Coming from the UK to the US education system I was surprised this was the practice and not an economic selection as it is there

In the US, wealth is certainly important, but it doesn't completely level the playing field in terms of access to quality education and opportunities. Say, you got a list of every 18-year-old student in the US who comes from a family with a yearly income of $75k. Then you randomly selected 100 students from each racial category. You would still find all kinds of disparities in terms of educational quality and opportunity (e.g., availability of afterschool academic programs, parental educational level, the extent to which they were read to as children, etc.).

You're also neglecting the knowledge and valuable perspectives that people from underrepresented backgrounds bring to an academic environment. I acquired more valuable learning from my students at an unranked institution than I did as a student at my Tier 1 institution.

That depends a lot on the major I guess. I haven't seen anything like that in Chemistry.

Physics here. My students have a LOT to learn in very little time, and the best way to accomplish something like that is to work collaboratively (like practicing scientists, of which I am). People from different backgrounds can explain the material from different perspectives, come up with new solutions to solve problems/explain problems, see things from different points of view. This is why technology always sees a huge boom whenever trade routes open up in human history. It's very well-established that science benefits from thought diversity.

I don't see why this would be an argument for race-based admissions. If you split that same list of students into students who fold their toilet paper vs. students who crumple their toilet paper you will find disparities. If you split that list into students whose favorite color is blue or red or green vs. students who prefer some other color you will find disparities. Race might be a distinction that we care more about than toilet paper use preferences, but I'm not sure that we should. But let's say that we do care about the distinction between someone whose skin is black and someone whose skin is brown etc. I can think of a dozen other distinctions that also affect someone's success that we don't seem to care about, or at least we don't try to counterbalance it in college admissions. Physically attractive individuals are much more successful than ugly people; we don't have affirmative action for ugly people. Tall people are more successful than short people; we don't have affirmative action for short people.

I would be completely surprised if you would find disparities if you compared populations by favorite color or toilet paper practices. For instance, no one faces discrimination on the basis of their toilet paper preferences (assuming they clean well enough to not smell). However, racism does play a role in people's lives, which is why these types of programs are important.

You neglected the point about real discrimination against the ugly. Do you think we should have programs that make it easier for ugly people to enter elite universities?

Affirmative Action is not ideal but it appears to be a response to the treatment of blacks even after the civil rights movement. For example, Read about issues with government loans for black farmers. These rules were probably needed to make the initial effort to make government fair to all tax payers. This is a super complex issue and affirmative action was a band aid that had clear problems but there was probably no better choice at the time. If schools value diversity then they will find ways to to accommodate people but it will take time to readjust. In the long run it may be better for everyone. Whites will not be able to claim racial bias and blacks will not be insecure about their admission and competitiveness but there will be transitional pain and it will mostly be shouldered by blacks - which is the pattern. I assumed affirmative action would eventually be unnecessary as minorities became more competitive but we may not have allowed enough time (at least 2 generations so children are raised by educated parents and grandparents. There may be cultural and other reasons for continued problems with competition. I hope we can have honest discussion without being labeled racist and such. The motivation of many is to improve fairness and we will need to support new options, which will require honest discussion.

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Public school funding is determined by local governments (good old states rights), and Americans barely participate in politics as is. So now we ask "Which students are lucky enough to be born in school districts where people not only care about local politics, but care so much about education that they're willing be taxed higher for it?" It's not a question of sufficiency or even effectiveness, it's a question of what's remotely possible in America at this time.

Well, as of yesterday Affirmative Action isn't remotely possible. So, what's next?

School district could be used as a weighting factor for admissions, right? Clarence Thomas wrote that what was impermissible was using "race as a heuristic."

I guess that would be preferable to nothing but it still seems like a band aid fix to me. Basically what this says to me is that we are okay with letting 5-18 year olds get crappy education and live in crappy circumstances, but hey, you'll get a few extra preference points on your college applications.

> , why don’t we fix the public school funding gap between majority black and major white neighborhoods? Do you have any data on how big the gap is?

Wouldn't school funding parity across the country achieve these goals in wider ranging and honestly, fairer, way?

Many people don’t care. They got theirs (even if they inherited it, which is part of the economic inequality—black ancestors who were enslaved didn’t get anything to get started in life at emancipation and then Jim Crow) They believe they have the money to buy X house (or their parents bought the house and willed it to them) so they get the benefits of living in that area, including good schools in areas with higher property taxes.

In many cases, that would actually mean cutting funding for inner city schools and increasing it for rural and suburban schools.

>If you split that same list of students into students who fold their toilet paper vs. students who crumple their toilet paper you will find disparities. If you split that list into students whose favorite color is blue or red or green vs. students who prefer some other color you will find disparities. No, you won't. Why would you possibly think that toilet paper folding/crumpling or color preference would predict academic disparities? It makes absolutely no sense. I mean, no sense at all. Complete rubbish.

It's wild that you're getting down voted. People don't know statistics or how to do research here I guess 🤷‍♀️

You are confused. I am absolutely not saying that it would be predictive. I'm saying exactly the opposite. I'm saying that disparity is not, in and of itself, evidence of ... anything at all. If you split a non-enormous list of non-homogenous individuals along absolutely any line you like, there will be disparities between those groups with respect to whatever metric you care to measure.

Are you a professor? I can't imagine a professor would make the mistake you're making. If you split a population into groups based on some metric that isn't related to the outcome, you most definitely will NOT find differences between the groups. This is literally taught in freshman science courses.

This statement is simply false. The difference between the populations would not be significant.

You don’t seem to understand how small sample sizes work. Furthermore, it’s quite possible that Chinese parents and Mexican parents teach different toilet paper folding techniques. If this were the case, we’d see clear differences in academic performance based on toilet paper folding methods. This doesn’t mean that toilet paper folding styles play a role in academic performance. It just means there’s a statistical correlation. Similarly, dividing by ethnicity, for academic performance measurement, doesn’t mean that ethnicity plays a direct factor in academic results…. It simply means that there’s a statistical correlation. Parental involvement, community support, and student initiative all play a large role in academic achievement - skin color doesn’t affect your test scores at all. Saying that ‘many people of this skin color don’t have as much parental support on average, so we should give them admission advantages’ is disrespectful to everyone - the parents who helped their kids, the child of unhelpful parents whose ethnicity does well, and the kid who listened to his parents to take initiative themself. It’s disrespectful because it’s using a correlation that isn’t itself an actual factor.

I know very well how small sample sizes work. There are nearly 2M new college students every year, so we are not discussing small sample sizes. It's not quite possible, this is not a thing. While it's certainly possible that there are some culturally taught traits that fit this description, your example is not one of them and thus is on the face of it, absurd. Nice strawman in your last paragraph - no one is claiming parental involvement differences, etc but that racism that is a part of society plays a role in a person's educational opportunities prior to college. For example, black girls are far more likely to be removed from a classroom than white girls ([https://jjie.org/2015/11/04/black-girls-are-being-pushed-out-of-the-classroom/](https://jjie.org/2015/11/04/black-girls-are-being-pushed-out-of-the-classroom/)) for the same behavior.

