The most ardent argument made against affirmative action is that it allows less qualified African American and Hispanic students to take seats away from more qualified White students.

In an attempt to find out if that is true, the Frederick T. Patterson Research Institute of The College Fund/UNCF studied the relevant records. The answer it came up with: maybe sometimes, but not often.

Certainly in the most aggregate sense it is not true, according to the study. The institutions that practice the most affirmative action -- as a whole -- expanded their freshman classes by about as much as the increased number of incoming African American and Hispanic students.

And the African American and Hispanic students who attend those schools have the same credentials -- again, for the most part -- as the White students. It did find, however, that qualified African American and Hispanic students are much more likely to be admitted to top selective institutes than their White counterparts -- as much as two-and-a-half times as likely. With those findings, the Patterson Institute -- the research arm of The College Fund/UNCF (formerly the United Negro College Fund) -- is attempting to weigh in on one of the most contentious issues of public policy today with a careful analysis of available, if often times insufficient, data.

The study was led by Dr. Michael T. Nettles, at the direction of the board of directors of The College Fund, which has traditionally represented the interests of private historically Black colleges and universities.

The board wanted to know, Nettles said, whether college attendance rates among African Americans would drop if affirmative action ended. The answer, he explained, was "No. But we could see a slowdown at the top institutions."

The study found that only 342 of the nation's 1,808 four-year colleges and universities are likely to use affirmative action. Because the rest admit most students who apply, questions of selectivity are not particularly relevant. Of those 342, only about 120 are "serious affirmative action institutions" in Nettles's words, meaning that they are the institutions where there has been the greatest gain in numbers of African American and Hispanic students in the past decade or so.