RIP Affirmative Action
BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court rules colleges and universities must stop considering race in admissions, putting an end to affirmative action in higher education.
What are your thoughts on this?Personally major W.
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There was a large discussion about this in the admissions department of the college I recently graduated from. They were confident they would find away around this via zip code and monetary information. I really don't think this will be a huge change for colleges and universities; however, it's going to be a large cost to them to create and implement these new tactics to keep their diversity numbers consistent.
I guess its fine for large universities of the world but I believe smaller institutions might struggle a lot more.
Universities will try but fail at preserving the same demographics they have now. So many articles out there on this, they'll certainly have some level of racism against Asians in there but I suspect the demographics will on the margin look much fairer incrementally
Universities will still find a way around this and in fact may make elite university admission more opaque (more emphasis on zip code, school, income, and most importantly I see a greater emphasis on future personal identify essays where admission offices can probably gauge if the applicant is URM).
With that being said, those who oppose affirmative action can probably also point to the UC system demographics (eg. UC-Berkeley is 40% Asian) to illustrate that admissions will still become less race-influenced (since AA is banned in CA).
More emphasis on zip code would be a huge improvement. Less likely to admit POCs with incredibly priviledged backgrounds versus people actually coming from disadvantaged zip codes. If this is the case, it's a huge win for actually disadvantaged minorities.
Now a black kid from Compton has a better shot than a black kid from Palo Alto whereas before they were both simply judged by their race.
“Black kid from Palo Alto.” Yeah there are black people all over Palo Alto. This fucking forum man
Agreed.
ZIP code will keep poor people receiving the benefits not old money private school educated black people who also got easier rides into everything.
Admissions counselors next year advising essays: “Make sure your reader knows you’re black. Really sell it.”
Black and Asian names usually stand out so it might be obvious.
I don’t know why the UC system has failed to find a way to get the racial makeup we know they’re after. But it’s a pretty safe bet that the fact of it being a giant, beureacratic state system plays a big role in that outcome.
Very confident these ultra-wealthy private schools will engineer the demographic makeup they want. Far more difficult things are accomplished regularly.
The ruling gives an exemption specifically allowing the consideration of race if it is something the applicant chooses to focus on in their application
You're likely to be disappointed by the practical impact of this holding. Committees can easily tell someone's demographics from their name, activities, geography, etc. Plus facebook obviously.
Once schools update their processes, future plaintiffs will have to say they're still considering race based solely on the fact they're still accepting lots of minorities. This would be hard to prove. Especially if they make standardized tests optional.
Everything I've read suggests that this will NOT be as easy to adapt to you as you claim. Yes, the impact will not be as total as it should be but it will significantly alter future classes to better drive at merit for Asian students
Most colleges expect it will take 5yrs to adapt and even that's optimistic as shown by states that had banned AA prior (even a decade later they weren't able to unfairly bring up black representation while discriminating against Asians)
Plus bear in mind there will be further lawsuits here (this is not the last battle) which will tighten the noose around colleges that try to get around it. Remember that if it was so easy to get around it then why didn't colleges use that in the first place? Most say that you can use zip codes and other stuff as a proxy but it is a semi strong proxy at best (think 0.4 correlation, not 0.9 correlation)
I’m an ex lawyer fwiw
This case was relatively easy because the plaintiffs were challenging admissions processes that openly considered race.
But what if the schools actually deny that they’re considering race and tell you to get lost? Your goal would be to start deposing admissions officers and issuing subpoenas for any written records/emails/texts.
That would require you to allege specific facts though. You couldn't just be like “I know there’s still AA I mean look at all these smiling minorities grrr” (lol). It would suddenly be pretty hard to survive a motion to dismiss.
The Supreme Court has been telegraphing this day for years and years now.
Just wait until more cases come out on this. There are already a bunch of cases on this stuff in the workplace in the offing, and after the next round of admissions (where a lot of students will be discriminated against by woke universities) there will be even further cases of AA in higher ed that are going to pin down these slippery practices
This is a great foundational step, but many more battles will be fought and now won because of our current SCOTUS
This wouldn't be hard to prove at all so long as test scores are still required for admission. It would be an incredibly easy statistical analysis and it would make the schools very vulnerable to lawsuits. If the Ivy Leagues, for example, quit requiring test scores, the quality of student will drop off dramatically, and in a generation the institutions will lose their prestige.
they're not required
It’s obvious that part of the reason for dropping standardized testing requirements was in anticipation of this. Admissions will be increasingly opaque since GPA is next to meaningless these days with rampant grade inflation and inconsistencies between schools. Legacy, donor and athletic admission is still allowed so white admission at elite institutions will likely stay the same or increase. Asian representation will likely increase and black, latino, native american etc. admission will decline, but schools will do whatever they can to mantain racial diversity
Literally doesn’t even mean shit. Schools have had time to prepare for this. Plus there’s room for some race based admissions if the applicant talks about how their race affected them.
This is a waste of time
Harvard wasted no time finding the loophole they’re going to exploit.
