when they are not well-compensated according to "market value."

The current crisis in public higher education demands that we make it a priority to grow and nuture such places.  They have to be created by real leaders, and leadership is what's really lacking right now.  Higher education leaders that are educated and experienced in the areas in which they work (e.g. higher education policy), leaders that focus on goal-setting first, and policy development second, leaders that see nothing as inevitable and everything in education as a possibility-- these are so hard to come by.  We are surrounded by narrow-minded thinkers who can't imagine a world other than the one they live in now. But if we encourage and develop people who can think outside the box--the box created by a highly individualistic vision of higher education-- we will find a sustainable model.  We will, as a community, move beyond the tragedy of the commons.

I'm not alone in this vision.  Hear it again, directly from the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics-- Elinor Olstrom.

Crossing Wires

A recent exchange between Chris Rickert and Mike Knetter provides a useful example of what happens when we engage in policy discussions without being insufficiently clear about our intended goals.

Chris's column from Thursday was titled "Big donors don't make a big impact on tuition at UW-Madison." In this piece he makes the following points:

(1) UW-Madison faces a public relations problem because it claims to have financial troubles but building construction on campus is rampant.
(2) Private donations to UW often go to buildings and athletics, rather than to need-based financial aid.
(3) There is a national affordability crisis.

He does not tie these three points together in any clear fashion in the text of the column, but the headline attempts to do so by claiming that what the three points tell us is that donors aren't really helping the university respond to the national crisis, since their money doesn't go to discount tuition.

Obviously, those who raise money from private donors at UW were not happy. And so we have a response today from Mike Knetter, of UW Foundation. Knetter makes two very clear points:

(1) UW is grateful for every donation it receives, whether or not it goes to financial aid.
(2) Donations that improve educational quality enhance the affordability agenda, since it is meaningless to provide an inexpensive education if that education isn't worthwhile.

Unfortunately, I think this discussion was not as productive as it could have been. If Chris's intent was to question decisions about resource allocation at UW-Madison, perhaps to stimulate a deeper conversation about those issues, then he got off-track by implying that only donations to aid are useful.  Mike's response is directly to that point.  And this is too bad, since it would be very helpful to the campus community for UW to engage in a public debate about the goals it is trying to achieve with limited resources, what the most effectives routes to achieving those goals are, and where we stand in relation to those paths.  If I'm reading between the lines correctly, Chris wants Madison to be responsive to public needs-- but it's not exactly clear that "responsive" means to him.  And if I am reading Mike correctly, he feels that in order for Madison to meet any of its many goals, it will need to continue to depend on private donors-- and that means accepting the heterogenous motivations donors possess and working within those parameters.  That too should be up for some discussion.

I hope in the coming months we can all attempt to begin our arguments about what Madison and System should or should not do by first saying what we want these institutions to achieve.  Unless we have a common understanding of goals, the route to reaching those goals will continue to elude us.

Making College More Student Friendly (Part 1: Seg Fees)

Another new Education Optimists series-- this one is focused on how to reform our colleges and universities to become more student-friendly. First up, seg fees.

Last night as I observed my Twitter feed, I noticed a tweet from a student journalist about a particular aspect of UW System policy on segregated fees. According to System financial rule F50, in order for an organization to receive seg fees, it must "require that all leadership positions in the organization be held by students enrolled on a fee-paying basis for at least half-time; as used in this policy, "half-time" status means enrollment for a minimum of six credits as an undergraduate student, and enrollment for a minimum of four credits as a graduate student, except that for UW-Colleges students "half-time" status means enrollment for a minimum of three credits."

This strikes me as a good example of a well-intentioned policy with unintended consequences.

The purpose of the policy may be to ensure that only students hold leadership positions, preventing others in the community from accessing student resources and/or controlling agendas. That makes sense. Maybe it is also intended to ensure that students who hold leadership positions have "skin in the game"--e.g. paid their seg fees. That makes less sense, since many students didn't themselves pay their seg fees: their parents or financial aid did.

But this half-time requirement systematically disenfranchises the more than 23,000 undergraduate students in the UW System who, for whatever reason, are attending college part-time. Statistics show that part-time enrollment is a temporary situation for some students, and a strategy for college attendance for others. For example, a student may be full-time throughout college, but due to family obligations or a short-fall of financial resources, or difficulty with some hard courses, may drop to part-time for a given term. Or, the student's approach to financing college may be to work 3/4 time, and take a half-time load. Such students are disproportionately first-generation, racial/ethnic minorities, and/or from low-income families. They are often somewhat older, and more likely to be women.

Participation and leadership in student organizations is important. It's not only a credit to one's resume, and a great way to build social networks, but it is also a predictor of college persistence. Thus, it is probably especially important for students who are otherwise disconnected from campus to have the opportunity--if they so choose, can fit it in, and are chosen--to take the role as a leader. Saying that they can't (or if they do, their organization can't access seg fees) is passing judgement on their abilities, rights, and opportunities based on a single atribute of their college attendance pattern: how many credits they take. This serves to preserve and maintain the advantage of students who can afford and manage to schedule full-time attendance, and perpetuates the interests of full-time students over part-time ones.

This rule could be modified in ways that maintain the intent--to ensure leaders are students--while removing the unintended consequences. For example, why not require of leaders (item 2c in F50) exactly what's required of members (item 2b): "Students enrolled for a minimum of one semester hour of credit at the UW institution for which the organization is seeking official recognition?" Or, require that the person has taken at least 6 credit hours on campus in the last 2 years? If a modification is sought, consider this: Is it really the case that there is a systematic problem of non-students taking leadership roles in student organizations, such that a blanket rule that disenfranchises 15% of UW System undergraduates is truly needed?