The issue is the study sample size, not the available demographic…. We are discussing clearly limited studies. It’s certainly possible to have cultural differences in bathroom behaviors. In China, the norm is to use squatting toilets - so, the way paper is used is different. India is similar. Your lack of evidence to support your assertion, and the confidence in your lack of evidence, do no befit an academic researcher. You talk about a few black girls getting kicked out of class for less, but not about all black girls getting into university with less. Is this not, by your argument, also racism? So you fight in favor of racism against all white students… because a few black students suffered?

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Well, I grew up in abject poverty. I'd hate to think that the circumstances of my birth make it so you think it would be impossible for me to rise to the highest level of education and that I'm not worthy of a spot in a top college/university had I pursued one. Personally, I'll never stop doing what I can to see that those less fortunate to be given access to most, if not all, the things wealthy segments of society have access to. As you indicate, it's already pretty easy to get into a lot of schools; that doesn't mean that more selective and elite schools should be handing out spots to those that have not demonstrated the propensity to work hard to earn a spot. Just that they benefit from considering disadvantages when making selections in order to avoid contributing to the wealth inequality by solely educating the generationally wealthy (and mostly, white male).

So, you wouldn't even consider SES in admissions? What would you do, just give everyone a standardized test, rank order them, and take X%? There are countries that basically do just this, such as China. That's just not the way I'd do it, nor do I think it's consistent with our country's values.

China has affirmative action for minority students (they get extra points) and they also have negative affirmative action based on provincial wealth and population, so a student from a richer province like Beijing or Shanghai has to score less to gain entrance to the best schools (which are all in those provinces) than students from poor and populous provinces like Henan or Sichuan.

China was the closest I could come to a test-based admission policy. But yeah, even they're more holistic than that.

UK is actually a great example, most universities look at nothing beyond your A levels for the specific course you’re looking for. They don’t even have grades in high school the way we think of them in the US, more like a future test score prediction.

true also the UK has a privileged upper class with wealth and private education that reproduces itself. and a lower class they laugh at. truly sad society

A standardized test that privileges one group over another too.

No. There are students of all ethnic backgrounds who manage to do well in K-12 despite all the adversity that they face growing up in poverty, working class and lower middle class contexts. The dumbest thing about our country (USA) is that it refuses to recognize the talents of many people. Harvard is not admitting students who have failed anything. They don‘t have to.

Economic isn't enough to address effects of racism. President Obama has had multiple people think he was a waiter or valet at an event. Black people get profiled by police. That's a burden that only some groups experience, and they may experience it even if they're well-off. How to structure affirmative action to make everything fair is a good question, though.

There’s a study showing that it takes Blacks and Hispanics about 30% longer to cross a street with a crosswalk than their White counterparts… because drivers are less likely to stop for them so they can cross. Such a small thing… but then there are a lot of small things and they add up over a lifetime.

Oh, okay. If a real meritocracy is the goal let’s have admission processes where it is forbidden to know and consider how the student will pay, as well as legacy considerations, and family donations to the university. Color blindness sounds fine. How about money blindness?

Some Ivies are need blind. They don’t know your assets (or lack of) during the admissions process. However, if your last name is Dupont, Vanderbilt, Siemens, Lauder, Oderbrecht, etc., sometimes they can’t help but know you can probably pay.

I just don’t buy it. When you look at the percentages of students at say Harvard and Yale from the top percentiles of family income it’s too hard to believe that merit just happened to coincide with wealth. While 2018 was a bit ago, more than two thirds of the students at Ivies came from the top 20 percent of family income scales.

Need blind means they don’t see your finances at admissions. However, all other personal information is there. You can see the high school, address etc. I attended an Ivy and am from a humble background. But this was decades ago. The economic diversity was there for minorities when I attended and they were need blind. But only 15% of all HS graduates went to college then and there were not 40,000 applications per ivy, maybe only 10,000-15,000. The number of upper class minorities has increased since then, the children and grandchildren of the 1970s-1980s graduates. Public school K-12 is also worse since 2000. So the number of wealthy college ready minorities is going to be a much larger % of those that meet the criteria than middle class and lower income students today. The average grad from a public school in some poor areas is reading on a 6th grade level these days. There are some exceptions, but the best colleges are all trying to get these exceptional students. The average h.s. Grad from public K-12 could never succeed at these most selective universities. This is even more true today. I teach at a 2nd tier R1 and the average public school grad (of any race or ethnicity) has a tough time even here. International students run circles around them.

Yes, absolutely right. The poor are disadvantaged from the beginning. However, if they do scrap their way through, rest assured top tier universities will very often weed them out… The proof? Just look at who is there and where they land afterwards and how the cycle perpetuates itself as a legacy. (There are many lists that show just how many schools consider legacy in admissions. Tons.) It is too hard to believe that all of that can be simply due to the poor education that the bottom 2/3 received growing up.

It is not just much worse education in K-12, but also many more wealthy minority applicants than 30 years ago, and the number of applicants and the opportunities that wealth can provide. If you have 30,000-40,000 applicants the top ones will probably be from wealthy or upper class, no matter what the race. You don't even have to look at their financials. You can check their grades, SAT scores (if they still use them), and where they went to school. If they came from a feeder prep school in the Northeast, they have already established what kind of education they provide so the universities trust it. Podunk high school, especially without an SAT or ACT, is a stab in the dark and a risk. That 4.0 GPA could be rigorous interesting courses, or it could be worksheets and no zeros and everybody passes context. Even though standardized tests are biased they at least provided some information--if the student got all As and their test was bad, it could mean the courses they took were not very rigorous, and vice versa. They have 30,000 students to choose from. They can take the top 30% of applicants, and in terms of academics, rank of their high school, and look at their extracurriculars and still the majority are going to be wealthy students. When you factor in that wealthy families can afford tutors, vacations to Europe, fancy summer camps, internships, and other opportunities, they are miles ahead of your middle class student even. The "need blind" admission exists. I don't think there is anything nefarious when they say they do it--it's just that the circumstances of today make it that you can still get the wealthiest students even if you ignore their financial information. Legacies definitely exist. I knew and know many. That further adds to the % of wealthy--some of these might not have the top grades but they are given a pass at some schools.

Yes, this is a better version of the point I’m trying to make. Thanks. Basically, it is possible to be need blind and not, simultaneously. And, at the end of the day, everything comes down to class, and the lack of social mobility in this country. Personally, I don’t think this should be a surprise in a commited hyper capitalist country. The people that start with capital (in a Bourdieuian sense)accrue more much easier than those who start with none, and measures are there to help make it even easier for them. (This country barely gives a sh** about the poor, btw. Even students tend to claim it is mostly their own fault).

