this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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Probably going to get downvoted for this, but I tend to agree that AA, as it stood, had run its course. Getting rid of it now clears the way for new and better solutions.
When I read these excerpts from this article https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action/ - I get a strong sense that AA really just allowed schools to be lazy.
Except anything remotely better will be dismissed out of hand as "woke" and never see the light of day.
I’m not so sure. I understand your cynicism but I don’t share it just yet.
Systemic bigotry isn't a byproduct, it's the point. See the now infamous quote from Lee Atwater. Content warning-- racial slurs.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/
Do you not follow the news or something? What indicators have you seen/read that give you optimism?
@garretw87 @smokinjoe
I understand where garretw87 is coming from here with the cautious optimism. Unlike the Voting Rights Act (section 4, iirc) that was struck down a few years ago and then multiple republican-led state legislatures immediately moved to find ways to disenfranchise any demographic they deemed to vote democrat, these race-conscious policies are a result from internal motivations and commitment to diversity.
Nothing is going to make Harvard enact a policy that it doesn't ultimately believe in (although we clearly see that court cases can dissolve existing policies). And even if the laws say that Harvard's goals of increasing diversity can't be through race-conscious admissions, then Harvard can and will find another signifier than race to achieve its goals. One way may be to add points during the review process to an applicant who reports that their family received social benefits, or maybe even go so far as to demarcate a map of zip codes and add points if an applicant grew up in specific communities that are well known for specific demographics.
I anticipate that something like this that is broadly defined but catches prevalence for certain ethnic groups while not being exclusive to any one ethnic group could be the way for Harvard to continue recruitment and achieve its diversity goals.
Also, before my comment here gets reduced down to " OP assumes all X race must be poor, hurr durr" I want to add that there is a small batch of elite high schools in America that recruit very talented students of all races from some of the poorest communities (the Bronx, Appalachia, South side Chicago, etc.) that extend generous scholarship packages for room, board, and tuition from which universities like Harvard are recruiting about half of its prospective diversity students. To put all the focus on universities for being race-conscious is to turn a blind eye that there exist private high schools that are doing the same thing.
This is exactly right. There have been various interviews with college admissions directors over the past year, and they pretty much all said the same thing. To paraphrase, "We expect that AA will be struck down. If we can't directly ask about race on the application, then we will achieve the same result by indirect means".
AA opponents mistakenly believe that colleges will now be forced to consider only grades and test scores. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Yes and yes. I for one welcome efforts to increase diversity by looking at these other factors.
Removing legacy admissions would help a lot. I've seen people arguing that admissions are a zero sub game. If someone gets in because of AA then someone else didn't get in. Ending legacy admissions would free up a much larger portion of admissions for a more diverse student body to get in, instead of some rich person's dumbass kid.
Colleges give preference to legacies because the admissions department is judged by its yield (the percentage of accepted applicants who actually enroll), and legacy applicants are more likely to enroll if accepted.
It's not necessarily related to being rich. A legacy is about as likely to be wealthy as other students at the school, because after all their parents were also students at that school.
Another important reason is that colleges rely on alumni donors, and alumni are less likely to donate if their children are not accepted.
I don't come to the same conclusion that AA had allowed institutions of higher education to be lazy in their admissions process.
I read this excerpt to mean that now these institutions that used to have race-conscious admissions will have to go the extra mile to communicate to prospective students of color that the institution is amenable to that student's application and is interested in recruiting them despite rulings like today's from SCOTUS.
The institutions impacted by this decision are self-motivated to increase diversity because those are values established and held by those institutions. So this excerpt saying they'll have to double recruitment efforts just means that they will have to demonstrate their doors are still open to students of color despite SCOTUS barring this particular avenue in.
The laziest answer, and the one they will take, is to just not admit as many Black and Hispanic students.