In other words, in a perfectly fair system a maximum of one in every fifty Blacks would go to college at all and half would drop out before graduating, with a tenth of those remaining being able to pursue higher degrees. About eighteen times that many Blacks enroll in college today (~38%), seventeen times that many graduate college (~17%) and four times as many are given PhDs (0.4%). Unsurprisingly most of the latter are unemployed or work in higher education themselves. These figures are proudly attributed to Affirmative Action and represent one of the biggest wastes of time and energy ever undertaken by our government.
Not all the abilities measured by IQ are that important to education; see the last two sentences in this comment. Calculations like yours would underestimate the ideal number of women and Jews in academia, and for all I know (admittedly little) that may also apply to African-Americans.
Not all the abilities measured by IQ are that important to education; see the last two sentences in this comment. Calculations like yours would underestimate the ideal number of women and Jews in academia, and for all I know (admittedly little) that may also apply to African-Americans.
My measure is a little crude; it uses IQ scores without dividing them into fluid/crystallized or verbal/nonverbal and that does have a cost in terms of accuracy. Unfortunately I don’t have the time or energy to do much better than a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not to mention my access to census data blows now that the Federal Government is shut down. This is part of why I didn’t bother looking at Asian-White or Male-Female differences where the numbers are smaller and the breakdown of scores is messier.
But at the same time; a 1sd difference (either the −1 for Black Americans or the +1 for Ashkenazi Jews) in a highly g-loaded test is such a heavy finger on the scale that I can’t imagine how my numbers would be off by the order of magnitude required to call the modern proportions “reasonable.”
But at the same time; a 1sd difference (either the −1 for Black Americans or the +1 for Ashkenazi Jews) in a highly g-loaded test is such a heavy finger on the scale that I can’t imagine how my numbers would be off by the order of magnitude required to call the modern proportions “reasonable.”
Sure, I didn’t mean that modern proportions are reasonable; mine was just a nitpick.
Not all the abilities measured by IQ are that important to education; see the last two sentences in this comment. Calculations like yours would underestimate the ideal number of women and Jews in academia, and for all I know (admittedly little) that may also apply to African-Americans.
My measure is a little crude; it uses IQ scores without dividing them into fluid/crystallized or verbal/nonverbal and that does have a cost in terms of accuracy. Unfortunately I don’t have the time or energy to do much better than a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not to mention my access to census data blows now that the Federal Government is shut down. This is part of why I didn’t bother looking at Asian-White or Male-Female differences where the numbers are smaller and the breakdown of scores is messier.
But at the same time; a 1sd difference (either the −1 for Black Americans or the +1 for Ashkenazi Jews) in a highly g-loaded test is such a heavy finger on the scale that I can’t imagine how my numbers would be off by the order of magnitude required to call the modern proportions “reasonable.”
Sure, I didn’t mean that modern proportions are reasonable; mine was just a nitpick.