Monday, November 13, 2006

Affirmative Action

An interesting article at Wall Street Journal about Asian Americans being discriminated against in Ivy League admissions. Pretty much this kid is suing Princeton for denying him admissions although a white classmate of his with test scores and grades that were lower was admitted. I guess this was probably an inevitable case. It doesn't really surprise me that there are some studies that indicate that Ivy Leagues limit admissions of Asian Americans more so than other groups. (It's called a glass ceiling.)

It will be interesting to follow this case as it moves forward. If it actually does move forward, that is. Particularly since it seems like the case calls for not only removing racial preference from university admissions, but also legacies and athletic scholarships. Although I still don't and probably never will agree with removing racial preference from university admissions, getting rid of legacies and athletic scholarships would be often. Legacies are affirmative action for rich white kids, and athletic scholarships are generally motivated more by universities' desire to earn revenue from their sports teams than in acting in the best interests of their students. However, legacies in particular, never seem to show up in terms of university admissions.

I'll probably talk more about this later.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with getting rid of non-academic related things like legacies - sports scholarships are ok as long as the kid isn't a complete idiot, and as long as other valuable extracurricular activities can be recognized too.
About affirmative action, I resent it when people say that I got into college because I'm Asian. If that is true, I *don't* want it to be. Although I'm not saying this is the case for every nonwhite person, I don't want any handout from the government - I want to know that I got where I am on my own merit. When affirmative action is applied, I think that income should be a huge factor. A lot of nonwhite students in grad schools are wealthy or middle class expatriates, and it doesn't seem fair that advantaged people like them vault over poor nonwhite-Americans because of their race.