Mismatched or Counted Out? What’s Missing from Mismatch Theory and Why it Matters

56 Pages Posted: 3 Jul 2015

Date Written: February 1, 2015

Abstract

Mismatch theory attempts to answer an important question — namely, are race-conscious admissions plans harmful to underrepresented minority students (URMS)? Mismatch theory purports to answer this question by demonstrating that URMS admitted under race-conscious admissions plans are more likely to have poor outcomes (both academic and professional) than their same-school peers and suggests these poor outcomes are the inevitable consequence of URMS' weaker academic credentials. The problem with mismatch theory is not its answer to these questions per se, but the fact that it attempts to answer these questions in a vacuum, isolated from a host of interdisciplinary research and scholarship that bears directly on these questions and offers important insights, for which mismatch theory does not account. This Article explores the interdisciplinary research and scholarship that mismatch theory ignores, draws important connections between these two bodies of research, and suggests that mismatch theory cannot offer a useful prescription for how to answer the question of whether race-conscious admissions plans are harmful to URMS, or understand why URMS tend to have poor academic outcomes relative to their same-school peers, without the benefit of this broader interdisciplinary perspective. In particular, this Article poses several additional and equally critical inquiries: what other credentials, beyond academics, predict academic success and/or bear on admissions decisions, and what other factors, beyond a student’s individual credentials, affect academic performance? An exploration of the empirical data and research demonstrates why these additional inquiries, otherwise missing from mismatch theory, ought to be incorporated into the debate about the propriety of race-conscious admissions plans and inform how we structure the policy prescriptions that follow.

Suggested Citation

Hawkins, Stacy, Mismatched or Counted Out? What’s Missing from Mismatch Theory and Why it Matters (February 1, 2015). University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, Vol. 17, Issue 3, 2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2625662

Stacy Hawkins (Contact Author)

Rutgers Law School ( email )

217 N. Fifth Street
Camden, NJ 08102
United States

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