Lest you think this is a minor issue that hardly ever comes up, take a look at today's Badger Herald. At last night's ASM meeting, student Nneka Akubeze was nominated to fill the position of vice-chair, and "Student Services Finance Committee Chair Sarah Neibart said because Akubeze, a special student, is enrolled in four credits, she is not eligible for a leadership position in ASM." A debate ensued. I do not know Akubeze, but it seems to me that debate was long overdue.

Under Assault? Fight Back

There has been so much bad news in Wisconsin (and the nation) this week, I haven't had two seconds to catch my breath. Each time I get a moment to think about what is happening here, and how powerless we seem to be in response, something else happens and my temperature rises.

Governor Scott Walker seems determined to tear apart the foundation of middle-class life here in Wisconsin, starving the University of Wisconsin System to death. I really don't care whether or not the right to "lapses" (in judgement) was contained in his godawful budget, the fact is that we have already taken a terrible $250 million cut, and now we face another $113.8 million shortfall on top of that. The effects will undoubtedly be detrimental to Wisconsin's middle class, as workers across the state are laid off, and students who can't afford to take 5 years to earn a bachelor's degree will drop out ( declining resources often lead to larger classes and waits for key courses at less-selective universities like the various UWs).

I am hard-pressed to see how destroying Wisconsin's pride and joy is a solid approach to job creation. The fact is, this isn't an economic strategy at all. It's a political one: Walker intends to reduce UW System to a shriveled raisin and then propose that we "solve" the higher education problem in the state by open the door to more private and for-profit institutions. "Businesses", he'll say. Moreover, by keeping the population from a postsecondary education, he'll help increase the likelihood they'll vote for him. (Seriously: I have NO PROBLEM with college dropouts, and don't bother sending me an email accusing me of such. My problem is with people who dropout and recommend that others do it too!)

Each week it's something new. Walker no doubt praised the heck out of Steve Nass for tormenting UW-Madison with his silly legislative hearing on affirmative action, and he's undoubtedly chuckling over what will happen when DOA gets UW System's plan for coping with the cuts. There's another Nass hearing in early November, and who knows what else around the corner.

If you can't stand this anymore, and you have the guts to say so, now's the time to get loud. Folks are organizing and together, united, we have to take action. I wish the UW-Madison football players would simply halt in the middle of their next game and tell the national television audience just what a schmo Walker really is. SCOTT WALKER IS KILLING BUCKY! We can't afford to take small steps here.

This is the Walker some of us knew was coming. This is the Walker we said you cannot trust, when others argued we could hand it to Scottie to come up with a new governance model for UW-Madison. This is the Walker who we must recall. Now. Get on it. Get to work.

Passing the Buck

This week we witnessed Steve Nass's Wisconsin Legislature hearing on the Center for Equal Opportunity's report on UW-Madison admissions, and the Walker administration's announcement that-- SURPRISE!--the state is cutting UW System's funding by an additional $65.7 million.

A common theme runs through the discourse and beliefs underlying both events: society's problems originate with and should be borne by individuals. Not policies or practices, politics or economies-- but your average, ordinary Joe and Josephine.

According to Roger Clegg of the CEO, the United States provides every child with an equal opportunity to succeed, a high-quality k-12 system, a testing system that is grounded in multicultural competencies and is thus unbiased, and equal access to the resources required to obtain college knowledge, file applications, and secure the necessary financing. Any difficulties in getting admitted, therefore, are the problems of individuals-- and society shouldn't bother addressing them.

According to Scott Walker and his administrators, the economic challenges the state faces stem at least partly from over-spending on individuals' college educations, and thus now is the time to pass the burden of payment onto individuals. Some UW alumni even appear to agree. After learning of Walker's cut, one such alum tweeted this:

UnitedCouncilUnited Council

More cuts to UW System and Education! http://t.co/EOcTuVMM

Oct 19FavoriteRetweetReply

in reply to @UnitedCouncil↑

@uwbadger74
frank rojas @UnitedCouncil Time for the UW students to step up and offset these cuts. Just a $250 surcharge would offset the majority of the cuts.
Oct 19 via webFavoriteRetweetReply

This same person argued during discussion of the New Badger Partnership that UW-Madison students could, should, and would pay more for their college educations-- even as our economy tanked, parents were laid off, and unemployment rose (yes, even among college grads).

So here we are, faced with substantial rigorous, empirical evidence that inequalities in opportunities of all sorts are widespread, including in education, and yet still people are making arguments that these public issues are fundamentally private troubles.

What should you do when you are passed the buck? Told that your difficulty getting access to the American dream is nothing more than your own fault? Told that you are alone in holding responsibility for the opportunities offered to you? Told you just need to try a little harder, pay a little more, struggle a little longer?

First, recognize and empathize with the folks passing off the problems. They can't analyze data without filters that exclude any potential for systematic causes. Remember the words of C. Wright Mills: "When, in a city of 100,000, only one man is unemployed, that is his personal trouble, and for its relief we properly look to the character of the man, his skills, and his immediate opportunities. But when in a nation of 50 million employees, 15 million men are unemployed, that is an issue, and we may not hope to find its solution within the range of opportunities open to any one individual."

Second, note the real underlying problem-- the massive economic inequality which makes them pathologize others, and even makes them feel good while doing it. They are the real "little people," as Mills wrote, "estranged from community and society in a context of distrust and manipulation [and] alienated from work." You can't help but worry for them.

Third, keep focused and fighting to reform systems and organizations. Their efforts to demonize and individualize every single person will take far, far longer than our concerted efforts to change the spaces and places in which people live. (See, there's the Education Optimist!)

