Wow… Today! Affirmative Action was ended by SCOTUS. I think mostly good intentions launched it. But I think it’s a skin we've needed to shed for some time. Still, there’s a sort of somber, historical feeling to this ending for me. It was in the weave of our society for a very long time.
My fully capable minority friends and I don't want ANY special treatment based on BIPOC. We will compete on our own abilities, and don't need any boost, because we know we will succeed and have succeeded. It's called AGENCY.
Looking forward to the supreme court ruling so that we can all move on. This discussion is becoming redundant and honestly boring. There are all kinds of preferential (legacy, athletes, students with special skills, donor's kids, etc.) processes that are used and I have a feeling, haven't confirmed, that more "average" students get in through those routes than by race (specifically black kids).
You are claiming that 55% of black folks are in the middle class. That is patentIy false. I disagree with your your inference. You are including in your math upper middle class incomes. You need to shave your numbers. There is the lower and the middle. Which constitute the numbers I am dealing with the range 25,000. to 50,000. dollars. I wrote 1,600,000 of 36,000,000 blacks are middle class. That is 4% of the black population.
"Black Americans make up 12 percent of the middle class and 13 percent of the population. Eighteen percent of the middle class identifies as Hispanic compared to 19 percent of the population.Oct 30, 2020" Brookings Institute
I wrote 4% percent of the black population is middle class. 12% of the U.S. middle class is black. That is less than proportion of blacks the U.S. population.
While there are many definitions for the “middle class,” this report will use the Brookings Future of the Middle Class Initiative’s definition: the middle 60% of households on the income distribution. By that measurement, middle-class families had incomes between $22,000 and $125,000 in the years (2013 to 2017) studied. Black people represent about 13% of the U.S. population, 61.2% of which are middle class.
Four decades ago, the vast majority of the middle class was white. In 1979, the middle class was 84 percent white, nine percent Black, five percent Hispanic, and two percent “other.” Over time, the middle class has become much more race–plural. In 2019, the middle class was 59 percent white, 12 percent Black, 18 percent Hispanic, and ten percent “other.”
There is a link between this article by Ruy Texeira and what John is getting at. Cross class solidarity makes sense but will never happen.
The power centers at the core of Democratic Party politics will never give up race based preferences because black middle class women are perhaps the most powerful subgroup in the party. Groups in power never give it up knowingly.
Affirmative action was designed to be a reparatory policy for Negroes/descendants of U.S. slaves for the nearly 20+ generations of wealth extraction, exclusion from education, exclusion from hiring, under payment, slavery and its effects, unconstitutional Jim Crow and the federal government's lax (read absent/negligent) implementation of Negro/DOS rights AND protections.
Affirmative action is about a specific constitutionally protected class of people: The Freedmen (see the post-civil war constitutional amendments 13, 14, 15) and the civil rights acts of the 1860's.
The Freedmen protected class status is forever.
You cannot subtract the contributes of Freedmen from development of the nation itself, therefore, the obligations that affirmative actions are designed to repair are Forever.
Those obligations cannot be obstructed just because SOME Freedmen have finally gained income in the nation we've built and been the human rights engine for. IMAGINE how much richer and even wealthier we would be had our full protections and Reconstruction been fulfilled after 1865! Or if the 6.2 Quadrillion for slave labor alone had not been extracted ... (that doesn't even count the economic terrorism, physical harms, and political disenfranchisement from 1865-1965 nor 1965 to present).
When 75% of Freedmen are in the "top 1%," (as we should be!) I'll consider us not needing AA. Until then, affirmative action now and forever in EVERY domain of economic, educational, and political life.
So it’s a punishment for people that had nothing to do with slavery, which ended over 150 years ago, and for which 93% of white people - even then - had nothing to do with? I guess the 360,000 fatalities from that war suffered by Union white boys to end slavery (and their descendants) are erased, kind of like the lives of young African Americans in Chicago are erased, with no protest by BLM or Antifa. And the beneficiaries are, of course, high melanin Americans living the same 150 years later, who are so bitter they have to grow up in America and not West Africa from where a subset can trace their ancestry. Yep, Pamela, that makes a lot of sense. The white liberals who want to keep Blacks like plantation pets have only two rationales: (1) multi-generational punishment as you seem to espouse, or (2) African Americans can’t cut it in America, where immigrants of many nations excel and more wish to live - over 2m from Africa alone since 2000 - and need preferential treatment to cope with their unique innate transcendent trauma. I reject both of these rationales.