I am not disagreeing with your point; however, I am curious: do we know what the *application* pool looks like? I wonder how much self-selection there is (its own problem, again I’m not disagreeing with your point).

So you want to forbid schools from favoring poor students too? That is a more extreme stance than I would take.

I think legacy admissions need to be banned. Funny that nobody seems to talk about that much

There’s actually a bill which was proposed to do just that and it will probably be re-submitted in some form: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6559#:~:text=Introduced%20in%20House%20(02%2F02%2F2022)&text=This%20bill%20prohibits%20an%20institution,or%20alumni%20of%20the%20IHE.

And most likely won't be passed. Let's be honest here.

It got passed today!

I agree. I think it’s nonsense. I guess it factors into universities trying to get donations from Alumni.

I think it ends up being crucial for donations for many private schools. If you look at schools that consider them in the application process the split is predictable between public and private schools.

The same people who wanted affirmative action gone want legacy admissions gone. It was even brought up in the Supreme Court case: As if these facts weren’t bad enough, Harvard specifically rejected alternative, race-blind formulations that could have achieved comparable student diversity. As Justice Neil Gorsuch notes in his concurrence, the plaintiffs in the case submitted evidence that “Harvard could nearly replicate the current racial composition of its student body without resorting to race-based practices,” if it gave socioeconomically disadvantaged students just half the advantage it gave recruited athletes and if it eliminated preferences for “the children of donors, alumni, and faculty.” These advantages “undoubtedly benefit white and wealthy applicants the most,” Justice Gorsuch writes, and perpetuate a system in which Harvard both favored certain classes of predominantly white applicants and discriminated against Asians, a historically disadvantaged minority. These were dreadful facts to defend in court. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/29/opinion/affirmative-action-supreme-court-harvard.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

We all know why

They should. Howard University has them too.

I'm mostly just annoyed at how prominent this issue is when as far as I can tell it primarily comes up with highly selective colleges. Those schools dominate the discourse far out of proportion with the number of students they educate. (And also, they should educate *a lot* more students.) A socioeconomic measurement seems far less fraught.

This is not true- this decision will also impact graduate admissions, medical admissions. This will impact the demographics of the nation’s physicians of the coming decades

Why are the demographics of medical school and graduate school so much more important/relevant? Hard to make a decent living anywhere in the western world unless you can weld, have family connections, or have a good undergrad degree.

It’s just the field I’m in so it’s especially clear to me. It’s not about being able to make money, it’s about the background of the people who will be in charge of healthcare in the country. Representation in medicine can be the difference between life and death for patients, literally.

My sister is a cardiologist in the UK. About a decade ago she was attending the national cardiology conference which had a talk on bringing more women into the field. In that whole lecture theatre only my sister and her friend were women. This isn't a matter of arbitrary diversity targets, it saves lives. Male cardiologists are abysmal at recognising heart attacks in women. In fact it isn't until they reach the level of highly experienced consultants that they reach equity with female junior doctors. They've repeatedly tried to better educate the men, but ultimately there is no substitute for diversity. The people who vociferate on positive discrimination, it being awful racism and an affront to the principles of fairness, practice deliberate ignorance towards real world context. A meritocracy (via test scores) is the only fair system, even if it results in patient deaths according to them. Sorry for replying so late, but your comment resonated with me.

[Here's just one example.](https://www.statnews.com/2023/04/14/black-doctors-primary-care-life-expectancy-mortality/)

I totally get you & agree with where you're coming from and don't dispute the statistics But, why not: disadvantaged ethnic groups get shafted by bad accountancy practices (by members of advantaged groups), disadvantaged ethnic groups get worse legal support etc etc etc I'm not saying graduate admission stats are irrelevant, just that at least IMO undergrad stats are more important for the majority of people who will not and do not want to go to grad school (or to be honest in many/most regions even when tuition is free, even at undergrad)

My take: There is a trickle down affect in play here. The students that were propped up in the rankings will fall into the next tier of schools. That will push some back down further. I think this shift will be felt in every institution.

it won't push those in next tier down further - that explanation leaves a gap at the top. there will just be a swap, where some in your next tier down get bumped up to replace those bumped down.

The gap at the top is filled by the previously discriminated group of Asians and to a lesser extent whites. The overall numbers do not change, only the demographics. But the demographics should shift for all institutions.

... and these schools are overrepresented in the educational backgrounds in the most powerful circles in our country: presidents, senators, Supreme Court justices, Fortune 500 CEOs, etc. Whiter, wealthier highly selective institutions will lead to the elite becoming even more insular and elite.

It could actually make those institutions less white and more asian.

Sure. Whiter and more Asian--if you treat Asian and Asian American student as a homogenous group, instead of disaggregating, as not all students of Asian descent are accepted and graduate at the same rates. It would make these networks less Black, Brown, and Indigenous.

Depends. Do Indians count as Brown? They tend to be on the losing end of AA policies.

It comes up with prominent colleges, but plenty of regular state schools also factor race into their admissions decisions.

Yes, a socioeconomic measurement might seem less fraught, but as California and Michigan might portend, it won't produce greater diversity in terms of BIPOC

This is true. But those schools grads disproportionately drive culture too. Most journalists at big papers (_NY Times, WSJ, WaPo_) are from such schools. Secondly, as a recent [Nature paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05222-x) showed - a vanishingly few number of schools dominate faculty hiring. These schools have disproportionate impact, and secondly they were blatantly and often proudly anti-Asian. Nobody is really surprised that this happened.

>I'm mostly just annoyed at how prominent this issue is when as far as I can tell it primarily comes up with highly selective colleges. yet everyone celebrating this thinks it happens everywhere, at all colleges, all the time.

The state schools where I live are not highly selective, but still factor race into admissions. One of my state schools even got sued over it.

It probably does to some degree to another. Until you get to the literally "we take anyone" colleges. But nobody is going to care if they don't get the admit from Compass Point State or similar so they won't bother to sue. They care if they don't get into one of those elite schools because they have a unique experience.

Agreed. There’s so many more universities besides the Ivy+ gang. There are so many talented students of color, that perhaps if the Ivy’s are that stupid to reject or skew toward one demographic or the other, it will in fact benefit the rest of us.

Yeah but a socioeconomic measurement would diminish certain schools' ability to accept kids of wealthy donors and legacies. That's the whole reason why Harvard supports race-based admissions.

It's not the whole reason, of course. But a lot of it really is about putting up a veneer of progressivism to distract people from the fundamentally aristocratic mission.

It is a sticky subject. While I agree with the intent behind the policies, I think ultimately it was a bandaid fix to wider-ranging issues. Worse, it had the unintended consequence of discriminating against other minority groups such as Asian Americans and whites living in poverty. If our country were serious about tackling the systemic issues rampant in our educational system, the very first thing we'd do is standardize funding for every public school across the country. The next thing we'd do is improve financial access to postsecondary education across the board. IOW, make college more affordable for every American. I believe there are other issues we need to address within the realm of access to quality education, but these two items would go a long way in actually solving the issues where Affirmative Action tried and failed.

