Affirmative action has failed

[Anonymous]

Weather affirmative action has failed is also debatable based on what you view its purpose as. If you view it as a time-limited extra support system provided to give specified groups a bit of a leg up due to past inequities that is very different from saying that all races should be proportional he represented in schools. I do not agree at all that schools should aim for proportional representation based on race. I do believe that affirmative action to address pass in equities, as well as providing admission to kids (of all races) who show potential but appear to have been supported due to circumstances, makes very good sense. That is a very different policy, though.

[Anonymous]

It's such a big leg up so this is mind boggling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This isn't a failure of affirmative action, but of our education system as a whole. Poor, URM kids go to crappy schools, which set them back from the very beginning. If all American children went to comparatively high quality schools, I would bet money that URM would have higher representation and AA would not even be necessary.

It's not entirely a school problem. The parents of these children also have a role here. There is only so much a school can do if the family / parent figures are not supporting the child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not an expert researcher. But the article is missing some data that I want. The article is using college age population for each group as the base. I don't want that to be the only information I'm given. I would like to know what percent of the total population base of each group has even applied to college at all. Does that make sense? Maybe the % is the same if you compare it to total number of college applicants rather than total percent of college age kids of each group.

I think that's a really good point and would make a tremendous difference to the figures. "College aged" is not sufficient it is a blanket group which will include non-English speakers, kids who dropped out of high school aged 16 or thereabouts and those who went into trades with no intention of ever attending college. Its not a detailed enough category.

No, that's entirely the point. You start from the premise that all kids are equally educable. Not that some people by virture of their skin color drop out at higher rates.

Of course this true. But it's not a COLLEGE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION problem if the kids don't apply in the first place.

[Anonymous]

In VA it's possible to forgo insurance and pay the $500 uninsured fee. You are then personally liable if you do get in an accident.

https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/commercial/#insurance/umvfee.asp

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole idea is so "un-american." Let kids compete. Let the best win.

Agree but get rid of SATs and ACTs which are designed for a certain student, not the smartest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Imo things would be better if we went to a full transparent quota system.

Ivy League should be 20% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, 10% Jewish, 30% gentile white.

Would be a acceptable compromise based on population mixture

It would make for a happier campus as well. Blacks and hispanics have a lot less rates of suicide and a lot more fun.

I never thought of this before, but I like it. It makes sense.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole idea is so "un-american." Let kids compete. Let the best win.

Agree but get rid of SATs and ACTs which are designed for a certain student, not the smartest.

+1

"To the test" really has its drawbacks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In VA it's possible to forgo insurance and pay the $500 uninsured fee. You are then personally liable if you do get in an accident.

https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/commercial/#insurance/umvfee.asp

+1

But how many people pay the fee? What do they do about it? Why should mandatory insurance NOT be a thing (in the interest of everyone)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's such a big leg up so this is mind boggling.

It might not be as mind boggling if the applicant pool demographics were known. Another interesting data point would be the percentage of applicants of each race rejected from each school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would be interested to see enrollment trends for Jewish students and Italian-American students

How would you find that? Both are white and not tracked.

You are naive if internally this data isn't tracked

No it is not tracked

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This isn't a failure of affirmative action, but of our education system as a whole. Poor, URM kids go to crappy schools, which set them back from the very beginning. If all American children went to comparatively high quality schools, I would bet money that URM would have higher representation and AA would not even be necessary.

It's not entirely a school problem. The parents of these children also have a role here. There is only so much a school can do if the family / parent figures are not supporting the child.

+1 schools are only reflective of the students (ergo, the parents) who attend them. You can try all you want, but teaching students who come from homes where education is an afterthought is HARD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's such a big leg up so this is mind boggling.

It might not be as mind boggling if the applicant pool demographics were known. Another interesting data point would be the percentage of applicants of each race rejected from each school.

One could make an educated guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole idea is so "un-american." Let kids compete. Let the best win.

Yes, that would be fair if they were all starting from the same 'starting line'. Best and brightest are usually the rich and whitest, just because of the early educational advantages these kids have. You have a lot better chance of going to college if you school is located in a wealthy community.

The kids that get into college are not the smartest, they are the most privileged = FACT.

That's not a FACT, fool.

[Anonymous]

So these are the colleges where white students are now a minority:

Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, all of the UCs, Harvey Mudd, Pomona, Swarthmore, Wellesley, Caltech, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Rice, Stanford, USC, University of Hawaii, Rutgers, UT Austin, UW

Couple this with the best 20 schools for socioeconomic diversity: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/05/25/sunday-review/opinion-pell-table.html

And you get- All the UCs except Merced, Pomona, Harvard, Wellesley, Stanford, UW, and Columbia as the most diverse colleges in the country.