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They picked what they thought was a “fair” set of criteria and it didn’t produce the outcome they wanted. They concluded it wasn’t “fair” because it didn’t produce they wanted. That’s garbage.No, that's science. If your goal is "more racially- and background-diverse admissions", and you set up a process to achieve that, and then find that your new process didn't work, then the process was wrong. So you come up with a new process.
> If you want certain communities to do better in education, you don’t manipulate the outcome by changing the selection criteria, you produce better candidates. Invest in education and safety in lower income areas.
The problem is that universities don't really have the ability to invest in education and safety in lower income areas. As rich as many top-tier private universities are, they don't have the resources to make a dent in this problem. So you have a chicken-and-egg problem: you can't fix the inequity that causes some kids to get a worse primary education, but you can't give them a better secondary education and allow that to flow back into their communities.
You have to break the cycle somewhere, and it seems pretty obvious that US federal and local governments have been failing miserably at improving education and safety in underserved communities. So you decide that you're going to find kids that your regular admissions practices would have rejected out of hand, but have the potential to learn and be successful at your school, even if there are gaps in their education. No, it's not a perfect plan, but what had been going on before wasn't working either. And maybe this won't work. But I think it's a worth trying.