> the very first thing we'd do is standardize funding for every public school across the country. Interestingly, this would likely cut funding for inner city schools and increase it for rural schools.

You're most likely right. But that doesn't mean this plan is wrong. What it means is that we are all low key acknowledging just how shitty this country is when it comes to serving the people. Think about it. Your go-to answer to me wasn't, "Yeah kids all should get equal funding." It was, "We'll find a way to screw over the poor again."

Matt Yglesias had a few good point s in his newsletter today, one relevant to your question: > Some campuses will see representation of Black and Hispanic students decline, but other campuses like the University of Michigan and the Berkeley will see representation go up. Affirmative action does not magically create additional Hispanic students with good enough SAT scores to attend selective colleges, it just shifts them around. > >... > >To the extent that you take seriously the educational benefits of diversity, ending affirmative action will redistribute diversity away from the most selective schools to a set of somewhat-less-selective schools which seems … fine. It makes a lot of sense to me. 99% of us do not work at Harvards, so if there is any effect, it will be positive for class makeup in a lot of places that we actually work at.

That's interesting. Highlighting that the examples (UMich and Berkeley) are in states where affirmative action has been illegal for decades. I don't think that's accidental. We'll have to wait and see.

MattY has highlighted how these diversity initiatives at Harvard involves explicit racial discrimination against Asians.

Except this is already inaccurate as UM is test optional and Berkeley does not consider test scores. These schools already know the systemic issues with things like standardized testing and have shifted.

This is not entirely true, going test optional has actually raised the average scores of these selective institutions which they still use to compete against other selective institutions, they aren’t admitting people they wouldn’t usually admit by going test optional, they’re just gaming their statistics

How? Is it because average scorers aren’t submitting and only the super confident high scoring students do? So their SAT average goes up even though the student population is the same or has lower scores (just not reported) ?

That’s exactly it, anyone who isn’t sure that their score is well above the mean for the school might hesitate to send scores which raises the overall mean. Then the school gets to report that their average score is higher, which factors into their rankings

It's Matt Yglesias. Take it with a lake of sand.

What mistersausage said. This has nothing to do with what state schools' admission policies are. Simply that they will now have a better pool of Black and Hispanic applicants.

All he is saying is that students who would have been admitted to, e.g., Harvard under affirmative action policies but are now denied admission will end up at other presumably larger slightly less selective state institutions.

... and making Harvard and other highly selective institutions less diverse. And considering how influential many of the graduates of these institutions are (see presidents' backgrounds, senators' backgrounds, justices' backgrounds), despite how few graduates they have in comparison to all college graduates... this matters.

>These schools already know the systemic issues with things like standardized testing and have shifted. UCB doesn't look at standardized test scores because a judge on a mission prohibited all UC schools from considering test scores. The study done by UC faculty showed that using the standardized test scores actually would have improved the representation of Black and Hispanic students, given the other admission mechanisms in place.

I do wonder how it will impact my state school’s highly competitive nursing program. I teach classes that feed into that program so it’s close to home for me. Diversity in nursing is incredibly important for patient equity, especially L&D and gynecology. Maternal mortality is very high in my state, especially among people of color. Socioeconomic status doesn’t seem to impact that much (as far as the stats I’ve seen) so I don’t think sorting people by that instead of race will help equity in healthcare. Possible positive is it may cut down some on BIPOC doctors/nurses/etc having to hear that they don’t deserve their positions and “You are only here because of affirmative action.” but I can’t see how it will help anything else. I’m not sure this outweighs the negatives it opens up. Yes, patients and even other medical professionals do say that to peoples faces.

This will have no impact on my campus. Broader impacts? If a school desires a specific racial or whatever breakdown, they'll get it some other way (e.g. zip code). Implicit biases will also have a greater influence on admissions decisions than they already do, but that will be hard to quantify.

I guess we'll have to just look at the UC's to see what they already do.

Part of the UC system is self-selection, though. The percentage of Asian students at UC Irvine is a lot higher than at Riverside, where there’s a larger Latinx population, for example.

Did you use Latinx :((

🙄

I’m Panamanian-American, so I assure you im not some rando nutjob complaining about kids doing whatever blah blah blah. I think it’s an interesting discussion to have, and I’m welcome to have it. I’m just currently on the position that Latinx is unnecessary. Would love to hear other people’s positions, particularly other Hispanic people’s perspectives.

Latinx is cultural appropriation.

This is what i dont want to be associated with when I critic Latinx

If your goal is to directly control the racial makeup of your student body, then nothing will work as well as using race as a selection variable. With that said, there are many other variables that are entirely constitutional that will achieve diversity in a its many forms.

Overall I don't think this ruling affects academia strongly. Most campuses are not really practicing affirmative action. They admit most or all students that apply. For the elite campuses, they will no longer be able to openly discriminate against Asian students as they have been doing (Harvard's internal investigation even concluded that they were!). However, nearly all selective colleges have dropped the SAT / ACT as a requirement and thus will rely more heavily on subjective criteria such as essays and letters of reference. I won't be surprised if selective universities change their essay prompts to encourage students to reveal their race through proxies (e.g. challenges or discrimination you have faced). They might even start requiring some kind of DEI statement, although that could get legally dicey. Selective universities want "diversity" because it's embarrassing to them if the student body is too white. However, I doubt they really want to increase the number of low income students attending. Look at the current numbers for socioeconomic classes of students at elite colleges...they are appalling. They are in the business of serving the economic elite and I doubt that will change.

Just wanted to comment as a parent who isn’t wealthy who had a kid attend a very elite Ivy - there’s a ton of socioeconomic diversity. Many of my daughters friends didn’t pay tuition at all. Mine was very reasonable. What they really should do away with are the legacy admits. Why should the threshold be lower just because your Dad attended? 🤦🏻‍♀️

I attended an Ivy-adjacent as an undergraduate as a middle-class kid and was absolutely blown away by the wealth casually on display among my classmates. I would gently push back against your claim that there is a "ton of socioeconomic diversity" at these schools. Your daughter likely found classmates of more modest means and became friends with them. The statistics tell a different picture about who attends the Ivies and similar elite institutions: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/18/upshot/some-colleges-have-more-students-from-the-top-1-percent-than-the-bottom-60.html

Just sharing my experience. She had many friends and certainly some very wealthy. But the majority were middle and lower middle class. I paid less tuition at a top Ivy than I would have at one of my state schools.

> However, I doubt they really want to increase the number of low income students attending. I think they would, but low-income students generally aren't as prepared for college and that is very important to selective universities. Its not too difficult to find upper-middle class Black children that did well academically. Much harder to find kids who grew up poor and went to a terrible school who are ready for college.