Finally, do not get frustrated and begin to believe them. Then you are truly alone in the world, and all hope really is lost.

Tomorrow: A Day of Student Action in Madison

This was posted on WisPolitics on Friday. The students are clearly being thoughtful about what this hearing on Monday aims to accomplish, and the degree to which it is a diversion from the real issues facing students. And they are not blind to the fact that the CEO and Nass want this to turn into a three ring circus, with students portrayed as "thuggish" animals. Here's to hoping that Monday is as peaceful and productive as it can be.


United Council: Invitation to concerned members of the Madison community
10/14/2011

Contact: David Vines, Matt Guidry (608)263-3422 ext. 12

Holistic admissions is an important issue to many of us and we experience the benefits of a diverse student body in the classroom, in the lab, and on our campus every day.

We do not understand the interest in this politically motivated, misguided report and we would like to take the opportunity to share with you the real challenges facing students of all backgrounds in higher education today.

We will not be attending Monday’s hearing. Instead, we invite students, allies, and other interested persons to join us:

October 17th at 1:00pm Room 411S of the Wisconsin State Capitol

We will hold a press conference focused on the issues the legislature has a direct impact on and what we would like to see our representatives in government focus on, including: reining in the skyrocketing cost of college, reducing debilitating student loan debt, the ability to get a decent job upon graduation, and the increased discrimination that students will soon face at the polls.

Following the press conference we will lead a march down State Street to the UW Memorial Union where those who are interested will have the opportunity to view the hearing on Wisconsin Eye in a neutral setting and participate in a debrief on issues affecting students.

Asian American Student Union (AASU)
Associated Students of Madison Diversity Committee
Hood Dispora
La Pec
Multicultural Student Coalition (MCSC)
Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA)
Queer People of Color (QPOC)
Teaching Assistants Association (TAA)
United Council of UW Students

Wisconsin's Economy Needs Affirmative Action

On this, Republicans and Democrats throughout Wisconsin can agree: the state's economy is in the tank. We need to find ways to create more jobs and grow our paychecks, and fast.

An overwhelming body of evidence shows that state and local economies are greatly enhanced by educating their workforces. Employers build and expand businesses where they can find educated talent and thriving communities where their employees can live. An under-educated population in a landscape with significant pockets of poverty does not make for a hospitable place to do business.

A college education pays off. Sure, more people are going to college, and that makes some people worry that the returns will diminish. But just look around: the unemployment rate of college graduates may be up slightly, but it's still half that of workers without college degrees. You have to like those odds. The chances that you will end up mired in poverty, dependent on government benefits, unable to send your own kids to college--these are greatly reduced if you complete at least a year of college.

This is common sense, and people know it. What they may not realize is that a college education pays off MORE for the people who are least likely to get it. Those kids who we might consider "long shots" when it comes to earning a college degree face the worst labor market prospects if they don't attend college-- so going to college gives them a huge boost. And they benefit even more if they not only attend college, but attend where with the resources and advantages improve their odds of finishing -- places like UW-Madison.

Data proves this: the best way for the people of Wisconsin to maximize the contribution of a college education to their economy is to ensure that the kids who are the "long shots" get to attend its most selective universities. Yes, those individual kids will benefit-- but even more importantly, we all will. The returns to helping them avoid poverty and become gainfully employed taxpayers accrue to the whole state.

This is why affirmative action works for Wisconsin. It helps extend educational opportunities to those who will reap the biggest benefits, which spill over to us all. Without some attention paid to a student's ability to benefit from college, selective colleges would admit only the "sure things"--students who will actually benefit the least. Sure not all of the "long shots" will succeed--but large numbers of them will, far more than those who would if they only attended non-selective colleges. And as for the rest of us, working hard and raising "sure thing" kids, we are not harmed by that extra attention to the "long shots" (the idea that we are being "penalized" is a statistical fallacy), and because benefits to a college education acrrue to communities, we are actually helped.

Affirmative action is in Wisconsin's best interest, and it's within our rights. It's time to stand up for a policy that efficiently uses a college education to grow our economy.

Task Force Named to Rethink UW System

The following folks will be rethinking UW System, courtesy of the Fitzgerald Brothers who got to choose 12 of the 17 task force members.

Their choices include:
Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls
Rep. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater
Rep. Pat Strachota, R-West Bend
UW-Platteville Chancellor Dennis Shields
Wis. Technical College Board President Mark Tyler
Former UW Alumni Association Chair Renee Ramirez
Carroll University Board of Directors member Joanne Brandes
Business Owner Tim Higgins
Former UW Regent Fred Mohs
UW Colleges and Extension Chancellor Ray Cross
UW-Oshkosh Chancellor Richard Wells
Former UW Student Regent Joe Alexander

Last spring, some of these folks were strongly opposed to the New Badger Partnership--UW-Madison's effort to break from UW System.

For example, who can forget Ray Cross's astute remarks, delivered just a short time after his arrival in Wisconsin. He noted that comparisons to U. Michigan were inappropriate, and stressed the importance of keeping UW System together especially during a "contentious and partisan" period. His goals including reducing competition and duplication, helping campuses fulfill their designated missions, and yes, obtaining more flexibility.

Chancellor Richard Wells had a crisis regarding academic freedom on his hands this spring after a March 7 incident in which an Oshkosh professor encouraged his students to sign a recall petition. He used the event as a teachable moment, holding a community discussion on political activities. We can expect that disagreements over the importance of academic freedom and how to best protect it will be implicit in the task force's discussions, even if they are not explicitly on the agenda.

As for Tim Higgins, well, we Optimists featured him on the blog several months back. He, along with Renee Ramirez, endorsed the NBP.