My arguments are already listed here...and are sufficient enough because the promises of repair and reconstruction were made to our protected class (Freedmen).
Of the many pieces I've published about affirmative action and reparations, you can see this:
Thanks for the references. I read the medium.com piece. So you eliminate all other slaves worldwide, including presumably slavery that exists today. You eliminate American Blacks who are not descendants of U.S. slaves only. How convenient. Your purity test sounds like the Daughters of the American Revolution. You don't acknowledge the sacrifices of so many to eliminate slavery in the U.S. You don't define success for the descendants of slaves, nor do you define any causes for failure of AA blacks other than what happened 150 years ago. By this definition, American Indians' claims would supersede your own and we non-Native Americans would all have to return to the countries of our ancestors. I admire the stridence in your writing, but you sound more angry than thoughtful, and quite naiive of history generally. What we perhaps share is a disdain for white liberals who, frankly, still don't see African Americans (and most other Americans) as their peers.
Assessed as $6.2 quadrillion and $151M per Freedmen/descendant of U.S. slaves.
BTW: By law via framers of the U.S. Constitution, there are ONLY Negro Freedmen. They knew domestic and other opportunists would try to grift. The Radical Republicans (including elected Freedmen themselves) prevented the "I'm Black now" grift from the start. Smart men!
Here's an article with references to the original research article about the $6.2Q estimate.
People who are serious about reparations and are attempting to calculate an accurate cost, should not come up with a total 60 times larger than the GDP of the entire world. That number is so beyond realistic that it actually hurts the cause. Fox News loves stories like this because it makes those on the side of reparations look like a joke. And people who are attempting to make a rational argument for reparations probably hate to have to answer for unserious research articles like the one cited. Do you really believe that if slaves were paid for their labor they would currently be worth 60 times world GDP all by themselves?
Hmmm...Economists don't perform calculations based on the emotional reactions of resisters. They perform reliable calculations based on real economic factors. As they should. The implementation is being negotiated between our protected class (Freedmen) and our government(s) and/or the institutions involved in the plethora of harms.
Ok, then simple question. If slaves had been paid for every minute of their labor at fair rates, do you believe they would now be, as a group, worth 10x the wealth of the United States?
OBVIOUSLY our enslaved ancestors would have EARNED that amount (cause that's the whole actual equation)...PLUS our families would have accumulated whatever compounded returns on investments from ~1776 to present.
THE POINT is that $6.2Q is an estimate of what was extracted across time/the footprint of chattel enslavement....and it was never paid...and in fact Reconstruction was sabotaged. So, here we are getting justice now.
I'm totally OK with our families receiving that $6.2Q PLUS the last 150 years of harms and further extractions on a reverse balloon payment schedule, multigenerationally. Likely 400+ years, unless it needs to be extended to correct any future ongoing harms/additional extractions.
When **you** do some study about this (like consuming the resources I provided) you'll see that, in addition to direct cash payments to Freedmen families, reparation is about reparatory policies, processes, and procedures...just as the framers established.
I'm way ahead of you. Just look for that shining light atop the hill. I've left a trail for you to follow. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. You can do it.
I just got into ATL from Cali (my former home) and am on my way home to my 8,000 square foot in the countryside. Beach home next week. I'm on the road less traveled, especially insofar as you.😂🤣🤣
Help me understand how you're carrying her or any other ADOS person. I truly don't see how you, as an individual, would be carrying her through Affirmative Action policies and procedures she's highlights.
Dr. Loury at 1:48. I think you miss the mark. Your analogy is irrelevant. Trying to haul Derrick Bell into your argument to suggest your argument is cogent (a clear straw man fallacy) doesn't work.
What is your the definition of Blackness? Well, I mean what is the definition of blackness you have internalized from dominant institutions? You have a 'made' mentality by the invisible white hand.
Why affirmative action? It is because a group of people descended from enslaved Africans have suffered disparate treatment for over 300 years by categorization based upon skin color like the Dalit in India.
The fact that you and your colleague had middle class money 'to pay your way' is irrelevant. So too is the argument you make for poor 'white' kids with pimples on their skin.
