| Jimmy Chan, Johns Hopkins University Erik Eyster, University of California, Berkeley |
| Does Banning Affirmative Action Harm College Student Quality? |
| Session: C-13-11 Wednesday 16 August 2000 by Chan, Jimmy |
| Banning affirmative action from college admissions decisions cannot prevent an admissions office that cares about diversity from achieving it through channels other than the explicit consideration of race. We construct a model of college admissions where candidates from two groups with different average qualifications compete for a fixed number of seats. When an admissions office that cares both about the quality and diversity of its entering class can use group identity as a criterion for admissions, its preferred admissions rule selects the best-qualified candidates from each group. When it cannot use affirmative action, the admissions office's preferred rule generally does not select the best-qualified candidates from either group: it randomizes over candidates to achieve diversity, at the expense of within-group selection. A ban always reduces diversity, and may also lower average quality. Moreover, even when a total ban on affirmative action raises average quality, a partial ban may raise average quality even more. |
| Submitted paper full-text in .pdf |