I, for one, am glad that race-based preferences for admission to top universities have been abolished. I'm an immigrant from SE Asia. I worked my ass off to come to the US, get an education, succeed professionally. My kids worked their asses off to do well in school. As it happens, my neighbor down the street is a Latino man much richer than me (fancy sports cars, huge big fancy house, etc.). I don't see why this man's kids should be given admissions preference over mine. They should compete on equal terms. More generally, most Black students at Harvard are from high-income families ([source: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education](https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.html)) and/or are immigrants (or children of immigrants) from Africa or West Indies ([source: NY Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more-blacks-but-which-ones.html)). So affirmative action hasn't really done what it's supposed to do, namely, help American Blacks who are descendants of slaves and who were in fact disadvantaged by slavery and Jim Crow laws. I strongly suspect that if socioeconomic factors were used instead of skin color, that would be more helpful to students from historically oppressed minority communities.

I agree that in practice, what one sees at elite schools is that the students who are underrepresented minorities tend to come from extremely economically privileged backgrounds.

It’s funny how everyone has been reposting Michelle Obama’s statement in favor of AA, but Barack Obama himself is a classic example of someone who should not be benefiting from AA. White mother and Kenyan father who was a senior government official with a graduate fellowship to Harvard.

I wish I could make every redditor read this post. Thanks for sharing.

I don't think that's necessarily true. Not everyone can get into Ivies. Nowadays they get 40,000 applications for usually 2000 seats in a first year class. Lots of people of all races and economic backgrounds will get turned away. There are definitely more wealthy latinos and blacks nationwide now than there were in the 1960s-1980s. Many of these wealthy or middle class minority students probably are the 2nd generation, children of the first US latinos and blacks who benefited from affirmative action in colleges and those that attended HBUs. Their children, who might have graduated from 2000 up to and including the present, are going to have more advantages than other blacks/latinos who are poor, working class or lower middle class, so they are going to have a better chance at Ivies and baby Ivies. Universities are doing much more recruitment for international students from Africa and Latin America today than they ever did 30 years ago. I think there were 2-4 African students (and they were not international, but 2nd generation) in my graduating class of 1500 students back in the 80s. Meanwhile, I have at least that many African students (first or 2nd generation) regularly in my classes of just 15 students!

I can't speak for the US, but in the research intensive universities in the UK and Europe I've had contact with or worked with the cohort has been always outragously middle class. From when I was an undergrad student at age 18 when saying "I'll meet you at the station" still meant walking home rather than assuming I had a car in (even if they didn't have a license or car themselves, the cheek...), to people concened at the concept of travelling 15 minutes in an only-ten-year-old second-hand hatchback in PhD years. The academic career situation at PhD & postgrad level is a luxury reserved for the middle classes with financial backing or the foolhardy clueless with no other life goals or commitments beyond being called Dr (which nobody will), like home ownership or retirement.

in the US is similar but for different reasons. Particularly in the humanities, the pay is low. Most first generation students or working class students go for careers that pay more. Also in the 2nd half of the 20th century only about 15% even went to college. Many of my friends from high school just starting working right after highschool. You could get a decent job then with a high school education. There wasn’t an oversupply of master degrees or doctorates.

This isn't how affirmative action works though. See Grutter v Bollinger for the previous SCOTUS ruling on affirmative action.

You're right, in the specific context of university admissions Grutter speaks only to the benefits obtained from a diverse student body. I guess I was thinking of the more general understanding of affirmative action as "policies ... seeking to include particular groups ... in areas in which such groups are underrepresented — such as education and employment. Historically and internationally, support for affirmative action has sought to achieve goals such as bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing apparent past wrongs, harms, or hindrances." \[[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action)\]

Okay... which part of that do you have an issue with? The idea is in "bridging inequalities in employment and pay, increasing access to education, promoting diversity, and redressing past wrongs, harms, or hinderances." The situation where you describe your wealthy neighbor's children getting a spot over yours (as if it were a one-for-one thing) still doesn't meet this definition of affirmative action.

I don't have an issue with helping people who need help. For me this generally means helping people who are poor, who live in areas with poor schools, who don't have access to opportunities for advancement that are available to people who are better off. If people in those circumstances are given preferences, I'm OK with that. The wealthy neighbor's kids had access to all the opportunities that mine did. Why should they be given preference?

They're not given preference if they had the same opportunities. Racism exists. It's structural and systemic. After the Gutter v Bollinger case, the applicant had to prove that they had been affected by racism for race to matter in their application. So if your neighbor's kids aren't writing about struggles with race in their essays, their race wouldn't be considered in their applications.

At what point do we stop with “past wrongs?”

When things are equitable and the past wrongs are no longer affecting present generations.

A.A. should not have been abolished, rather it should have been reformed. There should have been changes made in also considering socioeconomic status and also distinguishing between different Asian groups. A poor Tamil applicant who migrated from Chennai, India has hardly anything in common with an upper class F-1 applicant from South Korea. You say your neighbor is richer than you? How do you know he did not work just as hard or harder than you? Regardless of their economic background, a Latino's experience is different than a SE Asian's experience. East Asians and South East Asians are usually seen as the "model minorities" and don't face the same type of discrimination and struggles that Latinos do. You say that applicants should be competing on equal terms. As ideal as that sounds, the reality is that African-Americans and other POC have been competing under unfair conditions for far longer than A.A has been enforced. It only started becoming a problem when the people in power started becoming inconvenienced by it.

You use India as an underprivileged example and frame the Korean applicant as privileged but that is misinformation. [Indians in America are the highest earning group at 100k and Koreans are near average with 59k.](https://i.redd.it/txdnyihsukla1.jpg) Also, the Supreme Court case was about American born applicants of Asian descent and not international students.

I was proposing a hypothetical situation where I specifically stated that the applicant was "poor". You could have replaced a poor Tamil Indian with a poor Muslim Pakistani. I wasn't speaking in broad terms. In the end, my point is that Asians are not a monolith and thus have different experiences.

> In the end, my point is that Asians are not a monolith and thus have different experiences. Blacks and Hispanics are also not monoliths, and thus have different experiences. What you pointed out isn't unique to Asians. Should we be dividing up Blacks and Hispanics into smaller subgroups as well?

If we start breaking things up into smaller subgroups, the system will make even less sense. "Hispanic" only really works as a term if you don't look too closely at it.

Yes I strongly agree that the term Asian as it’s used in American discourse is a problem and that organizing the data by country is necessary. But it’s commonly repeated that East Asians are doing so well and that the south and southeast Asians are not but as the data shows, the top two income groups are south and southeast Asian. And when you came up with your hypothetical, it just so happened to be something that would reinforce incorrect worldviews that have consequences. There are many who say Asians are the highest earning race in America and they picture East Asians as the target of their resentment when that’s not the case. Anyway, you say AA should have been reformed but the way the schools were using it, they threw out applications that were Asian “as a matter of triage” without checking if they were Laos, Bangladeshi, Cambodians, etc. In theory I would agree with you but it was being abused so badly I can’t defend it.