Now, clearly both of you have 'made it in a 'white' culture. You are both so psychologically alienated from 'black people'. Early in the 1970s, prestigious universities you two attended were selecting 'black' people because they literally had none on their campuses. I know because I was invited to attend Princeton University. Both of you were lucky when chosen because you were/are black by slave masters' definition. Neither of you really 'paid your way'. You were 'chosen' by the invisible white hand. 12% percent of 'Black' people are middle class today. So, rare birds.
12% of the U.S. middle class is made up of African Americans, who comprise 13-14% of the U.S. population. So African Americans experience the middle class at roughly the same rate as other Americans. Overall, if you just focus on African Americans, 47% are middle class. 49% of Whites are middle class. That’s essentially parity. Mr. Ahmed is confusing his populations.
No, we are dealing with the entire U.S. middle class. Which is 170 million people. They say "12% of the U.S. middle class is black"
Which means .12 x 170 million = over 20 million black people are middle class, not 1.6 million. Which also means almost 50% of the black population is middle class.
Black Americans make up 12 percent of the middle class and 13 percent of the population. Eighteen percent of the middle class identifies as Hispanic compared to 19 percent of the population.Oct 30, 2020, Brookings Institute
Profile of Low-Income Families (Figure 1)
Four million low-income families (or 30 percent of the total) are Hispanic, 2.9 million (22 percent) are black or African American, and about 800,000 (6 percent) are other nonwhites.
I put this comment up on the YouTube video, but will leave it here as well...
I have a bunch of ideas on this, and I admit that I will not be able to share them all. First of all, white people have a "Protective Benevolence Narrative" in their treatment and view of Black people. Basically, we are pets who need "Massa" to keep us safe and nurture us to success. This is the point-of-view that "the good white folks", mostly left-wing classic liberals, have had for years and years. I would contest John's point about the necessity of that point of view even back in the 60s. Note: I am not saying that racism was not horrible (and more virulent) back then. Instead, I submit that once you deploy "preferential treatment" in the way it is currently contemplated--and frankly this applies to historic affirmative action--there is NO DATE after which it should go away. If you put a cast on a broken limb, you heal it, and you know that you must take it off as soon as possible. If you put a cast on a healthy limb, you weaken it enough that you might never be able to use the limb without "help" or special care. Treating black people like healthy limbs upon which casts have been applied has no long-term upside, and no obvious end point. That CANNOT be good. Further, and maybe tangentially, many if not most black people are familiar with the Tuskegee Airmen. They are revered for their performance. They reputedly never lost a plane they were guarding. Their flying skills were legendary. Why? Because they were trained harder and more strenuously (and likely unfairly) compared to white pilots of the time. Simply put, they WERE better pilots, as a result. I feel more hopeful letting the chips fall where they may than hoping they can slant the system forever. In any event, I am unsure if what I am trying to say makes sense, but at least it is off my chest.
As Thomas Sowell says, affirmative action just results in a mismatch between the student and the university. Unfortunately, then a lot of students end up failing out or just quitting when they probably would have been one of the top students at a different university.
Wow… Today! Affirmative Action was ended by SCOTUS. I think mostly good intentions launched it. But I think it’s a skin we've needed to shed for some time. Still, there’s a sort of somber, historical feeling to this ending for me. It was in the weave of our society for a very long time.
My fully capable minority friends and I don't want ANY special treatment based on BIPOC. We will compete on our own abilities, and don't need any boost, because we know we will succeed and have succeeded. It's called AGENCY.
Looking forward to the supreme court ruling so that we can all move on. This discussion is becoming redundant and honestly boring. There are all kinds of preferential (legacy, athletes, students with special skills, donor's kids, etc.) processes that are used and I have a feeling, haven't confirmed, that more "average" students get in through those routes than by race (specifically black kids).
Republicans block access to abortion. Republicans ban books. Republicans suppress votes. Republicans will end affirmative action.
Republicans hate BLM but want to defund the DOJ and FBI
Unemployment is going down under Democrats.
There is zero rationale for being a Republican.
You are claiming that 55% of black folks are in the middle class. That is patentIy false. I disagree with your your inference. You are including in your math upper middle class incomes. You need to shave your numbers. There is the lower and the middle. Which constitute the numbers I am dealing with the range 25,000. to 50,000. dollars. I wrote 1,600,000 of 36,000,000 blacks are middle class. That is 4% of the black population.