But that was then, and this is now. What do we know about the positions of these folks on the future of UW System? Inquiring minds want to know-- so please, do write in and share.

Innovating our Educating

Last spring I blogged several times about the importance of rethinking how we deliver education at the postsecondary level. At the time, I was focused on the question of how to deliver a high-quality education in a more cost-effective manner. At this moment, I think that focus remains important, but I am also especially cognizant of whether we are teaching in a manner that truly fulfills our mission. At UW-Madison that mission is embodied in the Wisconsin Idea-- our goal of bringing the teaching and learning from this university to people all over the state.

Accomplishing that goal in the face of an increasingly heterogeneous student body and under severe financial constraints will require us to think hard about what we do and how we do it. An article from today's Inside Higher Ed provides some provocative suggestions.

1. We must consider what style(s) of thinking our faculty and students value. Do we aim to educate change agents, or those who will help maintain the status quo? We must be honest about this, since it implies different approaches to teaching. It's easy to say we "value it all" but far harder to develop metrics for performance, for example, that reward it all.

2. We should think about what drives the way we teach. Do we teach in ways that are comfortable and convenient for faculty, or ways that reflect the styles in which students prefer to learn? In other words, are we "teaching to ourselves" rather than to our students? How does this affect our willingness to try new technologies, or consider teaching online?

3. We also need to talk about what we grade or reward. We are very focused on a normative program of study, 4 year-long bachelor's degree, credits accruing to time spent in the classroom, grades based on whatever the professor decides is important. Do we favor approaches that reflect the way we've always done things, or even more importantly, reward behaviors most like our own?

Throughout these discussions I think it's essential that we avoid adopting an overly relativistic position that claims to value and reward everything, says all styles are fine and good, and essentially avoids hard discussions. In the end, with an approach like that nothing will change and this may even perpetuate a downward spiral, since the way we currently educate is expensive and not necessarily sufficiently effective to help move us through the 21st century. This is a discussion that must originate with professors and students, and that I urge administrators to encourage but not lead. Change will take hold only those who teach and those who learn tackle this together.

Conservatives Claim Liberals Are Meanies

Race Matters

There is a robust debate on campus over whether last Tuesday's event at the Doubletree constituted a "protest" (which most seem to agree is appropriate) or a "disruption" of a press conference (which most seem to agree is inappropriate). Even those who disagree with the depiction of students as "thugs" who were part of a "mob" still appear to be concerned that a disruption may have occurred.

What is noticeably absent from the responses is a candid admission that that race matters in how we understand and interpret the events. Let's be frank: a large group of mostly brown folks came into contact with a much smaller group of mostly white folks and it freaked out some of those the white folks.

I was there. First, I was in Clegg's press conference, waiting to be called on while he prioritized questions from the media. I initially observed the protest outside with my ears (it was possible to hear them) and via Twitter. Next, I was in the hallway outside the press conference, in the lobby, where I was being interviewed by media at the moment the young men race through the lobby to open the hotel doors to the protesters. I saw them go by, and I heard a loud sound, then the sound of singing as students streamed into the lobby. Literally, whatever "it" was happened right in front of me. I then watched as students sang and clapped, spoke and cried, and then finally moved into the room where the press conference was wrapping up (having gone on for 45 minutes). I watched as a white man leaving the room (Lee Hansen) put up his hands to press against a black woman as he tried to exit, and as she in turn pushed back. I heard most loudly cries of "peace" and "let them pass" and watched as no one was injured. I remained in the hotel lobby until the student press conference wrapped up, and people departed.

So unlike so many others, I am not relying on second-hand information. That sort of information is filtered and distorted not only by memory and a bad game of telephone but also by racial insecurities.

I admit it: there was a fraction of a second in that lobby, when I saw the people run by and I heard the loud sound, that I experienced fear. At first, I thought it was surprise. Then I realized that I had caught myself anticipating violence and momentarily panicking as I saw men of color move fast and loud. I recognized it, I checked it, and I questioned it. I was angry with myself--for so much has clearly changed internally since I moved from a predominantly black community (West Philadelphia) to a nearly entirely white one. This is what happens to a person when the community in which they live is overly homogenous. And it took me no more than 30 seconds to chastise myself for it, get over it, and then experience the protest as it really was: peaceful, bold, and uplifting.

I had experienced another moment of fear not 30 minutes earlier, when I watched Clegg address a young African-American woman, responding to her question about his report with a smug, paternalistic smile that to me conveyed absolutely no understanding of the powerful hand he had in intimidating her. I reacted to him, in that moment, as a white man with no sense of his own privilege. It was the whiteness of his skin combined with the Southern in his voice and his hyper-masculine demeanor that made my hands shake. I was afraid of his evidently barely-repressed disdain for this woman. The Jewish ancestry in me felt it to my toes. I'm not proud of that either.

I challenge all of us to ask ourselves if I am utterly alone in feeling this way. If we cannot all begin to admit that we are race conscious every day, we are sunk. Entire op-eds and letters to the editors about "events" that were as diverse as any that ever occur at UW-Madison but neglect the fact of RACE are untruthful. It's time for us all to come clean. What distinguishes us from the racists is our honesty, candor, and willingness to learn. Race matters. And that's why the Doubletree event was no "disruption" but rather a necessary protest against an antagonistic deliberate transgression of outsiders on a community.


Postscript: It seems some did not understand that in my original post I was critical of BOTH of my responses. I have added a single comment to the end of the next-to-last paragraph to clarify.

What Do Comparisons of Test Scores Tell Us About Fairness in Admissions Practices?

Heard this before?

