{"title":"A Theory of Affirmative Action in College Admissions","authors":"Qiang Fu","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.694441","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"To address the issue of when minority and nonminority candidates compete for admissions to a college, we show that an academic quality--oriented college maximizes the test score of its incoming class by adopting an admissions rule that favors the minority. Such a \"handicapping\" rule increases competition and induces candidates to invest more in educational attainment. These results reconcile the often-assumed conflicts between diversity and academic quality. However, we also show that the non-minority responds to the affirmative action admissions more aggressively, which tends to widen the racial test score gap. (JEL H0, J7) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":337841,"journal":{"name":"Legal Education eJournal","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2004-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"117","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Legal Education eJournal","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.694441","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 117
Abstract
To address the issue of when minority and nonminority candidates compete for admissions to a college, we show that an academic quality--oriented college maximizes the test score of its incoming class by adopting an admissions rule that favors the minority. Such a "handicapping" rule increases competition and induces candidates to invest more in educational attainment. These results reconcile the often-assumed conflicts between diversity and academic quality. However, we also show that the non-minority responds to the affirmative action admissions more aggressively, which tends to widen the racial test score gap. (JEL H0, J7) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.