"Black Americans make up 12 percent of the middle class and 13 percent of the population. Eighteen percent of the middle class identifies as Hispanic compared to 19 percent of the population.Oct 30, 2020" Brookings Institute
I wrote 4% percent of the black population is middle class. 12% of the U.S. middle class is black. That is less than proportion of blacks the U.S. population.
From Brooking February 2020
While there are many definitions for the “middle class,” this report will use the Brookings Future of the Middle Class Initiative’s definition: the middle 60% of households on the income distribution. By that measurement, middle-class families had incomes between $22,000 and $125,000 in the years (2013 to 2017) studied. Black people represent about 13% of the U.S. population, 61.2% of which are middle class.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-black-middle-class-needs-political-attention-too/
Edit to add:
From Brooking October 2020
Four decades ago, the vast majority of the middle class was white. In 1979, the middle class was 84 percent white, nine percent Black, five percent Hispanic, and two percent “other.” Over time, the middle class has become much more race–plural. In 2019, the middle class was 59 percent white, 12 percent Black, 18 percent Hispanic, and ten percent “other.”
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/10/30/the-middle-class-is-already-racially-diverse/
Sorry, wrong. 47% of blacks are middle class, 49% of whites are middle class.
There is a link between this article by Ruy Texeira and what John is getting at. Cross class solidarity makes sense but will never happen.
The power centers at the core of Democratic Party politics will never give up race based preferences because black middle class women are perhaps the most powerful subgroup in the party. Groups in power never give it up knowingly.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theliberalpatriot/p/five-reasons-why-democrats-should?r=9cb7a&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Honestly, gentlemen? I can't *wait* for them to strike it down, and this is one of the main reasons.
Thats some rude acne, Scoob.
Affirmative action was designed to be a reparatory policy for Negroes/descendants of U.S. slaves for the nearly 20+ generations of wealth extraction, exclusion from education, exclusion from hiring, under payment, slavery and its effects, unconstitutional Jim Crow and the federal government's lax (read absent/negligent) implementation of Negro/DOS rights AND protections.
Affirmative action is about a specific constitutionally protected class of people: The Freedmen (see the post-civil war constitutional amendments 13, 14, 15) and the civil rights acts of the 1860's.
The Freedmen protected class status is forever.
You cannot subtract the contributes of Freedmen from development of the nation itself, therefore, the obligations that affirmative actions are designed to repair are Forever.
Those obligations cannot be obstructed just because SOME Freedmen have finally gained income in the nation we've built and been the human rights engine for. IMAGINE how much richer and even wealthier we would be had our full protections and Reconstruction been fulfilled after 1865! Or if the 6.2 Quadrillion for slave labor alone had not been extracted ... (that doesn't even count the economic terrorism, physical harms, and political disenfranchisement from 1865-1965 nor 1965 to present).
When 75% of Freedmen are in the "top 1%," (as we should be!) I'll consider us not needing AA. Until then, affirmative action now and forever in EVERY domain of economic, educational, and political life.
So it’s a punishment for people that had nothing to do with slavery, which ended over 150 years ago, and for which 93% of white people - even then - had nothing to do with? I guess the 360,000 fatalities from that war suffered by Union white boys to end slavery (and their descendants) are erased, kind of like the lives of young African Americans in Chicago are erased, with no protest by BLM or Antifa. And the beneficiaries are, of course, high melanin Americans living the same 150 years later, who are so bitter they have to grow up in America and not West Africa from where a subset can trace their ancestry. Yep, Pamela, that makes a lot of sense. The white liberals who want to keep Blacks like plantation pets have only two rationales: (1) multi-generational punishment as you seem to espouse, or (2) African Americans can’t cut it in America, where immigrants of many nations excel and more wish to live - over 2m from Africa alone since 2000 - and need preferential treatment to cope with their unique innate transcendent trauma. I reject both of these rationales.
It's COMPLETELY appropriate for you to reject your responses to your own straw man arguments.
OK, so what other arguments would you put forward for the continued need of affirmative action, beyond the two I mentioned?
My arguments are already listed here...and are sufficient enough because the promises of repair and reconstruction were made to our protected class (Freedmen).
