Supreme Court Officially Rules Against Affirmative Action
Well the long awaited ruling is finally here. The Supreme Court officially ruled against Harvard / UNC to now prohibit race-based admissions and the end of the quota system which has disadvantaged so many Asian applicants. What does WSO think? More topically, how will this affect university recruiting for finance and the overall pipeline of talent?
Given ESG is also such a big topic these days in the industry (esp. in LO AM / pension funds / etc), I'm curious to what extent the impact will be felt downstream at the employer level as well.
Let's keep the discussion civil as this is a HUGE topic in finance / ESG landscape / recruiting for all the students (both high school and college) who use this site and will inevitably affect all
Big day for equity for Asians
Should help so many of my younger cousins, very happy for them
Same, I'm excited for my younger brother.
I have several younger cousins as well who are Asian. One of them only got into 2 schools despite taking 8 AP classes, having a 3.9 GPA and being president of 2 clubs. Too late for him but his younger brother should benefit enormously now. Very exciting for him
I don’t think it’ll make a difference. It has become very en Vogue to flout SCOTUS / anything that slightly resembles a center or right of center thought.
This literally won’t change shit. Harvard itself did a model of admits without affirmative action.
The biggest beneficiaries? Rich white kids from New England and mid Atlantic regions.
More Brandons and Kelseys!
People have been waiting for this for over a decade, HUGE win. I'm sure universities will adapt to push their agenda and so this won't eliminate bias against Asians but it will make the playing field more even that it was prior to the ruling
Thank god. Think universities will still do it in some fashion, but it probably won't be as pronounced.
Probably won't have much impact. Universities can still tailor their application process to favor things besides GPA or "hard" skills which will have the same net effect.
The "quota" system has only been crushing Asians to the extent that it still accommodates the children of rich donors (who are likely to be white). As I've said a million times on this site, to the extent anyone is "stealing" an unearned spot, those are the kids that are "guilty," not some poor black or Latino kid being given an opportunity.
So yeah, we got rid of Affirmative Action. Won't change anything
Lol what a hilariously bad take. See below article for clear proof to the contrary, multiples states have banned AA in the past for public universities and that's quantitatively led to much more fair allocations to Asian students who worked hard. Now that this will occur on a nationwide level, it will follow a very similar path. For universities that try to BS their way through this and maintain similar quota levels, it will be clear as day that they are cheating the law and will get sued to oblivion because we have clear quantitative proof as to what happens when race is not explicitly considered
https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-affirmative-action-college-a…
EDIT: Linked a second article here as well in case folks get paywalled on the first (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/affirmative-action-ruling-4-things-…) that also shows proof. Excerpt below:
"
Have previous bans on race-conscious admissions affected student diversity?
The short answer is yes.
State-level bans on using race-based affirmative action in Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington have already given the country a glimpse of the consequences of prohibiting such a practice.
Research shows that in those nine states, the enrollment of students from underrepresented communities declined, even if other factors, such as class, were weighed more heavily.
In California, data showed that affirmative action helped Black and Latino university students.
Siqueiros saw a big decline in the number of Black and Latino students who applied to selective universities and colleges after the state banned affirmative action in the 1990s."
This below is actually quite incredible. An African American student in the 40th percentile of their academic index is more likely to get it than an Asian student in the 100th percentile. Black students in the 50th percentile are more likely to get in that white students at the top. What a broken program
Ozymandia, this is your chance to show everyone how well informed you are. Don't miss it!
For some reason I always thought Ozymandia was a girl.
Ozymandia is a girl.
I did. All of that work and all those words and that guy proved absolutely nothing except that getting rid of affirmative action hurts students of color. He did nothing to show that it leads to more equal outcomes for students of other ethnic backgrounds - like every asshat who complains about affirmative action, he completely ignored the elephant in the room, which is that legacy admissions and the children of donors are the ones making a mockery of merit based admissions, not blacks or Latinos.
I wonder what all these kids will complain about now? Who are they going to blame for "stealing" their spot?
Well, congratulations on missing the point entirely in your haste to... whatever it is you are trying to do.
The point I was making and which you "hilariously" couldn't grasp was that letting in some small percentage of black students isn't what is keeping Asian students from getting in - the policy of letting in legacy students and the children of donors is what skews the system, and those people are overwhelmingly white. Several of the links you provided (and thank you for backing up your take, despite it being irrelevant) make this exact point clear. Black students make up 9% of Ivy League freshmen (which we'll take as a proxy for the moment); 36% of Harvard students are legacies. Where is your outrage towards that? Sure, some of those legacy students are worthy candidates, but that goes for black students too.
