- Journalist James Fallows pointed out that there are between 3,500 and 5,500 colleges in the U.S. and all but 100 of them admit more than 50% of the students who apply. Only about 70 admit fewer than a third of all applicants. That is, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, “the great majority of schools, where most Americans get their postsecondary education, admit most of the people who apply to them.”
The changing demographics of the country are also changing student populations. As an example, in 2022, more than 33% of the students at the University of Texas at Austin, which automatically admits any Texas high school student in the top 6% of their class, were from historically underrepresented populations. And universities that value diversity may continue to try to create a diverse student body.
But in the past, when schools have eliminated affirmative action, Black student numbers have dropped off, both because of changes in admission policies and because Black students have felt unwelcome in those schools. This matters to the larger pattern of American society. As Black and Brown students are cut off from elite universities, they are also cut off from the pipeline to elite graduate schools and jobs.
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Al Franken made a good argument for affirmative action in Lying Liars. He hypothesized two children running a foot race, one of which the beneficiary of intensive training since he could crawl, the other without decent shoes. If they tie, is it really a tie? Or does the one without the benefit of wealth and privilege demonstrate more latent ability? Therefore, perhaps the finish line shouldn't be parallel to the road.
But that's the sort of nuance conservatives defy by definition and "fair means fair" despite the fact that elite colleges have always existed to keep out the riff-raff. Jeff Selingo has an anonymous quote from a Harvard administrator in "Who Gets In" along the lines of "Harvard admissions aren't designed to ensure the Harvard student body is elite; they are designed to ensure that only the elite make up the Harvard student body." Standardized testing was originally created to keep the Jews out of the Ivy League. The Stanford-Binet intelligence test was named after a eugenicist by a eugenicist.
I'm cautiously hoping it won't actually be so bad, mainly because I've gone through two of the UC schools. NPR has an article up that discusses the changes in the UCs when AA was eliminated by proposition, but that article is significantly more grim than the UC's press release on the topic (that has actual numbers). UCs today are non-white majority spaces. While some demographics are definitely underrepresented, it doesn't really sit right to call them non-diverse. Will Harvard, etc. follow suit? Maybe not I guess.
- UC undergraduates by race and ethnicity
Fall 2022:
32.2% Asian
22.5% Hispanic/Latino
22.2% White
4.5% African American
0.5% American Indian
0.3% Pacific Islander
2.8% Domestic unknown
15% international
2002 (post Prop. 209)
38% Asian
14% Hispanic/Latino
36% White
3% African American
1% American Indian
1% Pacific Islander
8% Domestic unknown
1% International
1994 (pre-Prop. 209):
37% Asian
15% Hispanic/Latino
36% White
4% African American
1% American Indian
0% Pacific Islander
5% Domestic unknown
1% International
My fundamental viewpoint is that affirmative action is a noble attempt to correct systemic injustice through introduced bias that is easily dismantled by racists. I think your average eugenicist WASP gives no fux how many asians there are at UC Berkeley; Stanford or MIT? Eh those have always been second-tier darkie schools anyway.
I think the problem is not that minorities are being denied entrance to elite schools, it's that schools that deny entrance to minorities can still be considered elite and I say that as the grandson of a Jew who was kicked out of Harvard.
My issue with the diversity argument has always been that it supplanted the thing that affirmative action was supposed to do, which is, more or less, reparations. The two black students I had over the years who went to Ivy leagues could have gotten in without any aide from diversity scoring, but each was the child of immigrants, not descendants of slaves. So the school gets to notch its pistol without actually helping anyone. That’s why even though I think it’s a right wing red herring talking point, I still believe that socioeconomic diversity is a better metric than racial diversity for actually trying to advantage the disadvantaged.
Son, did you just say "socialism?" That sounded a lot like socialism. Are you a socialist? Because as we all know, the only socialism allowed in America is for the troops.
I should amend to add that I couldn't possible give the first fuck less about the Ivy League. If 'm trying to hire someone, I barely glance at where they went to school. I know enough people who went to Ivies and enough people who went to middle of the road state schools to know better than to think it makes a difference to the type of person you are. It probably matters in business and law, but in my field it matters fuckall. So I'm all for government sponsored reparations, and free shit for the troops, too, for that matter, but only to the extent that I think any education is as good as any other education. You get out what you put in for the most part.