Education, Not Genetics a Key IQ Factor, Study Says

Is intelligence race-based? That argument was catapulted back into the public arena by “The Bell Curve,” the 1994 book by conservative social theorists Charles Murray and the late Richard Herrnstein that some credit with fueling the current debate over affirmative action.

Now, into the fray comes a provocative study that suggests that a major determining factor of intelligence is not genetics but the quality of pre-college education.

Studies comparing the IQs of blacks and whites during their senior years in high school and at college graduation typically find a gap of as much as 15 points. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, however, found that the IQs of black students who went on to college increased four times as much as those of their white college classmates, effectively shaving the IQ gap in half by graduation.

“Black students who finish college appear to make dramatic gains in cognitive abilities,” said Joel Myerson, a research professor of psychology at Washington University. “White students also improve during college, but to a lesser extent.”

Myerson and colleagues, who analyzed the same massive student databank as Murray and Herrnstein--the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth--hypothesize that disparities in educational quality from kindergarten through 12th grade account for the widening black-white IQ gap during the high school years. But most colleges and universities offer a more level playing field, they argue, thus removing the “constraint of inferior education.”

Sounding a cautionary note that may resonate loudly in California, Myerson adds that exams like the SAT--typically taken at the end of high school, when the IQ gap is greatest--may seriously under-predict the performance of black students at the end of college.