But, It Makes White Liberals Feel Better!

But, It Makes White Liberals Feel Better!

Thomas Sowell has long lamented the detrimental effect that racial preferences has had on blacks in college. He argues that, in order to satisfy quotas, blacks are being recruited into colleges for which their high schools have not prepared them. The result is a high drop out rate. A young man who might have benefited from a bachelor's degree at San Jose State now has nothing to show from his time at UC Berkeley.

The New York Times reports today that keeping black men is school is a major challege for higher education, and you don't have to read far into the article to see why.

Watching Simon Jackson in class is like watching a man who is conflicted about being in college. For long stretches, he huddles silently in the back corner, his head sunk into his bulky jacket. But every so often he strides to the front of the room to chat with the professor or to write on the chalkboard, self-assured to the point of cockiness.

A 10th-grade dropout who earned a high school equivalency diploma, Mr. Jackson, 21, is now a freshman at Medgar Evers College in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, eager, he says, to get a college degree.

"I was in school trying to learn," he said. "I liked to learn. I still do. That's why I'm here now."

It's clear that Mr. Jackson was fed more self-esteem in high school than mathematics, or even self-discipline.

"Over the course of the semester, class discussions veered from little things, like ways to remember to bring books to school, to how the students felt when they could not get waited on in stores and how difficult it was to go anywhere, even to school, without money in their pockets."

"It's the shame of American higher education," said Arthur E. Levine, the president of Teachers College at Columbia University.

No it isn't! The shame is on the primary and secondary schools who never taught Mr. Jackson that he needed to bring books to school or study or anything else associated with learning.

Clearly, the place for educational reforms is long before college. But, the only reform Democrats or the teachers unions will tolerate is higher pay.