<p>This is a thread where anyone can talk about their rantings about affirmative action. No flaming though!!</p>
<p>That is what this thread will turn into: an endless series of flames. Haven't you observed the previous rehashings of this, easily available by search?</p>
<p>This really isn't a good idea...</p>
<p>I don't see what all the controversy is about. Affirmative Action is clearly stupid.</p>
<p>Fides, I got a book for you. "When Affirmative Action was White", you should enjoy it.</p>
<p>No, he's right.</p>
<p>I think having a debate here is a good idea. I want people to have debates here and not on whats my chances threads when they see someone who they feel wasn't "qualified" to apply and much less for admission. (I don't think that's fair to the kid)</p>
<p>I suspect that in the majority of cases affirmative action (in college admissions) helps well off blacks and hispanics and hurts low income whites and asians.</p>
<p>Hardly the social justice people wish for.</p>
<p>Affirmative Action is way lame. I can't believe it's even legal.</p>
<p>Affirmative Action... more like Affirmative Racism</p>
<p>"I suspect that in the majority of cases affirmative action (in college admissions) helps well off blacks and hispanics and hurts low income whites and asians.</p>
<p>Hardly the social justice people wish for."</p>
<p>You got it. </p>
<p>On a disturbing note, this is the kind of social justice that many advocates of AA wish for. Whitey had his day in the sun and now he must suffer for his crimes, regardless of his income.</p>
<p>This topic has been talked about ad nauseaum;please just let it die. Please use the search function if you want to know what other people's opinions are, or check out U of M's forum on CC.</p>
<p>as an african american, let me just say that although AA isn't perfect, it IS somewhat of a remedy for the millions of minorities who's relatives suffered at the hands of discrimination. As a society, America is not far removed from being an intensely racist nation, with whites leading the charge. AA undoes hundreds of years of degradation by evening the playing field. Also, imagine what the racial composition of colleges would be if there were no AA: the vast majority of colleges would be all-white. As previously stated, whites are in fact the greatest benefactors of AA, through athletic and legacy admits.</p>
<p>i agree that this horse had been beaten dead.</p>
<p>
[quote]
if there were no AA: the vast majority of colleges would be all-white
[/quote]
Really? You know, by stating that, you are effectively saying that African-Americans and Hispanics aren't smart enough to get into college on their own.</p>
<p>This isn't flame, fyi. Just a response.</p>
<p>But rl.hill is right on one point - legacy admittance is also anti-meritocratic.</p>
<p>True, true. Legacy admittance is in no way fair.</p>
<p>well AA has been going on for enough years that URMs will start to get legacy status as well.... time to phase it out</p>
<p>
[quote]
Also, imagine what the racial composition of colleges would be if there were no AA: the vast majority of colleges would be all-white.
[/quote]
This is incorrect. </p>
<p>For many colleges the percentages of white applicants would be the same, the portion that is asian would be larger though.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As previously stated, whites are in fact the greatest benefactors of AA, through athletic and legacy admits.
