UNDER-MINORITIES AT MIT GRADUATE AT A LOWER RATE, BUT 75%-80% ARE
SUCCESSFUL VS. 85% 


An Interview with Paul Gray '54 MIT News Technology Review July 1997
MIT1 (F070297, \doc\web\97\06\mitad.txt)


"The Task Force took a whole set of practical actions aimed at this
objective of increasing the minority presence, and the outcome makes
it easy to defend our position. We graduate within six years about 85
perent of all the young people who enroll here as freshmen. If you
look specifically at MIT's minority youngsters over the same period
of time, the graduation rate is between 75 and 80 percent. To put
that in perspective,: nationally, the overall college-graduation rate
is below 50 percent, and the gradution rate for minorities in
engineering and science is below 50 percent. You can't say the
minorities at MIT are unqualified or poorly prepared, because
three-quarters of them do earn a degree" Comment - a 20-25 percent
dropout rate is still a lot more than a 15 percent rate, it used to
be two to one. Not unqualified isn't the same as equally qualified. A
disparity may well be an acceptable trade-off, but there is a cost to
racial preferences.