Of the many pieces I've published about affirmative action and reparations, you can see this:
https://medium.com/@pameladeniselong/the-u-s-supreme-court-must-return-affirmative-action-to-the-descendants-of-u-s-slaves-only-ea181e38e54f
AND
This: https://www.youtube.com/@pameladeniselong
Thanks for the references. I read the medium.com piece. So you eliminate all other slaves worldwide, including presumably slavery that exists today. You eliminate American Blacks who are not descendants of U.S. slaves only. How convenient. Your purity test sounds like the Daughters of the American Revolution. You don't acknowledge the sacrifices of so many to eliminate slavery in the U.S. You don't define success for the descendants of slaves, nor do you define any causes for failure of AA blacks other than what happened 150 years ago. By this definition, American Indians' claims would supersede your own and we non-Native Americans would all have to return to the countries of our ancestors. I admire the stridence in your writing, but you sound more angry than thoughtful, and quite naiive of history generally. What we perhaps share is a disdain for white liberals who, frankly, still don't see African Americans (and most other Americans) as their peers.
$6.2 quadrillion seems low. Im thinking more like $2 or $3 bajillion, on the low end.
Assessed as $6.2 quadrillion and $151M per Freedmen/descendant of U.S. slaves.
BTW: By law via framers of the U.S. Constitution, there are ONLY Negro Freedmen. They knew domestic and other opportunists would try to grift. The Radical Republicans (including elected Freedmen themselves) prevented the "I'm Black now" grift from the start. Smart men!
Here's an article with references to the original research article about the $6.2Q estimate.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU10/20210217/111198/HHRG-117-JU10-20210217-SD003.pdf
People who are serious about reparations and are attempting to calculate an accurate cost, should not come up with a total 60 times larger than the GDP of the entire world. That number is so beyond realistic that it actually hurts the cause. Fox News loves stories like this because it makes those on the side of reparations look like a joke. And people who are attempting to make a rational argument for reparations probably hate to have to answer for unserious research articles like the one cited. Do you really believe that if slaves were paid for their labor they would currently be worth 60 times world GDP all by themselves?
Hmmm...Economists don't perform calculations based on the emotional reactions of resisters. They perform reliable calculations based on real economic factors. As they should. The implementation is being negotiated between our protected class (Freedmen) and our government(s) and/or the institutions involved in the plethora of harms.
Ok, then simple question. If slaves had been paid for every minute of their labor at fair rates, do you believe they would now be, as a group, worth 10x the wealth of the United States?
**I mean the descendants of slaves of course
OBVIOUSLY our enslaved ancestors would have EARNED that amount (cause that's the whole actual equation)...PLUS our families would have accumulated whatever compounded returns on investments from ~1776 to present.
THE POINT is that $6.2Q is an estimate of what was extracted across time/the footprint of chattel enslavement....and it was never paid...and in fact Reconstruction was sabotaged. So, here we are getting justice now.
I'm totally OK with our families receiving that $6.2Q PLUS the last 150 years of harms and further extractions on a reverse balloon payment schedule, multigenerationally. Likely 400+ years, unless it needs to be extended to correct any future ongoing harms/additional extractions.
When **you** do some study about this (like consuming the resources I provided) you'll see that, in addition to direct cash payments to Freedmen families, reparation is about reparatory policies, processes, and procedures...just as the framers established.
Enjoy your weekend.
Sounds like a great name for a crypto coin.
Babajillion, or Bubjuillion.
I'm tired of carrying you.
From this point forward you'll have to walk on your own 2 feet.
Everyone else made it, so can you.
Just put 1 foot in front of the other and I'll see you on the other side.
I'm waiting for you on the other side with my special whipping cane from Singapore if you cheat. 😂🤣😅😆😁😄😃😀
I'm way ahead of you. Just look for that shining light atop the hill. I've left a trail for you to follow. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. You can do it.
I just got into ATL from Cali (my former home) and am on my way home to my 8,000 square foot in the countryside. Beach home next week. I'm on the road less traveled, especially insofar as you.😂🤣🤣
Help me understand how you're carrying her or any other ADOS person. I truly don't see how you, as an individual, would be carrying her through Affirmative Action policies and procedures she's highlights.
