The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions (review)

William G. Bowen and Derek Bok (1998). The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions. Princeton University Press. 512 pp. $60.00, hardcover, $17.95, paperback.

Former Ivy League presidents Bowen and Bok tackle the criticisms of affirmative action in college admissions by turning to evidence which shows that, given the opportunity, minority students ¹ do as well as or better than their White counterparts at the nation's top universities on a number of educational outcomes. Their findings remind us that affirmative action not only leads to more diverse campuses complete with their educational benefits (Hurtado, et al, 1998), but that individuals also benefit from affirmative action policies that give deserving students an opportunity to accrue the benefits of attending top universities. The timeliness of the book and study is critical as affirmative action policies are threatened or have been eliminated in many states.

The authors use the College and Beyond Database as the source for their data analysis. The twenty-eight private and public colleges and universities in the database (the list is present in the book) are easily recognizable institutions known for their excellence. Two cohorts of students, one entering in the fall of 1976 and the other entering in the fall of 1989 compose the study sample. Longitudinal data collected from these students include: grades, major choice, graduation rates; professional and graduate school attendance and completion rates; post-college income, civic participation, and retrospective satisfaction with college. Although, several minority groups were included in the College and Beyond Database, most of the analysis is limited to comparisons between Black and White students due to the limited sample size of other groups.

The value of the book is the empirical support which counters a number of myths about affirmative action and minority participation in higher education. Bowen and Bok first remind us that for the vast majority of the nation's 3,400 colleges and universities, the use of affirmative action in admissions is a non-issue due to the moderate or low selectivity of those institutions. Only a small number of universities and colleges have admissions that are so competitive that race-sensitive admissions would be any cause for concern. Bowen and Bok also debunk the myth that minority students who are admitted under race-sensitive admissions do not succeed in the tough institutions where they are enrolled. In the College and Beyond "universe" (terminology used by the authors to describe the selective schools in the study), 79% of the underrepresented students who began college in 1989 graduated, compared to a similar study of NCAA Division I institutions where only 40% of Blacks graduated six years after entrance. The myth that students will perform better at institutions where they have SAT scores similar to the rest of the student body (the "fit" hypothesis) is also dismantled through the authors' analysis. Their findings do suggest that those students with higher SAT scores graduated at higher rates than those with lower scores. However, once scores get higher than 1100 the relationship between the two flatten out. In fact, students at less selective schools had the lowest graduation rates of all SAT score intervals. A common argument rationalizing these findings is that grading standards have relaxed in more recent years and that minority students choose easier majors, such as ethnic studies, accompanied by faculty's greater willingness to allow marginal students to slip through. However, this study showed that Blacks were less likely to major in English and history, more likely to major in psychology, political science and sociology, and were equally likely to major in philosophy, economics, natural sciences and engineering. Only a very small number of students majored in ethnic studies.

Because the study extends beyond the college years the authors had the opportunity to examine the...