By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist

A new study by Princeton University has found evidence of a deep and pervasive bias against lower-class white and conservative youth at America’s elite colleges and Ivy League schools.

The study, conducted by Princeton sociologists Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford, draws from a new data set known as the National Study of College Experience (NSCE), which was gathered from eight highly competitive public and private colleges and universities. Data was collected on over 245,000 applicants from three separate application years, and over 9,000 enrolled students filled out extensive questionnaires.

According to Princetown Professor Russell K. Nieli, who summarized the findings, the box students checked off on the racial question on their application was found to have an extraordinary effect on a student’s chances of gaining admission to highly competitive private schools in the U.S.

“To have the same chances of gaining admission as a black student with an SAT score of 1100, an Hispanic student otherwise equally matched in background characteristics would have to have a 1230, a white student a 1410, and an Asian student a 1550,” Prof. Nieli explains.

Even more troubling were the findings concerning the question of “class based preferences” which found a general disregard for improving the admission chances of poor and otherwise disadvantaged whites, Nieli writes.

“At the private institutions in their study whites from lower-class backgrounds incurred a huge admissions disadvantage not only in comparison to lower-class minority students, but compared to whites from middle-class and upper-middle-class backgrounds as well. The lower-class whites proved to be all-around losers.”

When equally matched for background factors (including SAT scores and high school GPAs), the better-off whites were more than three times as likely to be accepted as the poorest whites (.28 vs. .08 admissions probability), Nieli writes.

“Having money in the family greatly improved a white applicant’s admissions chances, lack of money greatly reduced it. The opposite class trend was seen among non-whites, where the poorer the applicant the greater the probability of acceptance when all other factors are taken into account.”

When lower-class whites are matched with lower-class blacks and other non-whites the degree of the non-white advantage becomes astronomical, he writes. “(L)ower-class Asian applicants are seven times as likely to be accepted to the competitive private institutions as similarly qualified whites, lower-class Hispanic applicants eight times as likely, and lower-class blacks ten times as likely. These are enormous differences and reflect the fact that lower-class whites were rarely accepted to the private institutions Espenshade and Radford surveyed. Their ‘diversity-enhancement value’ was obviously rated very low.”

Besides the bias against lower-class whites, the private colleges in the Espenshade/Radford study also seem to display what might be called an urban/Blue State bias against rural and Red State occupations and values.

” . . . (W)hat Espenshade and Radford found in regard to what they call ‘career-oriented activities’ was truly shocking even to this hardened veteran of the campus ideological and cultural wars,” Nieli writes.

“Participation in such Red State activities as high school ROTC, 4-H clubs, or the Future Farmers of America was found to reduce very substantially a student’s chances of gaining admission to the competitive private colleges in the NSCE database on an all-other-things-considered basis.” Excelling in any of these activities was associated with 60 to 65 percent lower odds of admission.

Commenting on the study for World Net Daily, former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan says it proves that for admissions officers at the nation’s top private and public schools, diversity is ‘a code word’ for particular prejudices.

“For these schools are not interested in a diversity that would include born-again Christians from the Bible belt, students from Appalachia and other rural and small-town areas, people who have served in the U.S. military, those who have grown up on farms or ranches, Mormons, Pentecostals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, lower- and middle-class Catholics, working class ‘white ethnics,’ social and political conservatives, wheelchair users, married students, married students with children or older students just starting into college and raising children.”

As the study found, students in these categories are often very rare at the most competitive colleges, especially the Ivy League.

“Was this what the civil-rights revolution was all about – requiring kids whose parents came from Korea, Japan or Vietnam to get a perfect SAT score of 1600 to be given equal consideration with a Jamaican or Kenyan kid who got an 1150? Is this what it means to be an Ivy League progressive?” Buchanan asks.

Because many of these elite public and private colleges and universities benefit from U.S. tax dollars through student loans and direct grants, Buchanan is calling for new rules that will make the future flow of tax dollars contingent upon an end to these racial practices.

© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace®  http://www.womenofgrace.com