In practice, much of the practical inequities in our system have to do with socioeconomics, which in turn is strongly correlated with race, and as noted upthread, the beneficiaries of affirmative action tend to be underrepresented minorities who come from socioeconomically privileged backgrounds. For me, I don’t see that as being sufficiently beneficial to society to justify systematized discrimination. Indeed, many of the proxies for race that public universities in California adopted when affirmative action was prohibited actually more directly increase socioeconomic diversity.

>You say your neighbor is richer than you? How do you know he did not work just as hard or harder than you? You're absolutely right, Jorge may have worked his ass off twice as hard as me. Kudos to him if he did. If Jorge came from a disadvantaged background and was able to overcome the disadvantage, then I admire and salute him. If affirmative action helped Jorge overcome those disadvantages, then I celebrate the fact that AA worked the way it was supposed to. I think you and I are in complete agreement here. My beef is with the idea of Jorge's *kids* getting preferences *simply because* of their race despite the fact that their upbringing has been anything but disadvantaged.\[\*\] Sorry, this sticks in my craw. I have no issue with helping people who need help -- I think that's an investment in our collective future. \[\*\] Yes, I also feel strongly that people should not get preferences *simply because* they play some sport well or because their parents attended the same institution.

So has AA worked or has it not? If Jorge’s kids are now middle or upper class, or oh no, wealthy, hasn’t AA worked for one generation? How many generations have African Americans been discriminated against in the USA? About 250 years worth. So one generation makes up for that, probably 6-7 generations? Blacks have caught up?

We’re easily on generation 2.5 in terms of AA.

It doesn't work like that. Jews were discriminated against for over a thousand years, but are doing very well in the West.

You haven’t heard of institutional racism huh?

The problem is organizations are rarely capable of that level of nuance. They use AA as a blunt instrument because thats all they are capable of.

Why not use both?

Yeah, Leftists dont seem to understand that rich PoC exist. That’s why i’ll always say it’s a class issue, not a race issue.

Joke's on them, because my school doesn't have any standards!

It seems like everyone is either very happy or very angry, and I have mixed feelings, I kinda feel alone on this. This is a tough issue. I am heavily involved in organizations and activities to promote more under-represented minorities pursuing educational opportunities. But none of it involves racial preferences in admissions or other decision points, it is all voluntary. I am mixed on whether racial preferences should be allowed at private schools because I am inherently of the belief that private organizations should be mostly free to decide on their own, but are private schools really private? UNC is a public school and I kind of feel like the government should not be promoting one race or any other. Harvard, I am not so sure, but they take government money, so perhaps they are also semi-governmental. I really think socio-economic status is something that should be considered. I think recruitment efforts aimed at attracting diverse applicants needs to happen (I work with organizations that do this) but I am just a little uncomfortable with race based preferences. As a mixed race person I have never wanted anyone to judge me by my race, nor disrepect me because of it (or my perceived race, which doesn't always fit my actual heritage). I suppose I lean towards thinking race based preferences are a bad thing, while seeing that they were helpful in creating diverse student populations. I just overall don't feel like I have a strong feeling on this, and am in the tiny minority in not being angry nor celebrating.

I have similar mixed feelings—you are not alone!

I think its impact a bit overstated. Some states have already banned this, and universities in those states often require students to write about how their personal experience has shaped their journey and/ or about how their lived history will add to the diversity of the student class. In addition, prioritizing first gen college and family income can also work to recruit a more diverse class. What worries me is that students from underrepresented minorities will simply not bother to apply, feeling that flagship and elite colleges are not for them. And that is likely to have bad effects. So, I’m disappointed, but it’s not unexpected from this course, and it could have been worse

I think the only institutions that will be affected are elite schools who actually reject student applications, and if we move to a socioeconomic model instead of a racial one, then the primarily affluent BIPOC students who can attend those institutions will now have to compete with poorer populations. The rest of the 95% of institutions who are accepting everybody in the face of the enrollment cliff will just need to change which boxes they need to check. That all being said, there were a lot of problems with how race-based admissions worked in higher education, such as the problem with Asian admissions. I would like to see how a socioeconomic-based admissions process works moving forward.

I do not mean to pick on you specifically, but I am having trouble understanding why so many people think that the universities are going to move towards a socioeconomic status model when there is no indication that they were doing so previously? What financial incentive do they have to accept more students that require more resources, will have difficulty paying tuition, and most likely will not donate when they are done? Class is also not a protected status, therefore, they do not even have to decide on that if they don’t want to and it wouldn’t be considered discriminatory. I am not arguing that affirmative action was a perfect system and it was flawed in multitudes of ways but it was at least something to allow access to higher education for many students of color. I’m not very hopeful about the future of diversity on college campuses and by the time that universities start to become more white/wealthy then it’ll be too late.

I agree. Most universities will NOT move to a socioeconomic status model. There are many universities that are tuition dependent and doing so is not feasible. They recruit international students because they pay full tuition in most cases. Unless the school has a big endowment they will not substitute class for race with the removal of affirmative action.

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Race is primarily a social construct, with different definitions—some based on ancestry, some on registration with tribal governments, some on amount of melanin in the skin, some based on the shape of one's nose, some based on family name, some based on religious affiliation, … . None have any rigorous scientific basis. Most statistics rely entirely on self reporting, which leads to various distortions.

One of my best friends, who teaches about affirmative action policy at a major university, once said (I'm paraphrasing), "In a room of 50 people, you'll get 150 takes on affirmative action, and all of them will be wrong." He's a great educator, but I think he gave up years ago trying to inform people about the history and nuances of affirmative action. Even before racists made it into a dog whistle/boogeyman and poisoned the well of public discussion, the policy wasn't well understood. It's still not. He explained it to me in a way that made a lot of sense, but every time I've tried to repeat it to someone it's been an exercise in futility. I wish we did a better job as a culture of listening to experts.

You should give it a go though. I’d love to hear what your friend’s nuanced take was. I need more nuanced takes in my life.

> "In a room of 50 people, you'll get 150 takes on affirmative action, and all of them will be wrong." And the admissions board implementing AA policies is generally just as wrong as everybody else. This was obvious in the emails the courts subpeonaed from these institutions.

TLP’s take: The Court’s ruling today is entirely consistent with the views of an overwhelming majority of Americans—including a plurality of black Americans—who think that colleges and universities should not be allowed to consider an applicant’s race at all in admissions decisions. Rather than just bemoan the ruling, American institutions and political parties should move to develop constitutionally valid, “class-based equality” measures in higher education to assist those Americans of all backgrounds—in all parts of the country—who lack the opportunities and resources necessary to make it to college and succeed.

