<p>Agree with reforming primary and secondary education.</p>
<p>People on this site constantly tout the fact that success in life is based on the student, not the college they go to; by that logic, affirmative action has no positive effect because the minorities that benefit from it would be as successful elsewhere, so it therefore has no perceivable impact on minority social status.</p>
<p>If you reform earlier educational opportunities, then you can actually address the reason why minorities are disproportionately unqualified for the most competitive schools rather than slap a band-aid on and call it diversity.</p>
<p>When I’m applying to a school, the first thing I consider is not, what percent of this school is black or mexican, etc… In fact, I don’t consider those things at all, so I really don’t see the point in recruiting those types of kids. Look at CalTech, they got rid of AA and have been very successful since. Also, socioeconomic AA would be just as stupid.</p>
<p>socioeconomic AA will work. the whole point of AA is to help underprivileged minorities. if you look at statistics, african americans, hispanics and native americans generally tend to be poorer. so doing it based on money will still help them. it would get rid of benefits to the wealthier minorities. it would also help the poor whites and asians. this seems pretty fair to me. socioeconomic status can be changed so overtime, it doesnt have the same stigma as basing AA on race has so in the long run, the emphasis on blaming admission on race will fade a little and minorities in top colleges wont be looked down upon as much. the only downside i see in this is that the NAACP will complain because they like when policies are race related so they can remain relevant. so if AA gets rid of race and it works better than under race, the NAACP will lose some influence and jesse jackson might actually have to find a real job.
but still… no gov policy can fix african americans’ problems. unless family and education become culturally important, you wont see much advancement. sometimes kids are stronger than the parents so if they are exposed to important life facts earlier, they will more likely to care more about school and work harder. this can be done by requiring all kids starting at kindergarten to watch videos each beginning and end of the year that shows the benefit and consequences of education and life choices. those videos should advance in thoughts from importance of caring at kindergarten to importance of college at beginning of 5 grade. schools should start emphasizing college choices/opportunities at 6 grade. all of this will help the kids with less staler family conditions.
also, we need to drug test all people on welfare because many of those people are using gov money that is meant to buy food for their kids to buy drugs. this will help those kids and make sure they are getting fed. instead of giving direct money/debit card, they should get physical food. if parents are on drugs, take the kids away.</p>
<p>also, tuition doesnt really go toward the financial aid budget for most schools. most schools get that money from alumni donations and endowment which they invest and get more money from that money. thats why harvard can afford to give everyone a free ride if they need it. they have a huge endowment and they get millions a year just from the interest/investments of those money.</p>
<p>Get rid of legacy admits. I have yet to see a good argument in favor of why they should be retained. That move would create more merit-based and AA slots for everyone. </p>
<p>And I too would like to hear the arguments against a socioeconomic instead of a race/culture-based model for enhancing diversity. I can think of many arguments in favor.</p>
<p>I’m not, by the way, in agreement with those who don’t care about diversity in higher education. Part of what I pay those tuition dollars for is so that my (Asian) children will have the opportunity to live and work in close proximity to others whose views, background and values give them a different perspective. That’s part of the education I want them to have.</p>
<p>Once you control for higher education levels of the parents and opportunities for the child, the legacy boost doesn’t seem so big. A Duke legacy is likely to have a better chance at Duke than the published admit rate, sure–but that same legacy will likely have a better chance at Penn and Dartmouth as well because of a stronger application. </p>
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<p>This is important to me as well, and part of the reason I support AA (though I think socioeconomic AA, IMO, would do a better job of finding true diversity).</p>
<p>I do not support AA, I don’t get it. As an Asian parent, I also do not care for diversity, and the reason is I tend not to care what someone’s race is. I don’t feel my kid’s college experience would be enriched by interacting more with blacks, Hispanics, Asians, white…as long as they are good, smart students, then what does it really matter. As far as helping URMs in getting into college, I also think K-12 is more important, and they have to want to do it, by making it easier to get into those colleges not going to fundamentally change anything.</p>
<p>@M’s Mom legacy admission is there to reward and make the alumnus donate money. that money is very important because it goes toward everything including financial aid. legacy is a hook like athletic admission or knowing 5 languages or if your parents work at the college. legacy is not the same as race based AA because legacy can be gained or lost just like athletic abilities. race cant be changed. legacy also doesnt just pertain to one group of people. you can be any race and be a legacy. plus, legacy also helps minorities and non minorities who graduated from top colleges because their kids will have easier time getting in. but those who graduated from top colleges often have kids who are already successful at school and other areas like glassesarechic above says.</p>
This is an excuse that only accounts for some of the difference. Harvard’s legacy admit rate is 30%. Would you say that 30% of all students whose parents had a good college education will be getting in?</p>
