College Education, Graduation, and Intact Families
– By Howard Sierer –
Want college success for your children? Social science, backed up by extensive survey data, is unequivocal: get married and stay married.
A study by research psychologist Nicholas Zill reports, “Students from intact families are twice as likely to [graduate] as those from all other family types combined.” He continues, “It is more informative to know about the family the student comes from than the school to which he or she goes.”
(A note for single moms: There is no reason to throw in the towel. Your child can join the many others from single-parent families who have enjoyed a successful college experience. The key: committed, meaningful parental involvement with your child’s K-12 schooling.)
We often hear that children from families with higher incomes have better chances to get into top colleges and do better once they get there. To the extent that is true, it also correlates with the fact that twice as many lower-income families divorce as do higher-income families. “Family structure is about as important as family income in predicting who graduates from college today,” says W. Bradford Wilcox in an article titled “Family Structure Matters – Science Proves It.”
Charles Murray’s groundbreaking book “Coming Apart” clearly showed there are a wide variety of advantages given to children who live with their biological parents. His findings are broadly accepted by social scientists, prompting New York Times columnist David Brooks to write, “I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”
Yet Murray’s findings are completely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for major newspapers, and politicians. Why? Because they contradict the progressive narrative diminishing the importance of the traditional family.
Academic Philip Cohen (How to Live in a World Where Marriage Is in Decline), journalist Katie Roiphe (Stop Moralizing About Single Mothers), and political commentator Matthew Yglesias (The “Decline” of Marriage Isn’t a Problem) are typical of progressive thinking.
The progressive refusal to recognize the importance of the family manifests itself in futile attempts to improve college graduation rates for blacks and Hispanics.
For the last several decades, colleges have prioritized fostering “student body diversity” over academic qualifications in admitting students. A recent example: Over the unanimous objection of its Academic Senate, the University of California has stopped considering the SAT, allowing it to admit more black and Hispanic students. Other universities have followed suit.
To make room for more black and Hispanic students, Harvard University – with a large proportion of highly-qualified Asians in the past – now engages in blatant racial discrimination to limit their numbers. It does this by claiming to assess personality traits such as “likeability.” In Harvard’s progressive eyes, blacks and Hispanics must be “more likeable” than Asians.
To justify passing over more qualified applicants, colleges rely on a 4-3 2016 Supreme Court decision allowing race-conscious “affirmative action” when the policy is “narrowly tailored” and is subject to “strict scrutiny” by the courts. Like beauty, strict scrutiny is in the eye of the beholding judge and understandably has come under attack.
These controversial and overtly racist admissions policies may well come to an end next year as several cases move to the Supreme Court.
Let me suggest three ways universities can identify prospective students with better prospects of graduating without discriminating by race.
First, instead of dropping the SAT claiming that only applicants from wealthy families can afford SAT prep classes, universities should create their own prep classes or contract with existing providers and offer them to all applicants at no cost.
Second, support K-12 public school choice policies and charter schools. Volumes of data show that charter schools produce diverse, college-ready graduates of all ethnicities and races. Why? Parents who choose these schools for their children are meaningfully involved in their children’s K-12 education.
Universities could open their own charter schools as examples and as teaching laboratories. They could provide training, educational materials, and student teachers to strengthen magnet school and charter school offerings.
Finally, recognize that those living with their biological parents under the same roof have advantages that can’t readily be measured by the SAT or by “likeability” assessments.
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