Dr. Loury at 1:48. I think you miss the mark. Your analogy is irrelevant. Trying to haul Derrick Bell into your argument to suggest your argument is cogent (a clear straw man fallacy) doesn't work.
What is your the definition of Blackness? Well, I mean what is the definition of blackness you have internalized from dominant institutions? You have a 'made' mentality by the invisible white hand.
Why affirmative action? It is because a group of people descended from enslaved Africans have suffered disparate treatment for over 300 years by categorization based upon skin color like the Dalit in India.
The fact that you and your colleague had middle class money 'to pay your way' is irrelevant. So too is the argument you make for poor 'white' kids with pimples on their skin.
Now, clearly both of you have 'made it in a 'white' culture. You are both so psychologically alienated from 'black people'. Early in the 1970s, prestigious universities you two attended were selecting 'black' people because they literally had none on their campuses. I know because I was invited to attend Princeton University. Both of you were lucky when chosen because you were/are black by slave masters' definition. Neither of you really 'paid your way'. You were 'chosen' by the invisible white hand. 12% percent of 'Black' people are middle class today. So, rare birds.
12% of black people are middle class? Where did you get that from?
Brookings Institute, 2019. 12% of the U.S. middle class is black. Whites are 49%.
Put another way, 1,600,000 out of the approximately 36,000,000 black Americans are middle class. That is 4% of the black population is middle class.
The probability of 120 blacks between 25 and 65 years of age randomly sampled out of 1000 blacks being in the middle class is 4% .
12% of the U.S. middle class is made up of African Americans, who comprise 13-14% of the U.S. population. So African Americans experience the middle class at roughly the same rate as other Americans. Overall, if you just focus on African Americans, 47% are middle class. 49% of Whites are middle class. That’s essentially parity. Mr. Ahmed is confusing his populations.
You said "12% of black people are middle class"
That is not the same as what Brookings is saying, which is "12% of the middle class is black"
14% of the population is black and 12% of the middle class is black
We are not dealing with the total U.S. population. Only the middle class population.
No, we are dealing with the entire U.S. middle class. Which is 170 million people. They say "12% of the U.S. middle class is black"
Which means .12 x 170 million = over 20 million black people are middle class, not 1.6 million. Which also means almost 50% of the black population is middle class.
Black Americans make up 12 percent of the middle class and 13 percent of the population. Eighteen percent of the middle class identifies as Hispanic compared to 19 percent of the population.Oct 30, 2020, Brookings Institute
Profile of Low-Income Families (Figure 1)
Four million low-income families (or 30 percent of the total) are Hispanic, 2.9 million (22 percent) are black or African American, and about 800,000 (6 percent) are other nonwhites.
Urban.org
I put this comment up on the YouTube video, but will leave it here as well...
I have a bunch of ideas on this, and I admit that I will not be able to share them all. First of all, white people have a "Protective Benevolence Narrative" in their treatment and view of Black people. Basically, we are pets who need "Massa" to keep us safe and nurture us to success. This is the point-of-view that "the good white folks", mostly left-wing classic liberals, have had for years and years. I would contest John's point about the necessity of that point of view even back in the 60s. Note: I am not saying that racism was not horrible (and more virulent) back then. Instead, I submit that once you deploy "preferential treatment" in the way it is currently contemplated--and frankly this applies to historic affirmative action--there is NO DATE after which it should go away. If you put a cast on a broken limb, you heal it, and you know that you must take it off as soon as possible. If you put a cast on a healthy limb, you weaken it enough that you might never be able to use the limb without "help" or special care. Treating black people like healthy limbs upon which casts have been applied has no long-term upside, and no obvious end point. That CANNOT be good. Further, and maybe tangentially, many if not most black people are familiar with the Tuskegee Airmen. They are revered for their performance. They reputedly never lost a plane they were guarding. Their flying skills were legendary. Why? Because they were trained harder and more strenuously (and likely unfairly) compared to white pilots of the time. Simply put, they WERE better pilots, as a result. I feel more hopeful letting the chips fall where they may than hoping they can slant the system forever. In any event, I am unsure if what I am trying to say makes sense, but at least it is off my chest.
Excellent comment!
Precisely!
As Thomas Sowell says, affirmative action just results in a mismatch between the student and the university. Unfortunately, then a lot of students end up failing out or just quitting when they probably would have been one of the top students at a different university.