[/quote]
This is also incorrect. The greatest benefactors of athletics are black.</p>
<p>probably true Mr. Payne,
colleges would leap at the chance to fill up their athletic teams and their racial quotas...err, I mean diversity requirements by picking black athletes.</p>
<p>however, there are several recruited sports that are primarily for upper-class whites - squash, fencing, etc.</p>
<p>a relevant article from The Economist:</p>
<p>Poison Ivy - Sept. 21st</p>
<p>AMERICAN universities like to think of themselves as engines of social justice, thronging with “diversity”. But how much truth is there in this flattering self-image? Over the past few years Daniel Golden has written a series of coruscating stories in the Wall Street Journal about the admissions practices of America's elite universities, suggesting that they are not so much engines of social justice as bastions of privilege. Now he has produced a book—“The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates”—that deserves to become a classic. </p>
<p>Mr Golden shows that elite universities do everything in their power to admit the children of privilege. If they cannot get them in through the front door by relaxing their standards, then they smuggle them in through the back. No less than 60% of the places in elite universities are given to candidates who have some sort of extra “hook”, from rich or alumni parents to “sporting prowess”. The number of whites who benefit from this affirmative action is far greater than the number of blacks.</p>
<p>The American establishment is extraordinarily good at getting its children into the best colleges. In the last presidential election both candidates—George Bush and John Kerry—were “C” students who would have had little chance of getting into Yale if they had not come from Yale families. Al Gore and Bill Frist both got their sons into their alma maters (Harvard and Princeton respectively), despite their average academic performances. Universities bend over backwards to admit “legacies” (ie, the children of alumni). Harvard admits 40% of legacy applicants compared with 11% of applicants overall. Amherst admits 50%. An average of 21-24% of students in each year at Notre Dame are the offspring of alumni. When it comes to the children of particularly rich donors, the bending-over-backwards reaches astonishing levels. Harvard even has something called a “Z” list—a list of applicants who are given a place after a year's deferment to catch up—that is dominated by the children of rich alumni.</p>
<p>University behaviour is at its worst when it comes to grovelling to celebrities. Duke University's admissions director visited Steven Spielberg's house to interview his stepdaughter. Princeton found a place for Lauren Bush—the president's niece and a top fashion model—despite the fact that she missed the application deadline by a month. Brown University was so keen to admit Michael Ovitz's son that it gave him a place as a “special student”. (He dropped out after a year.)</p>
<p>Most people think of black football and basketball stars when they hear about “sports scholarships”. But there are also sports scholarships for rich white students who play preppie sports such as fencing, squash, sailing, riding, golf and, of course, lacrosse. The University of Virginia even has scholarships for polo-players, relatively few of whom come from the inner cities. </p>
<p>You might imagine that academics would be up in arms about this. Alas, they have too much skin in the game. Academics not only escape tuition fees if they can get their children into the universities where they teach. They get huge preferences as well. Boston University accepted 91% of “faculty brats” in 2003, at a cost of about $9m. Notre Dame accepts about 70% of the children of university employees, compared with 19% of “unhooked” applicants, despite markedly lower average SAT scores. </p>
<p>Why do Mr Golden's findings matter so much? The most important reason is that America is witnessing a potentially explosive combination of trends. Social inequality is rising at a time when the escalators of social mobility are slowing (America has lower levels of social mobility than most European countries). The returns on higher education are rising: the median earnings in 2000 of Americans with a bachelor's degree or higher were about double those of high-school leavers. But elite universities are becoming more socially exclusive. Between 1980 and 1992, for example, the proportion of disadvantaged children in four-year colleges fell slightly (from 29% to 28%) while the proportion of well-to-do children rose substantially (from 55% to 66%). </p>
<p>Mr Golden's findings do not account for all of this. Get rid of affirmative action for the rich, and rich children will still do better. But they clearly account for some differences: “unhooked” candidates are competing for just 40% of university places. And they raise all sorts of issues of justice and hypocrisy. What is one to make of Mr Frist, who opposes affirmative action for minorities while practising it for his own son? </p>
<p>The poor left behind
Two groups of people overwhelmingly bear the burden of these policies—Asian-Americans and poor whites. Asian-Americans are the “new Jews”, held to higher standards (they need to score at least 50 points higher than non-Asians even to be in the game) and frequently stigmatised for their “characters” (Harvard evaluators persistently rated Asian-Americans below whites on “personal qualities”). When the University of California, Berkeley briefly considered introducing means-based affirmative action, it rejected the idea on the ground that “using poverty yields a lot of poor white kids and poor Asian kids”.</p>
<p>There are a few signs that the winds of reform are blowing. Several elite universities have expanded financial aid for poor children. Texas A&M has got rid of legacy preferences. Only last week Harvard announced that it was getting rid of “early admission”—a system that favours privileged children—and Princeton rapidly followed suit. But the wind is going to have to blow a heck of a lot harder, and for a heck of a lot longer, before America's money-addicted and legacy-loving universities can be shamed into returning to what ought to have been their guiding principle all along: admitting people to university on the basis of their intellectual ability.</p>