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Is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound. It does very little to solve the true problem the human race is facing; poverty. Without scrapping the current system and building it anew, socioeconomic AA will do little good in the big picture; with building a new system, there should be no need for socioeconomic AA, for the very idea of socioeconomic classes is an affront to human rights, dignity, and equality.</p>
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This is true, and probably the best justification. Colleges didn’t make the system in which they need a lot of money to survive, they just have to deal with it.</p>
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Speaking five languages is not a hook. The other two don’t have as big an impact as legacy, unless you’re one of the top athletic picks. But even the athlete gets in on his/her own merit for something.</p>
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How do you lose legacy? Getting your parents to disown you? It is firmly in the “born with it” category.</p>
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Yes it does… that group is “people whose parents went here, who we will admit because we want their money.” That is one group, a group distinguished only by birth, just not a racial group.</p>
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College grads usually aren’t the ones with problems getting their kids into college.</p>
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Which is a good reason for why legacy students shouldn’t even need the boost.</p>
<p>@BillyMc your family can lose legacy if your kid doesnt go to the school their parent went to. like if a person went to harvard but their kids ended up going to upenn then the kids of the person who went to upenn wont have harvard legacy anymore. also, if you grew up poor, but got into harvard, your kid will have harvard legacy so you just gained that.</p>
Yes, your children won’t be legacy if you don’t attend that school. However, it doesn’t change the fact that you yourself can get that boost (whether it’s enough or not) merely by virtue of birth.</p>
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Both are groups of people, and both qualities (legacy and race) come from birth. The difference is that race comes with a culture, history (often of oppression), and serious negatives, while legacy is just a positive.</p>
<p>Is that the current legacy admit rate? I was under the impression that legacy acceptance rates were dropping everywhere (and faster than the drop in overall admissions rates). I, personally, have never seen an unqualified person get into a top school because of the legacy factor. I have, however, seen quite a few perfectly qualified kids turned away from top privates (Duke especially, where my parents went and know several classmates with college-bound kids). So in my experience, at least, the boost isn’t really there.</p>
<p>Also, racism still exists. That’s a fact. Until people stop “seeing race” these differences in outcomes are never going to go away. </p>
<p>Also, if you went to a totally socioeconomic based affirmative action, you would lose very many blacks and hispanics. That’s why it is not done.</p>
<p>In our current society, it is believed that “diversity” is predicated on racial diversity. Until we progress enough that this belief changes, affirmative action will remain in place. Affirmative action is not there to help minorities; it affects such a minority of the minorities that it doesn’t really help any racial group as a whole. Affirmative action is there because colleges know that people want diversity, and that it’s a detriment to be labeled “homogenous.”</p>
<p>That is why no one will switch over to socioeconomic affirmative action: because that’s not the goal. It’s not inherently wrong, but hopefully the lines between racial culture will be blurred over time and diversity will be defined by individuals.</p>
<p>Socioeconomic AA has its merits but achieving representation in college equal to a racial group’s proportion of the general population is not one of them. Numerous studies have shown that White and Asian students who come from families that make less than $10,000 a year still obtain higher high school GPAs and earn SAT scores significantly higher than Black students from homes with annual incomes of over $100,000 a year.</p>
<p>The greatest effect of Socioeconomic AA would be the admission of more children or recent and poor Asian immigrants into colleges and universities. What people would see on a superficial look at college campuses would simply be more Asian students and even fewer Black students and even though the Asian students might be from Socioeconomic backgrounds that are at least as deprived as those of the Black students, the consensus would be the problem has not been solved, but instead made worse because from a racial diversity standpoint ground was lost, not gained, by Black students in relation to Asian students.</p>
<p>The only people who believe that “diversity” has any importance are on the admissions committees and populate the faculty of these schools. In every case all of the many students I know that were helped by AA were middle or upper middle class and they only added to diversity if by that one means skin color. Frequently these students were so far removed from their “assigned culture” that they felt uncomfortable being treated as such at the college.</p>
<p>A student whose family makes more than $100,000 a years has so many more opportunities than a student whose family makes less than $10,000. The purpose of Affirmative Action should not be to ensure equal racial representation in college; it should be to provide an equal opportunity. If an impoverished white or Asian student outperforms a very wealthy black student, despite the opportunities the black student has, it’s clear that the white and Asian students should be admitted before the black student.</p>