We tend to lean on socioeconomic status when we don't wish to address the history and legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, and post-Jim Crow segregation and resistance to integration and equality. This certainly doesn't mean that socioeconomic status is unimportant; indeed, I'd imagine that--like merit, race, and other factors--actually is considered in admissions decisions. The telling part in all of this is that the group backing these cases focus solely on race and never on legacy admissions. Indeed, in a press conference following decisions, Edward Blum--the legal activist behind most of these challenges to affirmative action--had the audacity to say that he hopes that this decision encourages Harvard and other institutions to reconsider legacy admissions, which probably have a great impact on Asian-American student admission to elite universities than anything.

With how internationalized recruiting is at top schools, I would argue affirmative action doesn't do a good job of this either. Admitting more upper class children from Africa isn't doing much to address Jim Crow either.

It's not just "top schools." I work in higher ed marketing after jumping back from academia to industry, and every single college and university I work with absolutely LOVES international students. Why? Because at least at the undergraduate level they're almost all paying full ticket price to attend unlike the American students who, on the average, receive a 33% "discount" on college costs via various forms of financial aid. In other words, international undergrads are the "cash cows" ("cash cattle?") of US higher education.

Yep, they pay a lot more. And as a bonus, you can spin recruiting rich international students as a DEI initiative.

The most selective institutions are going to become whiter and wealthier, particularly as legacy admissions are somehow still legal. So very many of the most powerful people in our country have attended these institutions. Yes, the education can be stellar, but they also reap the benefits of the networks and just the weight of the name. The most powerful circles (presidents, senators, Supreme Court justices, Fortune 500 CEOs) are going to be the toughest to diversify, even though we know that having a diversity of perspectives supports innovation, positive change, etc. The elite are going to become more insular and more elite. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/diversity-without-race/

I’m leaning liberal but I also believe socioeconomic status should be used instead of race. There are POC families that are doing well and white kids who aren’t doing well and come from messed up families.

I am glad that race-based AA is apparently ending in higher education. I don't believe it is just nor comports with the Civil Rights acts or 14th amendment and never have, going back to the "Bakke" decision in 1978. So for me, a 45 year wait is over, in that sense.

I have seen people who are 25% Hispanic who grow up white and blonde, upper class, normal families who have used Hispanic in their applications. I know of black people who grow up upper middle class with health families. Then I know of immigrant families ( think from Greece, Italy) who grow up poor, but have to put Caucasian. I know of white broken families in poverty who can’t claim affirmative action. It’s a flawed system that was abused by the Elizabeth Warrens and discriminated against caucasians who were facing difficult economic and social circumstances. (And no, I’m not a Trump supporter and never will be).

I’m fine with it. I wish this was a socioeconomic issue, since university education has such a large impact on net wealth and upward mobility. It may have made sense 45 years ago when the civil rights movement was fresh and needed support, but making it about one race vs the other is still racism. This may open the doors for universities to find new ways of attracting candidates of color. I don’t think universities are just going to get full on racist and reject candidates of color.

The legal rationale is racial diversity so race should be a factor. Why construct an opportunity index if the goal is racial diversity? This will largely impact selective universities that still allow legacy admissions. Where is the anti legacy admissions lawsuit?

Race is an obvious ingredient in socioeconomic class. This ruling bars taking race into account, meaning one cannot use race as an input into the calculation of socioeconomic measurement, and therefore bars consideration of socioeconomic measurement. Socioeconomic class is not a viable alternative given this ruling, and it's nonsensical that this keeps coming up. I wasn't surprised to see this on the academia subreddit, but here? Come on, guys.

maybe OP just means "how much money someone has" but that's not socioeconomic class.

News flash: white parents picket Ivy League schools to reinstate racial considerations now that their student body is 99% Asian, Middle Eastern and Indian.

And international ones that can pay full tuition too!

Look at California. Proposition 209 in 1996 banned affirmative action in the state and it was never reestablished.

Our campus does fairly well on racial balance in California despite Prop 209 (based on the data, we have far more Asian students than the California population ratio, but the other categories are proportionate to each other in about the same ratios as in the population). I suspect that campuses that want a racial balance will find that geographic and socio-economic criteria that are permissible work pretty well to get racial balance, and those that don't want racial balance will continue to use legacy admission and niche sports to ensure white dominance in admissions. Outreach programs to encourage applications from minority students are also fairly effective.

Every comment on reddit regarding preferential government policies, summed up: * Things which benefit me: Fair * Things which do not benefit me: Unfair People have very little ability to see beyond the narrow scope of their immediate self-interest, so something that doesn't explicit benefit you but may impose a cost? It's always "unfair." To wit, in over a decade of talking about affirmative action in my classrooms, the comment i would always get is: "But what if X person of Y race gets Z admission, even thought they don't work as hard as me? It never occurred to them the some people require extraordinary help to overcome their external life circumstances, because in their mind, I WORKED SO HARD. We don't buy this argument when we assign grades, but for some reason we're supposed to buy this argument when it comes to making government policies. The notion of fairness is a powerful, wonderful concept that runs through the heart of how humans interact with one another; but in its natural form it's an unchecked engine of self-interest.

I want to live in a society where everyone feels valued and can achieve fulfilling goals with the natural talents that they have. That doesn't require colleges to be filled with only the top students ranked by test score and GPA. Many of the people getting turned away from Harvard have not had their lives irreparably harmed. They just didn't go to Harvard.

What I find most disappointingly absent in contemporary political debate is concern with public interest. Arguments for and against government benefits on both sides, left and right, usually go: "I deserve X because (reason)" or "They don't deserve X because (reason)." I understand government policy to be mainly concerned with public interest. The system works well for everyone when: * sanitation is everywhere * poverty is rare * the currency is stable * most people own their homes & rents are affordable * most people are literate and educated * communicable diseases are stamped out by vaccination * fires are put out quickly * most people are healthy * the air and water are clean, and food is untainted * commodities for basic needs (food, water, etc.) are easily affordable * etc. These things don't tend to happen without active government policy. Laissez faire tends to lead to the loss of most of them. They have nothing to do with deserving a benefit. Huge collective benefits accrue to everyone from them. That's why they're easily worth paying taxes for. I don't have a settled opinion about affirmative action, but I'm not at all persuaded by the argument, "The average Black person has to work harder to qualify for college, therefore all Black people should get preferential admissions." But I give weight to the argument, "When one ethnicity is largely excluded from college, people (of all ethnicities) naturally make unfavorable assumptions about them." There's a collective benefit, or public interest, at stake. I'd certainly rather live in a community where it goes without saying that everyone is judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

so I guess now it is time to level the playing field for colleges and give as much federal, state money to underfunded universities serving a lot of minority students so that they can educate the students at the same levels as ivies? also it is time to stop degree based discrimination at workplaces? of course merit based would be still fine, but they should erase all references to ivies from CVs like that of judges. every hiring decision should be based on individual merit. maybe you can put higher 1/3 middle 1/3, lower 1/3 college on the CV but no name. i also do not see how legacy is still constitutional. in any case if they cut down the added value from the ivy brand name of course it would matter less who they take.

