In April of this year, the Association of American Universities, comprised of 62 universities and colleges, including MIT, issued a statement on the importance of diversity in university admissions. The report affirmed the universities' commitment to "take into account a wide range of considerations - including ethnicity, race and gender" in evaluating prospective students and stressed the benefit to all students of education in a diverse environment, where race and gender figure prominently in the definition of "diverse."

The report documents a sea change in the universities' defense of affirmative action programs. Whereas such programs were originally conceived as a means of accelerating the intellectual and material advance of minorities, nowhere in the report is it suggested that present affirmative action policy actually benefits minorities; instead, artificial means of increasing minority student populations are defended on the basis that "all students encounter and learn from others who have backgrounds and characteristics very different from their own". In short, we now import underqualified minorities not for their own benefit but for the benefit of the majority student population. As a purely tactical move, this is a wise change of defense, because there is now overwhelming evidence that the policies practiced by most university admissions offices are actively harmful to minorities.

What are those practices? The report of the AAU claims, disingenuously, that "we do not advocate admitting students who cannot meet the criteria for admission", skirting the fact that those criteria are consciously warped to admit otherwise unqualified minorities. The admissions decision criteria at MIT are discussed in a 1989 report entitled "The Recruitment and Retention of Minority Students at MIT". Applicants are divided into four groups categorized as: 1) will likely be a top student; 2) will likely be very successful; 3) will likely be successful; and 4) probably cannot succeed. All those in the first category are admitted. All minority and some non-minority applicants are admitted from the second category. Many minorities but few non-minorities are admitted from the third category, and no one is admitted from the fourth category.

This overtly race-conscious admissions policy is mirrored at other institutions. The results are predictable. At 26 elite private colleges, the average black student's SAT score was 170 points below that of an average white student and nowhere was the margin less than 95 points. Nationwide, only 26 to 28 percent of black students graduate from college, a full six years after admission. At MIT, a representative of the Registrar's Office refused to reveal the GPA of minority students, claiming that "it would be misleading", but according to Dean Leo Osgood, required withdrawals in the six-year period from 1990 to 1995 were composed of between 33 and 55 percent minorities, who made up about 15 percent of the undergraduate student population.

To maintain "diverse" populations of students, the very best universities must admit marginally qualified or underqualified students who would have made good candidates for admission to slightly less prestigious institutions. These, in turn, must draw their minority students from a pool otherwise eminently qualified for admission at the next tier of institutions, and so on. This domino effect guarantees that the bottom of each class at all universities is disproportionately comprised of minority students.

The negative effects of the policies advocated by the AAU are far reaching. Qualified applicants are turned away in favor of less qualified applicants. Minorities fail at alarming rates. Those minorities who would have been admitted under a race-blind policy nevertheless experience self doubt and are stigmatized as part of the underqualified group. The high failure rate and overrepresentation of minorities among poorer students cannot help but give non-minorities the mistaken notion that minorities are intellectually inferior, hardly the lesson the AAU presidents would have them learn. In addition, these policies reduce the incentive for K-12 educators to challenge minority students...if minorities can be admitted to MIT with a 650 SAT score, why strive to raise them to the 750 level?

We can agree with the AAU's affirmation that in defining admissions standards, we "must take fully into account not only academic goals and standardized test scores, but also the many unquantifiable human qualities and capacities of individuals." In admitting students, let us by all means account for the content of their character, but to take into account the color of their skin runs contrary to all principles of democracy.

MIT, rather than slavishly following the failed policies of the last generation, should instead lead us into a new world in which each student can regard each other as equally qualified. It can do so by announcing that henceforth, in keeping with the goal of equal opportunity for all, race and gender will not be accounted for in admissions criteria. Yes, this will have the immediate effect of reducing the kind of cosmetic diversity favored by the AAU, but it must be remembered that those underqualified students admitted under the present policy would instead be admitted to the next tier of institutions, reversing the aforementioned domino effect. This will largely eliminate the destructive performance disparity between minority and non-minority students and increase incentives for K-12 educators to improve minority performance. Then, as performance improves, real diversity will flourish at all universities.