The idea that all groups must be correctly “represented” in colleges and universities has been doing bad things to American higher education for almost 50 years. One of the adverse effects is that it puts students who have lower academic preparation but fill a “diversity” quota into competition with better prepared ones.

Scholars have been arguing over the so-called mismatch effect for a long time. One of the foremost is UCLA law professor Rick Sander, and, in today’s Martin Center article, he shows that mismatch is not only real but worse than previously thought.

Sander and Professor Robert Steinbuch have completed a new analysis, about which Sander writes, “Our findings are even stronger than we expected. A student’s degree of mismatch in law school is by far the strongest predictor of whether he or she will pass a bar exam on a first attempt. In 2005, I estimated that mismatch could account for half of the bar-passage gap between Blacks and whites, with the rest caused by lower average pre-law-school preparation levels among Black students. Our findings indicate, however, that mismatch can account for two-thirds to three-quarters of the Black-white gap, as well as more than half of the Hispanic-white gap.”

So here’s another reason to hope that the Supreme Court finally rules against racial preferences in college and university admissions. It would help minority students better succeed in law school (and elsewhere).

And how about the impact of a Court ruling against racial preferences? Sander offers his thoughts:

If it does, universities may dramatically reduce the size of current preferences. But they may, instead, deemphasize traditional measures of academic ability (like the LSAT) in favor of highly subjective factors (like essays) that allow them to continue to use preferences under the radar. Or they may simply ignore the Court, as many law schools have ignored state-level bans on racial preferences. What we can be sure of is that university leaders will be talking with one another and with their admissions officers. A clear showing of the enormous harm done by large preferences could help steer them to the straight and narrow.