CNSNews.com Scoops Post by One Month on College Admissions Study

March 7th, 2007 6:32 PM

I know print publications tend to move slower than online outlets, but this is ridiculous.

On March 6, The Washington Post featured a story by staff writer Darryl Fears entitled "In Diversity Push, Top Universities Enrolling More Black Immigrants." Fears found critics who complain that some university admissions diversity policies end up drawing in more foreign black students at the expense of accepting more black American students for admission.

That's old news to Cybercast News Service correspondent Nathan Burchfiel, who beat Fears to the story not by a day or a week, but one month.

See for yourself. An excerpt is posted after the page break. [cont'd...]

Here's the link to Burchfiel's February 7 story.

Here's the link to Fears's March 6 story.

Full disclosure: Cybercast News Service (CNSNews.com) is a division of the Media Research Center, the parent organization for NewsBusters.

(h/t Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com's managing editor)

(CNSNews.com) - A new study suggests that black immigrants benefit from affirmative action policies in the U.S. more than descendents of slaves or African-Americans who suffered under Jim Crow laws.

The findings, published in the American Journal of Education, suggest that the original goal of affirmative action policies - to right past wrongs and provide opportunities to disadvantaged groups - is not being met because the policies focus on race instead of heritage.

Written by researchers from Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, the study found that while first- or second-generation immigrants make up only 13 percent of the 18- to 19-year-old black population, they comprise 27 percent of black freshmen entering 28 top colleges and universities.

The difference was most startling at the Ivy League level, where immigrant blacks comprise more than 40 percent of the incoming black population.

"If the goal of affirmative action is to help the descendents of American slaves and ... the descendents of people who went through Jim Crow, then it's not doing as effective a job as it could," study co-author Dr. Douglas Massey told Cybercast News Service.