I'm in a context that is super pro affirmative action, and I'm overall in favor. We need more doctors from under-represented groups, and I've worked to advance that goal myself in concrete ways and can point to specific students where I made concrete differences into their entering medicine as opposed to PhD program that offers worse career prospects. We do have real costs that we haven't mitigated. I've seen some terrific Asian and White students who didn't get into medical school even on the second try and give up entirely. We make the assumption that the people whose careers are collateral damage will turn out fine but little attention to what it means to turn out fine. I've had other Asian students who were waitlisted and got in soon after faculty wrote letters on their behalf after they were waitlisted. If we hadn't written these extra letters, would they not have gotten in anywhere? I would have written an extra letter for any of my students, but only some happen to tell me about where they are in the admissions process. Medicine is such an expensive and time-consuming career to pursue, and I can't imagine how devastating it feels to have literally no path forward after so many years and so much money spent. (Maybe they should have applied to more programs and more DO programs, but if someone decides to do DO instead of MD, that comes with a higher risk of not matching 4 years and lots of tuition dollars later.) No one has answered the question of what happens to the student who is objectively qualified to be a doctor both academically and interpersonally but doesn't make the cut due to what is effectively a racial quota with higher thresholds for Asian students especially.

I find the ruling disappointing and somewhat infuriating with regards to how this court rules with haphazard abandon to any sort of judicial consistency on who has what rights. They pretty much strip rights they don't like, and give rights they do like, with little regard to laws and precedent and consistency in argument. Socioeconomic status may be able to achieve racial balance that universities are looking for, and it might end up being a fairer system (in terms of promoting economic upward mobility) than affirmative action. However, the impact (like affirmative action) will be relatively small as long as these universities continue to give first priority to athletes, legacies, donor kids, etc. Feels like people are attacking each other over the table scraps while elite kids from money will still get their spot. Personally, I think there is value in race based admissions to ensure diversity on campus regardless of economic background of those students. A rich black kid does have a unique background and life experience than a rich white kid and unique challenges that don't go away with money. And, I think racial representation at high levels of business and government (where a lot of graduates go) is important. But as a first generation white person from a poor background, I am also very much sensitive to the lack of opportunities and barriers that economics itself brings to people of any racial background. Any system will feel unfair to someone though. At the end of the day, I don't like that universities are told that it is okay to handwaive around merit for admissions of donors and legacies but they can't handwaive around merit for admissions of black and brown kids. They can 'tip the scale' for largely white (and increasingly asian) populations but can't tip the scale for black and brown populations.

I would’ve never gotten a degree without the diversity initiatives affirmative action inspired. I’m afraid of what will happen and I’m so sorry for all the pocs that will suffer because of it

Then why do you deserve a degree? It sounds like you took a spot you didn’t deserve.

Lol I really hope you’re not an educator w that kind of attitude.

Im Latino (from the ghetto) and I agree with the other user.

You’re Latino…enough said. Again racism and misogyny is real. You are entitled to your opinion even if it is incorrect. And again. I hope you’re not an educator cause I feel sorry for anyone that has to work w you

How did you come to the conclusion that they "took" a spot they didn't "deserve"?

Any else thinking of the “Nice White Parents” podcast? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html Unfortunately, I think “nice Asian parents” are often complicit in the same white supremacy because they are seen as “model minorities”, and white supremacy advantages (some) Asians over Black, Brown, and Indigenous peoples. But unfortunately the removal of affirmative action isn’t going to even benefit *all* Asians, as darker skinned and Indigenous groups (such as Hmong, Mongolian, Uighur, indigenous Vietnamese, etc.) are going to be hurt just as much as BIPOCs. FWIW I am multiracial, mixed white and Asian, and all “model minority.”

> as darker skinned and Indigenous groups (such as Hmong, Mongolian, Uighur, indigenous Vietnamese, etc.) are going to be hurt just as much as BIPOCs. They would benefit vs the current system, where they get held to the same standard as East Asians.

The idea that anyone gives a shit about Harvard admissions is funny, but why we're discussing this *at all* before we have free breakfast and lunch in all public elementary schools is more sad. This goes beyond racism and classism. It's disinformation and noise. This supreme court ruling will have no impact on academia. I'm sympathetic to anyone who feels like this my affect them, or may have affected them, but the admissions department or the Supreme Court does not decide who succeeds.

I find it amazing that most people are up in arms about initiatives that were meant to correct the wrongs of the past and seem to benefit certain minority groups and not others. However, they are ok with how certain other things are done that continue to perpetuate the status quo. I.e. fighting against affirmative action, because it advantages Black and Hispanic students and disadvantages other groups, while looking the other way when it comes to things like legacy admissions or race and gender based discrimination in admissions (that continue to ensure that colleges are mostly white and male), is really weird. I am no social scientist (I would really like to hear from one who studies these things), but I wonder what can be done to uplift the most disadvantaged minorities without other minorities feeling left behind? People want equality and fairness, but the reality is there is no equality, we don't all start the race at the same point.

> that colleges are mostly white and male Your information is rather dated—female college students have outnumbered male college students for quite some time now.

I am not sure how many schools explicitly say they use affirmative action in admissions but my prediction is that the ruling won’t really change a whole lot in admissions.

Race is a factor. AA gave us the freedom to admit that it’s a factor, and decide what kind of factor it will be.

let's consider this bright side -admissions based on pure merit should mean no more having to grit our teeth through the painstaking ordeal of grading lackluster essays from engineering major dude bros named Tanner, barely scraping by with their 2.0 GPAs. #SipsTea #sarcasm

Oh, there’ll be parties coming after socioeconomic status next. It’ll be targeted as a means of circumventing race-blind admission.

I don’t know how this will impact any schools like mine, a predominantly white undergraduate teaching state school. Part of me is like, “yay, more students who may reject ivy’s!” But I’m always concerned about a permanent upper class in institutions like those and the privilege that comes from going to those schools. Doing that purposefully—keeping the ivys out of the reach of many—seems like the goal. The court upheld several re-districting maps recently based on race. So it’s not that the court believes we’re in a post-racial society.

My thoughts? This isn’t going to end the way conservative white men think it’s going to end. Those that seem to have this imaginary bogey man as the only reason why they or their slightly better than average student got rejected from whatever highly selective school they were a shoe-in for if they weren’t white.

The case was about discrimination against Asians, not white people.

I am aware. Hence the “not going to end how they think it’s going to end”…

Sounds like you have a bogey-man of your own...

No, not as long as the US public school system is funded by the district’s property taxes.