"The average test scores of minority students admitted to UW-Madison are lower than those of nonminority students admitted to UW-Madison. This is simply not fair, and is evidence of discrimination."

In other words, if minorities and nonminorities were treated equally in the admissions process, there would be no test score differences.

This claim is common and demonstrably incorrect.

Test scores in the general population are lower for minority students than for nonminority students. This means that even if UW-Madison were to rely solely on test scores for purposes of determining admission, and had the exact same cutoff point for admission (regardless of race), the average scores of minority students would be lower than those of nonminority students. In case that's unclear, try this. Say instead of a test requirement we imposed a weight requirement: you must be at least 200 pounds to be admitted. The proportion of football players admitted to UW-Madison would undoubtedly exceed the proportion of non-football players admitted. Same exact criteria, totally different chances of getting in, and totally different average weights of those admitted.

Among all of the factors you could use to assess whether two applicants are being treated equally, test scores are among the very worst, since they are more unevenly distributed than many others (e.g. minority/non-minority differences in average strength of letters of recommendation are likely much smaller than differences in average test scores).

It is for this reason that experts agree: "evidence of differences in [test] scores does not prove and almost certainly overstates the role of preferential treatment in admissions."

As we can all see, it is incredibly common to mis-interpret the significance of test score differences. Heck, the experts at the Center for Equal Opportunity do it all the time. But that doesn't make it right.

*******

Please, read more about this-- stop the spread of incorrect information.

Where are the WAA and Badger Advocates Now?

When someone lies about your alma mater this way, will you simply stand by? Or will you use your substantial resources to act?

Guest Post: 10 Myths About Affirmative Action

The following is a guest post by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, doctoral candidate in Sociology at UW-Madison and member of the Teaching Assistants' Association. The post originally appeared in the Socialist Worker and is reprinted here at my request. Please refer to the original post for sources for all works cited. --Sara

Students of color in the incoming freshman class at the University of Wisconsin in Madison must have had a disorienting second week of the semester. On September 13, they were greeted by a small group of old suited white men at podiums, telling them they don't belong here--and over 850 angry students telling those men they're wrong.

The press conference held by the misnamed Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) and the debate with their uninspiring spokesperson Roger Clegg later that same day left me less than impressed with the argument that the university's affirmative action policies discriminate against white people.

But what did impress me mightily was the students who again and again stood up to share their stories, their anger that men like Clegg don't think they matter, and their determination to assert that they do. Inspired by those students, here is my defense of race-based affirmative action. Put aside that the richest country in world history treats education like a scarce commodity to be fought over. Race-based affirmative action is simply a matter of justice.

Here are ten myths that people like Clegg spin about affirmative action--and the facts that dispel those myths.

Myth Number 1: Students of color admitted under affirmative action aren't admitted on merit.

If there was one phrase Roger Clegg kept using at his debate that made the entire audience hiss, it was "lowered expectations." That's what Clegg says affirmative action means for minority students. But what he calls lowered expectations, I call recognition of a higher achievement.

According to the Black Commentator, "Wisconsin, and in particular the Milwaukee area, justly merit the invidious distinction of the Worst Place in the Nation to be Black." One reason? The staggering extent to which the criminal justice system in this state is directed at young Black men and their communities.

Sociologist Pamela Oliver has shown that Wisconsin's racial disparity in sentencing people convicted of new drug offenses dramatically dwarfs the disparity in every other state--including New York under its infamous Rockefeller Drug Laws.

In short, succeeding in high school under these conditions is a real achievement--one that frankly dwarfs managing to study SAT vocabulary in a well-funded suburban high school where students are expected to go to college.

And speaking of the SAT and other standardized tests, it's worth understanding some of the reasons for the racial discrepancies in test scores. As Adam Sanchez explained for SocialistWorker.org, since standardized tests are created to sort students, they only serve their function if some students consistently perform better than others.

This has two implications. First, test designers need questions that lots of students will get wrong, and the easiest way to do this is to use questions that draw less on classroom experiences that all children share than on home experiences that only some did. (The need for variation in scores is also why the exams are timed, even though this makes them much more artificial.)

Second, test designers need questions to agree on who the high-scoring students are--otherwise, everyone would score somewhere near the middle. This means that before new questions are added, they are vetted to make sure that they pick out the same students who already are scoring well on the tests. (In testing parlance, such questions are "reliable"--which doesn't mean they are "valid" at capturing real intellectual merit.)

These reasons help to explain why the best predictors of standardized test scores are parents' wealth and education.

Myth Number 2: White students are admitted to college solely on merit.

Underlying all the attacks on affirmative action is the idea that without it, college admissions are race-neutral and meritocratic. But as my fellow UW student Paul Pryse wrote after the last attack on affirmative action at UW:

As many as 15 percent of freshmen at America's top schools are white students who failed to meet their university's minimum standards for admission, according to Peter Schmidt, deputy editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. These kids are "people with a long-standing relationship with the university," or in other words, the children of faculty, wealthy alumni and politicians.

According to Schmidt, these unqualified but privileged kids are nearly twice as common on top campuses as Black and Latino students who had benefited from affirmative action.

There's no such thing as a race-neutral college admissions policy in America. "Colorblind" just means the advantages and disadvantages are rendered invisible.

Myth Number 3: Affirmative action hurts students of color by putting them in environments for which they aren't prepared.

This might have been Clegg's single nastiest argument of the night--that because UW-Madison employs affirmative action, it admits students who are, in Clegg's words, "guaranteed to fail."

Students of color do have a harder road at college than most white students, but it isn't because they're unqualified--it's because discrimination and hostility don't stop at campus gates. Campus cultures have been improved by the victories of antiracist student movements over the past 50 years, but they are still alienating at best and vicious at worst for some students.