AA lives.
most people’s applications to these universities tend to be glorified sob stories anyway.
Will this include discussions on how you had to work twice as hard as others because elite universities discriminate against you......
I'm surprised they made such a tongue in cheek reply.
I'm surprised as well. "We will certainly comply..." reads as flippant. Like they have already decided the makeup of next year's class and this law won't change that...
Just like you are giving Harvard too much credit for their ability to find loopholes, you are giving anyone who files a lawsuit too little credit for their ability to present hard evidence.
The main reason why Harvard lost this case is not because of hard stats like how asians score higher on tests and have higher gpas, that would have been too easy. The main reason they lost is because they could not explain how arbitrary personality scores were used as a big determiner for admissions. If Harvard proceeds to discriminate on large scale basis, then they will have to explain how they reach such demographic numbers.
I didn't read the case very closely, but my conclusion is that the ruling states that schools can not use race both DIRECTLY (as they have been doing) and INDIRECTLY (like you suppose they will do) for admissions. Many schools will obviously try to do the latter, but its not as easy you as might think. Otherwise california state schools wouldn't be so overwhelmingly asian.
Your summary of the ruling is correct.
Agree to disagree on the ability of Harvard and other well-resources schools to find their alternative path.
Not sure why the negativity on my post about Harvard finding a loophole. Certainly felt like a matter-of-fact post when I made it.
California schools are overwhelming Asian because it’s literally the state with the most Asians in America Lol.
Lol no. Universities will be dragged kicking and screaming and it won't end up at perfect parity but it will indeed drastically alter class demographics as already seen by states where AA is banned for public universities. We will see further cases brought up that will cut out the wiggle room these universities try to use as well
Lemme guess, you notice/hear that UC has a lot of Asians and case closed?
Or is there more.
Did the other Affirmative Action post get deleted?
It did indeed, still showing on the side bar though. Mods just being heavy-handed, there was nothing wrong in that thread that I'd seen and if someone commented something bad then just delete that comment. They do that plenty in others. Par the course I suppose. Wonder how long this one lasts.
The most messed up reasoning I've ever seen. The post complied with WSO's terms & conditions, no violations were spotted, and it was still deleted because 'it could lead to violations.' Insane
This is progress and represents the end of one of the only true remaining examples of institutional racism in this country. Big win for anyone who cares about merit. Love to see it.
Amen
Get rid of legacy admission(s)!! Reduce the economics barriers, prep boy !
Unironically getting rid of affirmative action does actually threaten both legacy and donor admits as well (which I'm fine with since I fell under none of the 3 categories). The 3 policies worked hand in hand, you'll notice the majority of AA candidates were not coming from poor areas. They're just "rich" minorities. Below is a great discussion about the ruling w/ Robert Barnes, a lawyer who attended Yale and later left specifically because of the admins absurd policies.
WSO is soft af for no reason
But you're happy that you can be discriminated against on the basis of how much money your parents make?
Lot of bigots on this thread, trying real hard to find any fig leaf they can in the midst of their excitement.
MLK - "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 the content of their character."
Chief Justice John Roberts - "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.“
Yeah, so a typically thinly-reasoned conservative argument.
"Hey, the very system I purport to represent is insanely bigoted and has been proven to discriminate against black people, so I feel I have full moral authority to say that the real problem in this country is that we're making an attempt to fix that by giving a helping hand to those victims!"
The real villains of college admissions are legacy and donor admissions, not the extremely small number of kids getting in through affirmative action. But the people on here are probably quite likely to be legacy admissions themselves, and unlikely to be minorities, and so no one cares. All "me, me, me"
This is a brain dead response. Go take a look at admissions to top universities and the socioeconomic make up of the classes.
Even if one disagrees with legacy admission, it does not mean that affirmative action should remain in place. So this is a nonsensical argument.
Legacy admission is not covered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act or the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th amendment, so it's unlikely that courts would rule against it. Bottom line: affirmative action is discriminatory because it applies disparate admission standards based purely on race.
Someone should make an AI that predicts a student's race from his college application and sell it to Harvard. I'm sure they're going to use things like zip code, name, and those kinds of factors to infer race, might as well build a program to save them some time.
Also FYI -- the ruling applies across ALL higher ed (not just undergrad) including medical school / law school / MBAs (see below)
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-courts-affirmative-….
https://www.chiefhealthcareexecutive.com/view/for-medical-schools-supre…
Makes perfect sense. Now the next two big topics to address are:
1. Workplace DEI discrimination
2. Private high school DEI discrimination
100%. So many black dudes with sub 3.0 GPAs went to my prep school while I have Asian friends that applied with incredible accomplishments (national geographic middle school champion etc) but didn't get in. Not remotely fair to them
The other side effect here is that less blacks will apply to Top 50 universities given they know that AA has been cancelled, so that will also lead to a reduction in how many candidates colleges can look at WHILE simultaneously doing the opposite for Asians who might not have applied because they know the deck is stacked against them -- i.e. even if colleges try to maintain the quotas system, it will actually become doubly harder for them to do so because of this second order effect paired with the ruling itself
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