African American Student Enrollment and Peer Assessment at the Most Elite Law Schools

I want to continue with talk about my paper on the relationship between African American student enrollment and U.S. News peer assessment scores.   The bottom line is that there is little relationship when we look at all schools -- but when one focuses on the top 103 schools and top 26 schools there is a small correlation (around r = .20).  The illustration at right, which is taken from my paper, plots the percentage of African American students against schools' U.S. News peer assessment scores of the top 26 schools. 

What I want to do now is look at the most elite schools -- those with U.S. News peer assessment scores of 4.0 or better.  They are  Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, NYU, California Berkeley, Michigan, Penn, Virginia, Georgetown, Duke, Cornell, Texas, Northwestern, UCLA.  For those 16 schools there is a substantially (but not statistically significant) higher correlation (r = .43, p = .10).  You can see a plot of the peer assessment scores against the percentage African American student enrollment of those 16 schools at right.  I'm now wondering if the percentage of African American student enrollment might be most useful for distinguishing between schools in one segment of the market, such as the most elite schools?

Comments

[Orin Kerr]

I'm not sure I would say there is a relationship between U.S. News peer assessment scores and percentages of African-American students. It seems more accurate to say that two of the top three schools have somewhat higher percentages of African American students -- something like 11%, instead of 6-8%. If that's right, I would think the explanation likely lies in the unique place in the hierarchy of the very top schools, either in terms of admissions policies, scholarship policies, or the rates at which offers are accepted (or some combination). Put another way, if we're thinking of cause and effect, presumably the #1 or #2 position causes the enrollment numbers, rather than vice-versa.

[Alfred Brophy]

I think you're right, Orin, that the more elite schools are better able to recruit African American students than the less elite schools. Enrollment reflects, I suspect, the revealed preferences of highly sought-after African American students. If that's true, that may tell us something about schools' desirability and perceived quality.

[Orin Kerr]

Glad we agree, Al. If the end goal is to suggest that you can use minority enrollment in the rankings because it reveals perceptions of school quality, though, I am not convinced. We know the schools' desirability and perceived quality already, so I don't think it makes sense to look for some other criteria with a non-zero correlation to that known factor and then to use that criteria to estimate the factor we know. (If that makes sense.)