Only this past summer at UW, a fraternity hung a life-size black-clad Spiderman doll by its neck from the balcony of its house on fraternity row. If Black students find inhospitable a campus that mere months ago saw the echoes of lynching, only a racist would think that the answer is to keep them off that campus--for their own good.

Myth Number 4: Maybe affirmative action was important once, but those days are long past.

It's hard to imagine anyone making this argument seriously, but then again, Clegg--who, under student questioning, said he wasn't sure whether Black students on average attend less well-funded schools than white kids--didn't seem to be joking. Here are just a few relevant facts:

The median Black family has just 5 percent of the wealth of the median white family (with Hispanics much closer to Blacks than whites)--this is one of the most important ways that advantages and disadvantages are passed down over generations.

Another is segregated schools. A majority of Black students in Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York attend schools that are over 90 percent Black and Latino, and most white students attend schools that are overwhelmingly white. Here in Wisconsin, the Milwaukee school district, with 77 percent Black and Hispanic students, spends $3,081 less per student than the nearby Maple Dale-Indian Hill district, where 80 percent of students are white. The average Black or Latino K-12 student in the country attends a school in which most students are poor.

Meanwhile, one of the most-ballyhooed areas of progress--the narrowing gap in high school graduation rates between Black and white students--has been shown by sociologists Stephanie Ewert and Becky Pettitt to be a statistical lie: once you include prisoners, the progress disappears. The biggest change is that now the Black students who don't graduate high school are locked up.

Myth Number 5: Affirmative action policies in colleges distract attention from disparities earlier in the pipeline.

This one--which Clegg also threw out at the debate in Madison--is just bizarre. Have you ever heard any proponent of affirmative action say, "Well, I would support equal access to quality K-12 schools, but I'm too busy defending affirmative action at colleges?"

Affirmative action at every level helps future generations at every level. Many students of all races are being taught by teachers who may have benefited from affirmative action programs--and who had their sense of education's power and importance shaped by the struggle for affirmative action and civil rights at their colleges.

On the other hand, we might ask those making this argument about their commitment to reforming "the pipeline." I was next in line to question Clegg when the debate unceremoniously ended, with a long line of students still waiting to speak. My question was simple: Since he and his organization apparently want schooling to be colorblind, what have they done to combat residential segregation, by far the biggest contributor to different schooling for different races?

Myth Number 6: Eliminating affirmative action would be fairer to Asian students.

This might be the CEO's most important left cover for their position--the idea that UW-Madison is discriminating not only against white students, but Asian students as well.

As Chinese-American student government leader and Student Labor Action Coalition member Beth Huang pointed out at a pro-affirmative action rally on campus here in Madison, this argument lumps together very diverse populations into the category "Asian." In particular, Wisconsin has a large Hmong population--settled in the Midwest as refugees after the CIA had recruited them into its "Secret War" in Laos--who are largely segregated and impoverished, and should be beneficiaries of affirmative action.

However, it's also true that some "holistic admissions policies" used at universities--such as privileging certain kinds of extracurricular experiences--can function to limit the number of Chinese and Chinese-American students on campus. The main beneficiaries are not other students of color, who remain underrepresented on campuses, but wealthy white students.

Proponents of affirmative action should fight efforts to divide populations that historically have faced discrimination in the United States.

Myth Number 7: White students are only harmed by affirmative action policies.

As it happens, the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action programs in general--by far--have been white women. But this article is about race-based affirmative action, and my case is that these race-based programs are essential for white students--for the sake of their own education.

As we waited in line to question Clegg last week, the student in front of me told me that she had multiple white students in her classes tell her they'd never met a Black person before. Can it really be in these students' interest to have African American students kept out of college, so the country's Black population remains an abstraction to them?

As left-wing education expert Jonathan Kozol points out, research shows that "the strongest opposition to integrated schooling among white people is among those who have never experienced it." Kozol cites studies showing that "60 percent of young people of all races feel not only that they will receive a better education in an integrated setting, but that the federal government should make sure that it happens."

Myth Number 8: Anything that smacks of "quotas" is rigid and suspect.

Quotas became a dirty word in the 1990s, when Democratic President Bill Clinton led the effort to get rid of them--in the name of "mending, not ending" affirmative action. A series of Supreme Court decisions then sharply limited the ways that colleges are allowed to use race in admissions.

But what a quota really means is that there is accountability to stated diversity goals. Here at UW-Madison, the university's 10-year diversity initiative, Plan 2008, fell far short of its goals--which the college's Academic Planning Analysis division attributed to a lack of increased financial aid. Today, the university is less than 4 percent Hispanic, less than 3 percent Black, less than 2 percent Southeast Asian and less than 1 percent Native American. And a third of these students never graduate.

In the same 10 years, the university recruited faculty of color, but failed to increase its rates of granting tenure to them. Faculty of color often face a dilemma in which they are expected to mentor many students of color and serve on every diversity committee, but are not really rewarded for this work in the tenure system.

A system that enforced more accountability to its stated diversity aims would force departments and the university administration to address this kind of discrepancy. Without this accountability, it is far too easy to never question the basic operating and funding structures of the university, while bemoaning the lack of progress on diversity.

Myth Number 9: If we had class-based affirmative action, we wouldn't need race-based affirmative action.

Racial and economic disadvantages in education are deeply intertwined, but that doesn't mean the racial disadvantages can be reduced to class.

