The U.S. Supreme Court to end racial preferences in college admissions, very soon, just about everyone predicts. So what happens next?
Give preferences to low-income and working-class students -- backed by generous financial aid -- rather than linking preferences to race, argues Richard D. Kahlenberg, who's writing a book, Class Matters: Imagining a Fairer and Less Divisive Future for Higher Education.
President Biden could appeal to minority voters and to working-class whites by "strongly endorsing class-based affirmative action," he writes.
"Class-conscious admission models could result in more racial diversity than the current system, but only if all selective colleges used them, and, at the same time, considered a much larger and more diverse pool of applicants for admissions and stopped admissions policies that now favor legacies, the children of big donors, and athletes," concludes a new Georgetown University report.
If that doesn't happen -- Georgetown isn't optimistic -- the fallback is to improve K-12 education so low-income and non-Asian minority students have a better shot at competing for limited seats at selective colleges.
The report calls this a "retreat."
It is much, much harder to improve K-12 education than to let the not-so-well-educated into selective colleges. Maybe it's impossible. But shouldn't we be trying?
Many selective colleges have gone SAT/ACT optional or stopped looking at test scores entirely. The shift to subjective criteria -- grades are so inflated they're virtually worthless -- makes it easier to hide bias against high-scoring Asian-American students.
"Privately, leaders of college associations say their members’ instinct is to try to 'get around' the expected anti-affirmative action decisions by considering applicant 'adversity' as a way to replicate the racial composition they now achieve on campus, writes Michael Dannenberg on Yahoo.
One of my daughter's college roommates came to the U.S. as a 12-year-old speaking no English. I think she got into UCLA by acing her math SATs. Her father was a cook at a diner. But she was Chinese.
Out of curiosity, I checked to see if the general requirements at my alma mater (Georgetown College) had changed, and it looks like they have not. There is still religion, social sciences, foreign language, math, natural sciences, art appreciation, and PE. Even though I was a chemistry major, the introduction to art and music has been a solid base for my current spending time and money enjoying both.
You anonymously keep writing "look it up." That's a lazy, unconvincing rebuttal. Take your own advice to heart. Here's a Bing summary of what's necessary to get a liberal arts degree: The classes required for a liberal arts degree vary depending on the school and program. However, most bachelor’s degree programs require the completion of a substantial number of liberal arts credits because of the coursework’s versatility and value. Liberal arts classes include education, history, psychology, and art history, as well as social sciences such as economics, anthropology, political science, and media studies, and sciences such as biology, neuroscience, and environmental science1.
You won’t often find any required courses within a liberal arts degree. However, in an effort to create a well-rounded…
There are several tactics a highly selective university could do. There would be differences between public or private.
Establish a baseline of grades, high school classes, SAT/ACT scores and then pick randomly from that.
Eliminate the admission benefits given to athletes. No more varsity blues scandals.
Eliminate legacy admissions. No more GW Bush or Al Gore's at the Ivy Leagues.
Eliminate the admission benefits given to the children of employees.
Eliminate developmental admits. No more Jared Kushners.
At UNC-Chapel Hill, they could adopt a top 10% plan much like Texas adopts decades ago. Such a plan would increase diversity more than the social engineering of quotas.
SD
One aspect seldom understood is that affirmative action students too often can't do rigorous college work. Hence the invention of what I call "Oppression Theology" degrees. I suspect that today most employers know that a degree in Oppression Theology is not worth much. Indeed, such a degree should be seen as a red flag -- indicating that the applicant is a potential powder keg employee who should not be hired. Included in that field of "study" are degrees in race, gender, and gender preference systemic injustices.
But perhaps such useless degrees are just the tip of the degree legitimacy scandal. A college ACCOUNTING professor at UCLA faces expulsion for refusing to grade black students more leniently than everyone else in the…