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<p>But it doesn’t. Studies show quite the opposite, in fact.</p>
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<p>Read more: [Accessibility</a> to Elite Colleges Is More Difficult for Poor and Minority Students | TIME.com](<a href=“Accessibility to Elite Colleges Is More Difficult for Poor and Minority Students | TIME.com”>Accessibility to Elite Colleges Is More Difficult for Poor and Minority Students | TIME.com)</p>
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<p>The court has shown a tendency toward activism–to wit, Citizens United. As always, follow the money.</p>
<p>@Sally305, that study doesn’t pass the smell test. Clearly, grads at Elite schools, no mater the race, economically outperform students that go to less selective schools. The life time earnings of a Princeton grad, on average, is higher than a Rutgers’s grad.</p>
<p>And are you implying that the court is being influenced by money, and that explains it’s “activism”?</p>
<p>Well, if you don’t like the Princeton study there’s more from researchers at Stanford and Harvard.</p>
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<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/education/scholarly-poor-often-overlook-better-colleges.html?src=me&ref=general[/url]”>Better Colleges Failing to Lure Talented Poor - The New York Times;
<p>There are a lot of people, and we can see this from comments on this board who deeply resent affirmative action. They will fight it any chance they get because they feel it is WRONG, and should have never happened. </p>
<p>The fact of the matter is that it is entrenched in our system, has been deemed legal by the SCOTUS, and it’s just tough luck for those who are in the above category. They are wrong according to the law. They are on the wrong side of the law. </p>
<p>However, the policies were not meant to remain in place indefinitely, and the question becomes when the are no longer necessary. I think, and so do a lot of people, even those who supported AA, that the topic needs to be revisited, and the provisions removed as they become unneccessary. So do a number of justices on the SC. So the case is of interest. Doesn’t mean that it will be struck down just because the SC took it. Look at the stats as to what the decisions are on cases. Predicting these things is not easy even for those who are very skilled and practiced in it. We’ll find out soon enough and the arguments here as to what the SC will do will be moot once it is done. </p>
<p>I doubt very much if AA is going to be washed out, but in the specific case of UT Austin, I can see where it may no longer be necessary. A school or organization is going to fight for every bit of latitude it can have in making its decisions, wrong or not. That’s just been the way it has worked, more often than not, so it’s not unusual that UT Austin want to reserve its privilege to use race as a holistic factor. Heck, they’d fight to keep anything that gives them more leeway. But I think it’s going to be tight, and a tie will keep things as they are. It’s down to two justices as we know how 6 of them will most certainly vote, and Kagan is out on this vote. My guess is that it will hinge on Roberts or Kennedy. If they both go with the conservative group, then UT Austin loses. But even then, how they word the decision is almost certainly, IMO going to stay specific to the UT Austin situation and not repeal AA.</p>
<p>I am not saying the justices are being paid off or anything like that. I am suggesting that a lot of money behind these cases is helping them get to the court in the first place.</p>
<p>Do you think righteous cases must all be pro bono?</p>
<p>Left-wing groups use lawsuits strategically to advance their causes. It is no more nefarious for right-wing groups to do so. Historically, the NAACP had a legal strategy to fight against racial discrimination. Abigail Fisher and her backers are working in the same tradition. The notion that only some racial groups are entitled to use the legal process to defend their rights is itself racist.</p>
<p>And that’s the crux here, usually is: what passes the smell test?
Personally, I don’t see how a thread can keep calling out race, insisting this or that about race or those of some race, insisting one race gets more out of a process, that there is a racial thumb, etc- and not ask to be called out for their extraordinary awareness of…race.</p>
<p>Anyone who thinks this is fair or that we’ve made it to some colorblind society, is not getting it. I am not a bleeding heart. I see it more as: you put a variety of kids into the pool and let each reap the benefits, as a member of that pool (here, college) and the pool as a whole. Even SCOTUS has benefitted from what I believe is calculated diversity. </p>
<p>If we are a multi-identity society, why not allow that to be reflected? Oh, in college admissions, so far, we do. Why do opponents always try to constrict the qualifications down to “academic achievement?” How much of that is self-serving? </p>
<p>So, some say, yeah, let’s get race out of the process, the vocab. Where it fails the smell test, for me, is how you build that argument. Enough rant.</p>
<p>Cpt, respecting your posts very much.