Because of residential segregation, even when a Black and a white family have the same household income, it's very likely that the Black family's children go to far worse schools. The "war on drugs" has led to an all-out assault on Black communities in particular. And in the current era--to quote sociologist Matt Desmond, commenting on his study of evictions in Milwaukee--"eviction is for Black women what incarceration is for Black men." It should be obvious that these processes have a tremendous effect on children.

Moreover, the most important dimensions of class--wealth, not income--are the hardest to account for in college admissions, especially when it comes to ensuring racial justice.

One reason wealth is harder to measure is that many government programs are designed to make sure the poor--as opposed to the rich--don't get benefits they don't qualify for. One result is that it is generally easy to verify whether someone is officially living in poverty, but not always whether another family has been living paycheck to paycheck, while still another with the same income has valuable assets.

Myth Number 10: We have to choose between class-based and race-based affirmative action.

Have you ever noticed that the only time Republicans seem to care about how poor kids will get to college is when they can use this concern as their battering ram against racial justice?

There is every reason to support affirmative action based on both race and class. And although I began by setting aside the way education is being made a scarce commodity, there's every reason to fight that, too.

Beneath the attack on affirmative action is the idea that not everyone is entitled to a good education. But the money is there for quality, integrated schools--in the military budget; in the bailouts going to the banks; in the taxes never paid by corporations and the extremely wealthy. Any social organization that requires children to spend their childhoods competing to see whether they'll be among the lucky few to attend the right schools isn't rational.

So at the same time that we fight for justice in college admissions--and justice means affirmative action--we should fight for more educational opportunity for all students. The rallying chant of this defense of education should be: "Black, Latino, Arab, Asian and white, rich or poor--education is a right!"

Or maybe it will be the cry that we came back to last week, over and over again: "Power to the people!"

Securing Wisconsin's Future

When my son was a baby, we used to visit storytime at the public library together. He loved it, crawling around the floor, mouthing the toys, nibbling on books. And I enjoyed it as well, particularly because of the social time I spent with other moms.

While this was a period in which I was on unpaid maternity leave from UW-Madison, and thus not actively teaching, when moms asked what I “did” I’d hesitantly reveal I was a professor. I got a lot of “oh wows” and “what’s that like?” and then after they learned about my field of expertise (higher education) I’d field many questions about how they were supposed to ever manage to get their kids into college. Their babies weren’t even yet one year old, but I was happy to answer. At the same time, I often felt an odd kind of guilt-—I was acutely aware that this wasn’t something I really had to worry about. My son was college-bound from the time he was conceived. Some of those other kids and their moms were going to have to really work at it.

Maternal education is one of the strongest predictors of children’s outcomes. If your mom finished a bachelor’s degree rather than only a high school diploma you are more than twice as likely to earn one yourself. This is partly but not entirely because moms with college degrees are much more likely to have good jobs and enjoy full employment, and thus are more able to afford college. But there are other reasons as well. College-educated parents (and this includes dads, who are incredibly important but less-often the primary caregiver) engage with their differently from the beginning. They obtain higher-quality prenatal care, are more likely able to spend time with their newborns given their more flexible and higher-paid employment, and they are fortunate enough to have the time to invest much more of their energy in endowing their kids with large vocabularies and enrichment activities that result in measurable advantages in test scores, even as early as kindergarten.

Most if not all children have kind and loving parents who take care of them, keep them safe, play with them, etc. But the kinds of things highly educated parents can buy and do with their children seem to provide a boost that’s very hard to match. (Schools, so far, don't seem up to the herculean task.)

Since colleges and universities have raised tuition far more often than governments have increased financial aid, a college education remains a difficult, expensive thing to procure in this country. Attendance is increasingly predicated on the level of education and wealth in your family—yes, that relationship is stronger now than ever. In this country, in statistical terms, people from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds have less of everything required for college—less wealth with which to buy homes near the best schools or purchase for test prep and tuition, less educational background to utilize when sifting through potential colleges, completing applications, and filling out FAFSAs, less job security on which to rely when it comes to taking time off for college visits. The list goes on. Those facts alone mean that the chances of obtaining a bachelor’s degree are far, far less for Black, Latino, Native, and Southeast Asian children than for other children, especially if their parents don’t have college degrees—and very often, they don’t. The chance that a black student will attend college increases from 46% if his parents only attended high school to 84% if his parents graduated from college. But only 10.7% of blacks in Wisconsin hold bachelor’s degrees. Thus the cycle is long and vicious.

Many opponents of affirmative action want to ignore these facts. They want to pretend that it’s possible to compare black and white student with similar test scores, and test for “fairness” based on who is admitted. Sure, admitting a black student with a test score that is lower than that of a “comparable” white student seems unfair, but only if you insist on pretending that life begins when students file admissions applications. It is clearly eminently fair when you realize the incredible odds that most minority students had to beat in order to arrive at that same point of application, compared to the odds that most white students faced. The odds a person beat can provide important context that captures the unmeasured attributes of individuals. Admissions officers seek to admit the students most likely to benefit from and succeed in their universities. Perseverance, stamina, a family’s investment in a student’s success—all of these things are difficult to document and demonstrate in admissions files, but they enhance a student’s chances of success. Picking “winners” requires trying to include those unmeasurable factors when making decisions. Race is a proxy, and for now, the best one we’ve got.

Of course not all minority students would agree that they faced down long odds to get to the point of applying to college. Some are the children of doctors and lawyers who own their own homes and always expected their kids to get a college degree. Some blacks, like some whites, were born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple. But overwhelmingly, this is not the case. In contrast, it is far, far more common for white students to have not faced down long odds to get to the same point. This is because, as Mitchell Stevens has written, “the organizational systems that deliver students to the point of selective college entrance remain structured in ways that systematically favor white and Asian American applicants over black and Latino ones.” And that matters. Stevens reports, “as copious scholarship makes clear, black and Latino students remain considerably less likely to become candidates for admission at the nation’s most prestigious schools than their presence in the general population would have us expect.”

