David Card's Expert Report
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC., Civil Action No. 1:14-cv-14176 Plaintiff, v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE (HARVARD CORPORATION), Defendant. REPORT OF DAVID CARD, Ph.D. December 15, 2017 Table of Contents 1. QUALIFICATIONS .................................................................................................................................................. 3 2. ASSIGNMENT AND SUMMARY OF OPINIONS ............................................................................................ 5 2.1. Assignment .................................................................................................................................... 5 2.2. Overview of report and summary of findings ............................................................................... 6 3. AN OVERVIEW OF HARVARD’S APPLICANT POOL AND ADMISSIONS PROCESS .................... 12 3.1. Harvard’s admissions process is highly competitive, and academic achievement is abundant in its applicant pool ................................................................................................ 12 3.2. Harvard seeks candidates with a wide range of skills beyond academic achievement ............. 16 3.3. Harvard’s decision process is labor-intensive and seeks to understand the full context of each applicant’s high school achievements ....................................................................... 23 3.4. Harvard’s ratings reflect important and otherwise unobservable information about the academic and non-academic qualifications of applicants ..................................................... 25 3.5. Prof. Arcidiacono’s statistical model fails to account for numerous dimensions of Harvard’s admissions process ................................................................................................ 31 4. ACCOUNTING FOR NON-ACADEMIC AND CONTEXTUAL FACTORS IS CRITICAL IN MODELING HARVARD’S ADMISSIONS PROCESS .............................................................................. 33 4.1. There is no statistically significant difference in admission rates for the vast majority of Asian-American and White applicants .............................................................................. 34 4.2. White applicants have relatively stronger qualifications on non-academic dimensions .......... 35 4.3. Prof. Arcidiacono’s model excludes available measures of life circumstance and context ..................................................................................................................................... 40 5. A MORE COMPLETE STATISTICAL MODEL SHOWS NO EVIDENCE OF BIAS AGAINST ASIAN-AMERICAN APPLICANTS .............................................................................................................. 46 5.1. Important differences between Prof. Arcidiacono’s methodology and mine ............................ 46 5.2. My enriched model finds no statistically significant evidence of bias ....................................... 62 5.3. Analysis of key subgroups of the data further contradicts SFFA’s claim of systematic bias ........................................................................................................................................... 75 5.4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 79 6. AVAILABLE DATA DO NOT INDICATE THAT RACE IS A DETERMINATIVE FACTOR IN ADMISSIONS AT HARVARD .......................................................................................................................... 81 6.1. Race is less important than other factors in admissions decisions ............................................ 82 6.2. Race is less important than unmeasured, individualized factors .............................................. 85 6.3. Prof. Arcidiacono’s claim about a “floor” for the admission rate of African-American applicants is not supported by available data ......................................................................... 87 6.4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 93 7. ANALYSIS OF POTENTIAL RACE-NEUTRAL ALTERNATIVES .......................................................... 95 CONFIDENTIAL Page 1 7.1. Race-neutral alternatives identified in academic literature and by SFFA ............................... 95 7.2. Academic research indicates that race-neutral alternatives diminish universities’ ability to select for quality ....................................................................................................... 97 7.3. Analysis of race-neutral alternatives using Harvard’s admissions data ................................. 103 7.4. Mr. Kahlenberg’s simulated race-neutral practices, like others considered above, could achieve a comparably diverse class only by changing the class in significant ways and compromising its quality ....................................................................................... 151 7.5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 153 8. APPENDIX A.......................................................................................................................................................... 155 9. APPENDIX B.......................................................................................................................................................... 171 9.1. Documents relied upon ............................................................................................................. 171 10. APPENDIX C ....................................................................................................................................................... 178 10.1. Parent occupations.................................................................................................................. 178 11. APPENDIX D ....................................................................................................................................................... 180 11.1. Primary activities .................................................................................................................... 180 12. APPENDIX E ....................................................................................................................................................... 181 12.1. Variables used in logit model of admissions .......................................................................... 181 13. APPENDIX F........................................................................................................................................................ 187 13.1. Mr. Kahlenberg’s Simulations ............................................................................................... 187 CONFIDENTIAL Page 2 1. QUALIFICATIONS 1. I received a B.A. degree in Economics from Queen’s University (in Canada) in 1978 and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 1983. From 1982 to 1983, I was an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. From 1983 to 1997, I held positions as Assistant Professor and Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Since 1997, I have been the Class of 1950 Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. 2. I have published more than 110 articles and book chapters, co-authored one book, and co- edited seven others, including the Handbook of Labor Economics. The majority of my publications are focused on labor economics—the field of economics that addresses questions related to discrimination in various contexts, including education. My articles have appeared in the leading journals in economics and econometrics, including Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Econometrics. I served as co-editor of the American Economic Review from 2002 to 2005 and co- editor of Econometrica from 1993 to 1997. I have also served on several editorial boards and government advisory committees for statistical issues, including the National Academy of Science Committee on National Statistics (2012 – 2015), the U.S. Census Advisory Committee (1991 – 1996), Statistics Canada’s Labour Statistics Advisory Committee (1990 – 2002), and the National Institutes of Health Social Sciences, Nursing, Epidemiology, and Methods Review Panel (1998 – 2003). 3. My research has been recognized by several awards and prizes, including election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1998, a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 1992, and a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economics in 2004. In 1995, I received the John Bates Clark Medal, widely regarded as one of the highest honors in the field of economics, which is awarded by the American Economic Association to the outstanding economist in the United States under the age of 40. In 2006, I was awarded the IZA Prize by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn for outstanding academic achievement in the field of labor economics. In 2008, I was awarded the Frisch Medal by the Econometric Society for the best article in applied economics published in Econometrica in the previous two years. I was the co-recipient of the 2015 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in economics. 4. My research focuses