The Effects of DEI Policies Will be Felt for Years to Come
“the real problem with DEI-based admissions, hiring, and promotion policies is not that they lower standards for minorities; it’s that they lower standards for everyone”
The people who embraced these policies embedded them deeply in the system for this very reason.
From Minding the Campus:
The Damage from DEI Will Last a Generation. Eradicating It Is Still Essential
The Trump administration’s efforts to roll back “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) on college and university campuses have gotten a lot of attention, and rightly so. There has also been significant pushback, with many institutions simply faking compliance by renaming their DEI departments while pursuing the same Marxist agenda. Still, I think conservatives can be forgiven for feeling like we’re gradually winning on this front.
What we tend to overlook is the damage DEI, in its various guises (like “Affirmative Action”), has done to American higher education and society at large for more than a generation. Even if Trump and future Republican administrations succeed in completely dismantling the DEI regime, we will still have to live with the fallout for at least another generation.
That’s because the real problem with DEI-based admissions, hiring, and promotion policies is not that they lower standards for minorities; it’s that they lower standards for everyone.
For example, let’s say you’re a DEI honcho at a university and your goal is to increase the number of black students in your medical school. Since blacks, on average, don’t score as high on the MCAT as whites or Asians, that means lowering the required score for black applicants. You can do that—or at least, you could do that—without also lowering the required score for white or Asian students. Institutions do it all the time and have for years. Most applicants either don’t notice or don’t complain. They just go elsewhere.
However, once students are on campus, you’re faced with a dilemma. Those who score lower on the MCAT are statistically less likely than their peers to perform well on exams and other evaluations. The only solution is to lower the score required for a passing grade, from, say, 80 to 70. Or maybe just move to a “pass-fail” system, as some medical schools are currently doing, essentially eliminating grades altogether.
The problem is that you can’t do that just for black students. Unlike different admissions criteria, which you can attempt to justify using high-sounding bureaucratic jargon, having different grade requirements for different groups of students would be too blatant. Everyone would notice—not least, the students themselves. You could very easily have a mutiny on your hands.
So now all your students—not just the black students or the women or whoever—must master only 70 percent of the material to pass, whereas they used to have to master at least 80 percent. How can this not produce a generation of doctors who are less knowledgeable and less prepared than their predecessors?
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Comments
Summer School for some medical school students has been a thing since the 1980’s. Next time you visit the doctor, ask them what they did on summer break in medical school. If they respond, ‘there was a break?”, get a new doctor.
as you board your next plane…or go in for your medical treatment
would rather see an asian/white person at the helm or a poc?
jesse jackson already gave of us his answer yearssssss ago
and had to apologize for it
Not disagreeing with the fine article. But mixed in with all this is the AMA’s clear objective to limit the number of physicians (a bit of enlightened self interest to keep prices high by limiting supply). This is done by limiting admissions to medical schools and limiting the size and number of medical schools. Do we really have a clear understanding of the qualifications for generalists and specialists physicians?
This is SUCH an opportunity for a clear thinker to arbitrage his way into immense wealth. Start schools that operate strictly on merit, like they used to be. You can easily become the new Ivy League that the old Ivy League threw away. The world will beat a path to your door to hire your graduates.
DEI affects last a generation. Who are you kidding? They’ll last 50 years or more. DEI admissions/hires will be around for a long time. They’ll hire/admit other DEIs. It will take a long time to bleed them and their “intellectual” successors out of systems if it ever can be done.
I work as a professor at a medical school, and over the past couple of years DEI has increased in toxicity to the point that It is generating strife between faculty members, and cynical passivity from the students. Our school was one that recently renamed DEI, but continues most of the policies. They contribute nothing of value, and are increasingly seen now as parasitic drains on limited health care resources to benefit the few at the expense of the many. Those who champion DEI are deeply embedded, but they are also arrogant enough to blatantly do some pretty outrageous things that have stirred up considerable disgust in quite a few quarters. Perhaps we could end the culture quicker by rewarding and protecting the whistleblowers .who can really nail them. Once the twin myths of invincibility and retaliation are confronted and debunked the end of DEI may come sooner than we think.