The goal of affirmation action is to create an opportunity for deserving kids who haven’t had the opportunities they deserve. If we refused to use a proxy like race for “deserving but often denied opportunities” we would have to collect extensive personal information that nearly everyone would object to providing. Applications would quadruple in length, and admit rates would drop because there would be even more incomplete applications. If we instead decided not to bother using either a proxy or such intense data collection to facilitate the provision of such opportunities, the average value of the college degree would likely decline, a larger fraction of Wisconsin's population would remain mired in poverty, and there would be no hope of ever not needing programs like affirmative action.

So yes, it is tempting to think that starting college is the beginning point of life—-the point at which all can be fairly determined by a single test score. But college applicants are not born; they are raised. As Stevens says they are “delivered to the point of application by social systems that send children from different groups to this particular destination at different rates.” Pretending that the road to college is race-neutral is to close one’s eyes to the realities of daily existence in the United States. Acknowledging the role that race plays in structuring opportunity, and attempting to reduce the influence of race on those opportunities is not racism—and no, it is not reverse discrimination. Racism is assuming and acting like the color of one’s skin is inherently inferior, rather than acknowledge the problem lies in the way society treats the color of one’s skin. Those who seek to level the playing field do so by explicitly acknowledging that the trouble isn’t that someone is brown, it’s that brown people are treated terribly in this country. It’s far harder to admit that and seek to do something about it, than to deny reality and cry racism.

Those seeking to end affirmative action at UW-Madison need to remember these facts. There is an enormous payoff to a state’s investment in educating its minority students at its finest schools. Research demonstrates that admitting black students to more selective schools improves their chances of finishing college—not the opposite—and furthermore, these students generate bigger individual and social returns from their college degrees than do students whose college attendance is far more expected and much easier to obtain.

Furthermore, supporting affirmative action does not equate with supporting the denial of opportunities for white students. Far from it. This is a case where the benefits for minorities are large, and the costs for individual white students are very, very small. College opportunities abound for majority students, who attend college at very high rates and appear to succeed in completing degrees almost no matter where they attend. Denial from one college nearly always results in admission at another. Data from Wisconsin show that not attending one’s top choice college and instead attending another appears to have little to no impact on whether a student enjoys in and excels at college. In contrast, the great threat to ending affirmative action is that minority students will attain far fewer college degrees. And that would undoubtedly threaten the economic security of our state. None of our families can afford that risk.

UW-Madison Deans Take the Lead

In the last 24 hours we heard from at least two UW Madison deans, weighing in on the COE debacle. I share their words with you here.

Thursday, 8:59 pm.
CALS students,

I am writing to you in my role as interim dean of CALS to respond to attacks on members of our community by Mr. Roger Clegg of the Center for Educational Opportunity. The center released a report that charges that UW-Madison discriminates against applicants on the basis of race. This conclusion is misleading and unfounded. UW-Madison uses a system based on a holistic, selective, competitive process that includes many factors to determine who is admitted. Most importantly, UW-Madison only admits students who have demonstrated the ability to succeed at Madison. On Tuesday evening, along with over 800 other members of our community, I had the opportunity to witness a debate between Mr. Clegg and Professor Church of our law school. I was deeply offended that Mr. Clegg chose to make his argument with comments that were demeaning and derogatory to members of our student body. Every one of you who has been admitted to UW-Madison has worked hard to get here and you all deserve to be here.

As scholars, I urge you to be on guard for the misuse of statistics for political gain. As Badgers I know you will continue to respect and support all the members of our community.

On Wisconsin!

William F. Tracy
Interim Dean and Director, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences
Friday Chair of Vegetable Research
University of Wisconsin-Madison


Friday, 11:32 am

Dear Colleagues,

The School of Education is proud of its long commitment to a diverse faculty, staff, and student body. Moreover, School faculty and staff have been major contributors to the scholarship on issues of educational access and equality. Our research and experience confirm that a diverse academic community enhances teaching and learning, enriches research, promotes vibrant intellectual discourse, and serves the professions and communities for which we prepare our students.

We affirm our conviction that all School of Education students represent the best of our campus—smart, committed, and active individuals who make a difference now and, as alumni, will shape our future. Our students compete vigorously for admission both to the campus and to our professional programs. Our School’s minimum academic requirements are among the highest on campus. For these reasons we reject the recent claims by the Center for Equal Opportunity regarding the quality of our undergraduates.

I call on the School to support and encourage every student; to take this opportunity to engage in critical discussion and analysis about access and equity in education; and to redouble our efforts to create a School that reflects the diversity of our nation and the world.

Julie Underwood, Dean
UW-Madison School of Education

In Case You Doubted What This CEO Business is Really About...

This should remove all doubt from your mind. Here who is promoting CEO's attack on UW-Madison

(1) White Reference--a website "designed for the dissemination of news of interest to the White Nationalist community as well as others interested in such information. This includes reports of crime and oppression against White people worldwide, as well as accounts of White resistance."

(2) American Renaissance, a group advocating for a "race realism" approach, and "racial-realist" thought.

(3) TMB, who writes that "minorities going crazy in Wisconsin."

(4) The American Civil Rights Institute, "a nationally recognized civil rights organization created to educate the public about racial and gender preferences." The blog is maintained by La Shawn Barber and created by Ward Connerly. Barber is known for her writings such as "Black Pride, White Paternalism."


The list goes on.. and this has been in the works for a long time. Here is Clegg attacking us back in 2007.