Affirmative Action - Do the Benefits Outweigh the Costs?
The DOJ recently filed an Amicus Brief against Harvard's affirmative action policies. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department…
I wanted to start a discussion regarding what people's thoughts were regarding affirmative action, especially since many of us went to colleges/universities that use it in admissions, and work for/want to work for companies that do as well.
Do you think that the benefits outweigh the costs, and why?
You apparently do not visit the off topics section on this forum very often . We literally just had a topic on this issue a couple of days. A while back, someone expressed frustration that the affirmative action topics have occurred almost every week. Now,it seems like it occurs is every day...
We know that most people on this site are opposed to affirmative action. You can get everyone's views by taking a look at the other topics on affirmative action. I will predict that this topic will get a lot of SBs
maybe racist liberals should stop racially discriminating against groups they hate
Please stop. What you are saying does not make much sense. Liberals do not hate white people and Asians.
Interesting that Asians, Blacks, and Latinos are all inaccurately scored in various ways, but white students seem to be perfectly scored.
Also, I'm curious on how the "substantial penalty" is measured, as well as how it came up with numbers 50% of blacks and 33% of latinos in measuring who is affected.
Lastly, the argument that scores alone determines who makes up a successful class is exactly the issue. There are more important things in life than what someone scores on a single test.
Request For Mods: Consider Adding An Affirmative Action Forum?
As much as I agree with the goals of affirmative action, I don't know if current implementations are helpful (especially on the university / grad school admissions side).
There have been a ton of studies showing AA admits to elite universities disproportionately find themselves underperforming academically, which isn't surprising since a lot of them spent the previous 18 years attending chronically underfunded and understaffed public schools. These kids likely would have succeeded at lower ranked universities but because of AA programs they found themselves competing with kids who had every advantage in life and attended elite prep schools.
IMO the best solution would be to start earlier and improve elementary and high school education for underprivileged kids so they're better equipped when they go on to college (or take up trades or whatever). This is obviously way easier said than done and I won't pretend to know how to even begin but I think this gets at the root of the problem much more than AA for college admissions does.
The real solution is to:
a) desegregate school districts. Many school districts are hopelessly segregated along racial and socioeconomic lines - look at a map of Montgomery County Public Schools, one of the wealthiest school districts in the country. There are schools that are 70% white and schools that are 5% white. Part of this is to finally stop funding schools with local taxes, despite how much that might trigger the Karens.
b) make public universities free. We already spend an enormous amount of money on financial aid programs that only drive up school tuition. Cut back on FAFSA/government subsidized student loans and instead make every state school free or extremely low cost.
c) establish more community college -> 4 year college pathways.
The last part of this sounds fucking terrible. You'll get an average of well funded schools and very poorly funded schools, leading to an average of poorly funded schools in inner cities. Next thing you know everyone and their mother is trying to send their kid to a prep school, ballooning tuition up to even more outrageous rates (100k/year anyone?) when everyone who possibly can will do anything to prevent their children from going to shit inner-city schools. All this does is fuck over the middle class who have made the right choices in life and bought property in a good part of town (and paid alot in taxes) to benefit people who haven't paid anything, even though we already spend more on education that just about anywhere else in the world.
Nope, this won't work. Just like forced busing caused white flight out of cities, in this era you'll have wealthier families (of all races) either moving out of the area entirely or sending their kids to private schools. You can't desegregate by force. Desegregation can only be realized by changing people's hearts and minds.
This is literally the inverse of the correct action. Not only should college not be free, we should be actively working to close ~1/3 of existing schools and encouraging at least half the population to pursue career training programs (ranging from plumbing to electrician to cybersecurity to nursing). Making college free will shift the cost of college onto taxpayers, thus driving up demand for college by even more people (than today) who should not be attending college.
I don't understand this. There are an enormous number of junior colleges and community colleges already, and virtually all do this.
I'm the interim CFO of a start-up non-profit cybersecurity-focused college/training center. I have no clue if we're going to be successful--I kind of don't think we will be in my heart of hearts, but whatever. Anyway, our goal is to work with large corporations and historically black colleges/universities (HBCUs) to graduate students and move them into major corporations who badly need skilled talent. There is no race-based affirmative action here seeking to reluctantly hire under-qualified candidates. The idea is that QUALIFIED black graduates will be linked up with businesses that badly need U.S.-based computer talent.
I have always hated affirmative action because it chiefly judges people on their superficial qualities and basically sets aside qualifications. I have always felt that the Ivy Leagues, in particular, should use some of their $40 billion endowment and identify promising black teenagers in economically depressed areas and pay for special tutoring and test preparation so that they can generate QUALIFIED applicants. Race-based affirmative action is just so insulting in how lazy it is, especially for insanely rich educational institutions. Seriously, Harvard. Do you lack the funds to talent-find and assist students in under-served black communities gain the qualifications to attend and succeed at Harvard? Of course you don't. You're just f*cking lazy and you'd rather just use skin color as an easy way to virtue signal.
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