So as I've said in the past and will reiterate, anyone who complains about affirmative action without also and primarily complaining about a system in which wealthy parents buy their children a spot in a college are just bigots, full stop. Cheer all you want for affirmative action being struck down, but it won't help more Asian kids get admitted - all of the links you cited (well, the NBC one, I got paywalled on the WSJ article) say absolutely nothing about the new composition of incoming classes except that there are fewer black and Latino students. In other words, you've done no work to show that removing affirmative outcomes leads to more spots for "worthy" candidates. All that we know is that students from ethnic backgrounds that have traditionally been unable to attend prestigious universities now have even less of a chance - for all we know, those few students will be replaced by rich white kids. In fact, as I said, it's actually extremely likely that that is what will happen.
Will this affect MBA, graduate and PhD admissions? And what exactly is affirmative action
My guess is that will also affect graduate school admissions as that is ultimately very similar to college admissions. Don't see why that should be any different and while it's not explicitly said, graduate school is still higher ed
Diversity hiring programs coming next (srs)
There is another case in the works.
Cannot wait
I’m convinced you kids just live in la la land. Lol
Absolutely. Diversity programs operate on the same flawed and unconstitutional principles. They are designed to specifically exclude groups like Asians and men. It’s 100% discrimination just like with college admissions.
Already seeing inklings of this right here -- https://www.wsj.com/articles/companiesexpectnew-challenges-todiversityp…
Big W for the nation and for each and every single person who would have been put at a disadvantage due to their race.
How long before this impacts diversity programs?
Well I'd break it out into 3 parts:
1. Simplistic answer is that as the current cohort of college students ages out (4-5yrs), the pipeline itself after that period will look much more meritocratic and that will naturally limit the impact of DEI programs discriminating against Asians over time
2. Second driver is this ruling plus anti ESG backlash will continue (latter has been happening in a big way for past 6 months now) and cause companies to tamp down on DEI initiatives which will be helped by the recession (DEI was ok in a time of surplus but in a time of survival it becomes survival of the fittest -- i.e. merit)
3. 3rd driver I suspect is this will be accelerated by a raft of lawsuits -- which will burst out now that this ruling has come out against AA in higher ed -- on DEI in the workplace as well. So it depends on how those cases go (local vs by state vs a suit that is accelerated up to SCOTUS) would be my guess
So all said the next 5-10yrs are looking very rosy for Asian applicants
Fantastic news for all Asians!
This won’t benefit Asians. It benefits whites. Harvard has modeled this already. Go read a paper or something kid
I guess I shouldn't be surprised at a take this shitty - after all, bigotry and education don't go hand in hand, so I'm not surprised that someone who blames affirmative action for Asians being "discriminated" against wouldn't understand what he's talking about.
It isn't students of color who are "stealing" spots, it is the children of wealthy parents and legacy students. Getting rid of affirmative action does absolutely nothing to ensure more meritocratic outcomes, because it doesn't actually address the fact that university admissions weren't meritocratic to begin with. The "natural" order isn't merit-based, and anyone who complains about the tiny percentage of black kids who get in on affirmative action but ignores the plurality of students who essentially "bought" their way in or had a helping hand from a relative who went is being a bigot, pure and simple. Complain about both, or neither, but don't have the absolute gall to suggest that eroding whatever tiny help was given to black students in the admissions process is somehow going to turn the system into a meritocracy.
I realty don’t think anything will change. They will come up with some other subjective metric that allows them to discriminate against races they don’t seem to want (in this case Asain).
The data begs to differ, see two articles showing it drastically alters the student body ratio
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/affirmative-action-ruling-4-things-…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-court-affirmative-action-college-a…
What I am saying is that the universities won’t follow SCOTUS ruling
This isn't the final battle. Ruling still leaves some wiggle room for universities to still consider race so I suspect there will be subsequent cases to really pin it all down to not let universities beat down on Asians
However, it will take universities years to adjust (and probably years for various courts to go through these rulings as well for new cases) so ultimately it's a good backstop for the time being as more stuff solidifies around these rulings
Biden speaking now “I strongly disagree with the SCOTUS ruling.”
Lol who didn’t see that coming
Biden is such a hypocrite, in a recent fundraiser even he said he didn’t like abortion yet supports it for political points. A senile old man who can’t even stay true to his own code
How is that being a hypocrite? That's the whole fucking point of being pro-choice. He doesn't believe in abortion, but thinks others should be free to make up their own minds. I don't like playing basketball, but that doesn't mean I think we should rip out every hoop in the park.
The fact that you think this is hypocrisy says a whole lot about you. Moreover, politics is about compromise, so even if he is a hypocrite (which, again, he's not), meeting in the middle isn't scoring "political points," it's called governing.
