David Wand: Race should not trump merit at Canada’s universities

Across the country, law and medical schools have adopted identity-based admissions criteria in the name of equity. But very little data has been available on how those policies work. New research from MLI is changing that. In a new paper on DEI and admissions in Canadian law and medical schools, researcher David Wand requested admissions data from 18 law schools and 14 medical schools. Only six law schools and eight medical schools agreed to share their data. Wand then compared applicants’ standardized test scores – such as the LSAT and MCAT – against actual admissions outcomes. To discuss his findings, Wand joins Inside Policy Talks. On the podcast, he tells Peter Copeland, deputy director of domestic policy at MLI, that race is a key factor in the admissions process, raising, he argues, serious questions about meritocracy. Based on these findings, he argues there is a better way forward and calls on provincial governments to ban race from the admissions process. “The ultimate goal here is to ban it and follow the lead of other multiracial democratic countries that also are concerned about historical disadvantages experienced by certain racial groups,” says Wand. He points to Scandinavian countries as an alternative model, noting that they do not consider race in admissions but instead support disadvantaged students earlier in the process through programs aimed at improving academic performance.