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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP I think that's kind of a minor detail. I don't think you're going to see a huge number of AA and Hispanic students even applying to the top schools because for many the type of education they've received up to high school would not make them competitive in the first place.

The really sad data point was some of the data from state flagship schools, especially in states that have a significant AA population.  I don't understand what is going on there.

We really need minority populations to go to college and graduate because otherwise we are writing off the portion of our population that needs to be working and productive to keep our country going. I am somewhat  concerned about this as a 50 year old and I think we sometimes miss the forest for the trees in this discussion.

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I agree with you, but I disagree that PP's point about statistics it is a minor detail in terms of OP's misleading title. That data set actually doesn't show anything about affirmative action in admissions because it isn't limited to the pool of applicants. Since the data is compared to the entire US population, it shows that relative to the population, fewer black and hispanic kids are going to college. The reason for this does not begin and end at the college admission officer's desk, and to suggest so (as OP's title does) fails to focus on the bigger issues of what is preventing these kids from getting into the applicant pool in the first place. You can't hold colleges accountable for failing to admit people who can't or didn't apply for whatever reasons (didn't graduate high school, incarceration, already working in field that doesn't require a degree, etc.). You can't fix a problem if you don't focus on it properly. Use the right data to make the right points.

In fact, the cited article isn't really about affirmative action and whether it has "failed":

"Affirmative action increases the numbers of black and Hispanic students at many colleges and universities, but experts say that persistent underrepresentation often stems from equity issues that begin earlier."

To evaluate the effectiveness of affirmative action, you need to use the applicant pool. To determine why various populations are underrepresented in the college applicant pool generally, you need to look way back, earlier in life than a child's 18th year.[/quote]

The title of the thread, comes directly from the NYTimes article.[/quote]

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