Mr. Sander's original article noted that when elite law schools lower their
academic standards in order to admit a more racially diverse class, schools one
or two tiers down feel they must do the same. As a result, there is now a
serious gap in academic credentials between minority and non-minority law
students across the pecking order, with the average black student's academic
index more than two standard deviations below that of his average white
classmate.
Not surprisingly, such a gap leads to problems. Students who attend schools where their academic credentials are substantially below those of their fellow students tend to perform poorly.
The reason is simple: While some students will outperform their entering academic credentials, just as some students will underperform theirs, most students will perform in the range that their academic credentials predict. As a result, in elite law schools, 51.6% of black students had first-year grade point averages in the bottom 10% of their class as opposed to only 5.6% of white students. Nearly identical performance gaps existed at law schools at all levels. This much is uncontroversial.
This is an interesting idea. What it amounts to is that by placing people in situations that they were not prepared for, they did worse overall than if they had either earned that level or worked at the level where they were suited. There is some logic to the fact that they could be overwhelmed by the work, and over looked for being in the lower sections of their classes.
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