Affirmative Action Bad Except for the Rich

[subgenius]

College-Entrance Preferences for the Well Connected Draw Ire
By JACQUES STEINBERG


MIDDLEBURY, Vt. — One morning in late February, Mike Schoenfeld will gather about two dozen manila folders from his desk and carry them to a hearing room inside the admissions office of Middlebury College.

As the admissions committee listens, Mr. Schoenfeld, the dean of enrollment planning, will present what the college refers to as its "special interest" cases: those of applicants whose parents — by virtue of being loyal Middlebury alumni, fabulously wealthy or both — have captured the attention of the Middlebury administration.
.........
Now that critics of affirmative action have persuaded the Supreme Court to consider whether black and Hispanic applicants are taking the rightful spots of more-qualified whites, some supporters of race-conscious admissions are mounting a counteroffensive. They complain that it is the preferential treatment afforded some applicants because of their parents' wealth or college affiliation that is unfair.

........
"Affirmative action remedies past discrimination," Senator Edwards, a graduate of North Carolina State whose parents did not attend college, said in an interview. "Legacy admissions give more to kids who already have more."

Unlike affirmative action, the preferences for children of alumni have rarely been tested in the courts. But since the overwhelming number of beneficiaries of such policies are white, some scholars say that legal challenges are inevitable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/13/education/13LEGA.html

So can Bush, a beneficiary of "legacy" preference (think he would have gotten into Yale without it?) be against it for others, perhaps more needing of it, without seeming a bit hypocritical?
Does this expose him and the Republican party to more charges of racism?

[subgenius]

Should have posted in "Politics and Current Events.":confused:

[Tmy]

The typical anti AA rant: "It's not fair, the best qualified should be admitted."

Now find me one school that admits students soley on SAT and GPA scores.

[corplinx]

I think the deal is, any government university should not be entitled to any preferences whatsoever. Alumni preferences, Racial, Military, Rich, Poor, Smelly, Ugly. The admissions should be totally blind. Now, that is never the case. The gap is that the admissions person can still be put under pressure to "give this guys kid a break" or "get more minorities in" by upper staff without it being a set policy. However, its an imperfect world.

If a private university wants to use discriminatory admissions (affirmative action, alumni preferences, military preferences, etc) then I think they should forgo all government dollars including research grants and letting students pay with stafford loans/pell grants.

[patnray]

Affirmative Action was originally about actively recruiting qualified minority candidates to provide racial diversity. Unfortunately it degenerated into a quota system, which is much easier than recruiting applicants.

But an admission policy "blind" to race might be hard find. Consider a state university in a racially diverse state. One could identify a subset of all graduating high school seniors who are academically qualified for admission to the state university. One could determine the percentage of each ethnic group in the subset. If the admission policy is truely blind to race, then percentages of each group in the incoming freshman class should match the percentages in the subset.

In practice, at least here in California, eliminating affirmative action has resulted in disproportionate admissions to whites and asians compared to the subset of qualified high school graduates. One could argue that the admission policy is, therefore, not blind...

As long as a university can not accept every qualified applicant, there will always be someone who feels they were unfairly left out... At some point admission decisions become arbitrary.