MORE SUPPORT FOR THE MISMATCH THESIS: A recently-posted paper on the National Bureau of Economic Research web site contributes to the growing body of evidence that affirmative action preferences hurt, rather than help, their intended beneficiaries.

Interestingly, this study was of students’ experiences in primary school rather than in college or graduate school. But if competing with students that are much better prepared to do well can cause problems for primary school students, it’s hard to see why it is so unthinkable that it would do so for college students.

Richard Murphy and Felix Weinhardt write that their research “establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability.” To put it in more concrete terms: Suppose a primary school student has the experience of being toward the bottom of her class in math simply because her class happened to have a lot of high-ability students in it. After that experience, she is less likely feel confident of her math ability and less likely to study and do well in math in secondary school than a student who had the same demonstrated ability in primary school, but who ranked higher in the class because he happened to be competing with fewer high-ability students.

For more background on the problem of mismatch, read Want to be a Doctor? A Scientist? An Engineer? An Affirmative Action Leg up May Hurt Your Chances and A “Dubious Expediency”: How Race-Preferential Admissions Policies on Campus Hurt Minority to Students.