Some x-posting</p>
<p>Thanks. I’m a real amateur in SCOTUS predictions as I have spent no time analyzing how things work when put before them. I have a close friend who did argue a case in front of the SC, and my son and a daughter of a close friend, do study these things carefully and are pretty good at predicting these things. None of the three feel that any wide sweeping AA changes will be made but that it is possible that UT Austin will get its knuckles rapped in using race as a factor when not needed in the situation, and that this might become in determining whether AA is permitted or not in situations. I have to admit, I did not get what the issue was here until my BIL and SIL in TX were complaining about the 8% UT Austin rule–they have twins who graduated this year, and neither got into UT Austin, as they come from a very upscale high achieveing school and missed out on the 8% auto admit, when they are easily top 10% in the state academically. </p>
<p>Conservative groups fund these things too. Take abortion issues as an example. Every thing that can be challenged re application of Roe V Wade is, even when it is a foregone conclusion it’s going to be struck down. Just to wear away at the ruling. Same with prayers and religion in schools. If you follow the money, I would not be able to predict who you would come up with as the ones who have spent more in these challenges and cases, but my guess is that it would be the conservative groups simply because they tend to be in the businesses involving the money.</p>
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<p>How can a thread about a Supreme Court case about racial preferences not be about race?</p>
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But the Percentage plan succeeds in admitting a sizable number of URMs, so it does result in a diverse student body. Why is that not a “critical mass”? </p>
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Academically weaker candidates already have the opportunity to elevate their competitiveness for admission via ECs, leadership, community service, character, athletics, recs, essays. Why does race need to be considered on top of all of that if plenty of URMS are being admitted in the Percentage round.</p>
<p>“Why does race need to be considered on top of all of that if plenty of URMS are being admitted in the Percentage round.”</p>
<p>^ Since you’ve moved from theoretical objection to practical, why does considering race hurt when the number of holistic academic URM admits are so small … a couple percent at most? (I think your theoretical argument is much stronger.)</p>
<p>GMT: Perhaps not everyone shares your idea of “plenty” or “critical mass.”</p>
<p>^ considering race “hurts” because its discriminatory. SCOTUS, in the Grutter ruling allows that an exception can be made, based on reaching “Critical Mass”. If you’ve already reached “critical mass” (defining that is one of the issues SCOTUS may try to answer…and would be the most interesting item to come out of any rulings on Fisher…), then you no longer justified in using race.</p>
<p>GMT, UT Austin, wants to keep every bit of flexibility they can. That’s standard operating procedure. What they may be saying, and I have not been on top of this, is that because the law in place, because AA is permitted, that race can be a holistic factor, they reserve the right to do this whether or not it is “needed”; This is all very tricky because when is it “needed”? </p>
<p>If you start a school, and set the admissions standards such that, say, test scores are the important deciding point, and you draw your line, and you end up with all Asian kids, you will quickly find out that you won’t even get them as paying customers because most of them don’t want to be at an all Asian school either. This sort of thing happens all of the time. Schools that are in danger of becoming lopsided in the gender ratio are justifiably concerned because once the ratio becomes too far over, the school starts suffering because without some gender preferences given, over all admissions is adversely affected. Girls hate, hate, hate it when they are “discriminated against” but they are not as likely to go to a school that is say, 70% female which is the natural consequence if males in that scenario are not given an admissions boost. That is what is happening, by the way, at a number of colleges these days. </p>
<p>I know a number of folks who decided they did not want to go to schools that were “too vanilla” and they were of color, which whitewashed the schools all the more. You can see that there is a areal pragmatic issue at stake. </p>
<p>Gruber makes it even more difficult because a quota is not permitted for race and yet, clearly some sort of fuzzy quota is in effect at any school taking race into account. </p>
<p>I want to add that I am very sad at the way the SCOTUS has evolved. That we can predict how Justice Thomas will vote, as well as Justice Sotomayer, Kagan and some others just because of how they feel about “things” not looking at the merits of a case and how it all fits into the Constitution and the changing dynamics of life is very, very sad to me. The SC should NOT be as politicized as it is these days. I am so hoping that Roberts, Sotomayer, Kagan can be belly up and truly understand how they should be viewing cases, not as their own personal opinions but in the context of the law, the Constitution and this country. I have no hope for some Thomas and some of the others and it’s my personal opinion that it is a travesty that he is sitting where he is.</p>
<p>As others have said, the ruling on Fisher will likely only impact UT, and only that holistic portion of admissions that uses race. If race is removed, then they would put in place a holistic method similar to many other schools. Not much of an impact.</p>
<p>However, if SCOTUS attempts to define “Critical Mass”, then all bets are off. To be honest, I don’t know how you could define it…I haven’t seen anyone make an effort. Perhaps they replace “critical mass” with some other criteria? Either way, how they answer that question is the key…of course, they can always PUNT and not make a ruling!..and failing to come up with an answer to critical mass, may be why they do…</p>
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<p>The public school systems of Texas and California are or soon will be majority Hispanic. I fear that there will be political pressure to create admissions policies that cause the college population to mirror the high school one in demographics. This would mean setting aside more than half of the seats in college classes for URMs. If you believe, as some AA advocates do, that racial differences in academic achievement will wane over time, then 50 years from now racial preferences will not be necessary to achieve proportional college representation. If you believe as I do that achievement gaps are deeply rooted, you worry that the magnitude of racial preferences will increase.</p>
<p>GMT, the % plan only works if it succeeds in drawing in a representative (for lack of another word, right now) number. I think that is the pinhole leak. I think, in larger terms, that this is not solely about the admit process, itself, but has to include (now or later) a review of the results of that specific process. Ie, the goals and process can pass initial muster, but if they don’t achieve the goal through the process at hand, oops.</p>
<p>I think it’s significant that finances can keep out a number of kids, resulting in de facto segregation. That the % plan is subject to scrutiny if it is not meshed with the aid to allow those kids to reasonably pay for college. More specifically, does the % plan actually favor kids who can pay?</p>
<p>And, is there standardization in how hs rank is calculated in Texas? From prior posts, it seems not. The % portion is flawed. It tries to level the playing field without standardization and resources.</p>
<p>“considering race “hurts” because its discriminatory”</p>
<p>I believe it’s well-established that UT discriminates in favor of athletes, full-pay students, and others. The question here, from a practical (rather than theoretical) standpoint, is whether it’s OK to favor a URM in a well-intentioned effort to increase minority participation. As a practical matter, the answer to that is a no-brainer.</p>