This represents progress as the removal of one of the only remaining instances of true institutional racism. Big case, big win for anyone who values merit. Thank you SCOTUS.
DEI initiatives in the workplace are next
And there was an outcry in the force, as tens of thousands of HR managers were suddenly handed a pink slip. I get a chub just thinking about it.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character." -MLK
"Students must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite, and in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice." -Justice John Roberts
With the decision of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, we're one step closer to eliminating actual systemic racism, and one step closer to realizing Dr. King's dream. God Bless America!
Great quote.
Big win. After decades of affirmative action it's definitely time to shift focus on more tangible issues like socioeconomic background and how you grew up rather than something as surface-level (literally) as your skin, and people who are race discriminatory are pretty quickly weeded out in more educated circles anyways.
100%. This isn't the final say on AA as the ruling is still arguably somewhat narrow, but it does provide the foundation for further rulings to reinforce this one and over the next 10yrs lead to much better policies
That is where the focus should have been all along. Affirmative action has very little impact on college admissions; it's a marginal issue at best. You know what has a massive impact on the composition of college classes? Wealth and legacy status.
Whether or not that was the intent, this ruling basically means a handful of black kids won't get into top colleges in favor of more rich and (predominantly) white kids getting in. For all the folks playing victim about "discrimination" against Asians, I'll be interested to hear your tune going forward when you can't blame affirmative action anymore
Here's how Harvard responded today. Note the first paragraph:
The cynical take is that Justice Roberts inserted an escape clause in the decision. The 1978 University of California v. Bakke decision supposedly struck down racial quotas but in fact cemented them by allowing universities to seek "diversity" as a "compelling interest". Likewise, this decision could just permit the status quo to continue as long as each black and Hispanic applicant includes a My Experience with Racism essay in their application.
My guess is that the cynical take probably goes too far, and that the decision will actually matter. But I would bet against the idea that every school will operate like CalTech now. They'll use this loophole and anything else they can find to limit change as much as they can.
Yup, this is just the beginning. Many more cases will now be taken up, this ruling provided some reasonably solid footing on which to build more anti-racist rulings in future
I hope we focus less on race/gender/LGBT and more on the kid's economic upbringing. I would be cool with "affirmative action" on this basis.
AA was intended to be a temporary band-aid to a problem that should've been solved directly after the American Civil War. It's obvious that it failed in this regard failed- the group that benefits the most from affirmative action are white women. National Women’s Studies Association Journal, Fall 1998 (6 million women, the majority of whom were white (73%) , gained jobs they wouldn’t have otherwise held but for affirmative action.)
Yet, people harp on the statistical anomaly of "wealthy blacks taking your spot". 10% of Harvard is Black- it's even crazier to assume that that 10% of Black people at the school are majority beneficiaries of AA. You people dislike minorities so much that you can't even begin to accept that fact that your Black and Brown peers EARNED their spots at the school. FURTHERMORE, a study found 40 percent of white students admitted to Harvard University were legacy students, children of faculty and staff, or on the dean’s interest list (applicants whose parents or relatives have donated to Harvard). That number drops for Black, Latino and Asian American students, to less than 16 percent each coming from those categories.
This same study found that roughly 75 percent of the white students admitted from those categories would have been rejected if they had been treated like their non white counterparts. Almost 70 percent of all legacy applicants are white, compared with 40 percent of all applicants who do not fall under those categories, the authors found.
Yet, "Wealthy Blacks" are taking your jobs and your spots at elite universities. I'm a person of color- I graduated from High School as a National Merit Scholar, AP Scholar with Honors, 3rd in my class, founded my own charity, played multiple instruments (and won awards!), multiple varsity sports and scored above the 95th percentile on both the SAT and ACT. But, of course, when the people at my majority white school found out what school I had gotten into, I consistently heard from not only my high school peers but my COLLEGE ADMISSIONS COUNSELORS "You only got in because you were Black"- and I didn't even go to or even get into an Ivy League School! It's not lost on me that many of the same people who will cheer this decision will simultaneously decry HBCUs as "racist" or unnecessary. Who the fuck would want to go to school with people who assume you don't belong there in the first place?
All this to say, college admissions has never solely been about merit and Asian people cheering for this have been played. IMO universities and colleges will only get more white- this was never about remedying discrimination against Asians, but removing Black and Brown people from these spaces and the Court's failure to address legacy admissions is confirmation of this. Unconscious bias is a thing and while it wasn't perfect, AA was somewhat of a check against it. I'm incredibly disappointed that the Court failed to recognize the daily realities associated with being Black and Brown in this country and the struggle for these communities to realize economic opportunities. Education has always been the key and that door got shut a little tighter.
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