61–70 of 1001 posts
Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)
Link to demographics on legacy admissions: https://www.culawreview.org/journal/legacy-admissions-an-ins...
What does this mean in practice?
Double-digit increases of Asian students at top tier universities, primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite students. Probably a modest reverse version of that at the lower tier universities. Love the policy change or hate it, that’s what’s likely to happen.
Given the actual numbers, its more likely that the largest number of applicants negatively affected by this will be white, in absolute terms.
What does this mean in practice?
Admissions departments will find proxies for race. The next year of Harvard freshmen will not be majority Asian. The admissions department won’t allow that to happen.
That’s probably what your theoretical proxy will look like, if you’re correct.
I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.
Advocates for a new admissions system at TJHSST proposed a merit lottery. Conservative advocates called it racist and the proponents "enemies of excellence" in precisely the same way that they did for the eventually implemented system. A similar response would happen if applied to universities.
I think that merit lotteries are excellent and work much more effectively than the ordinary things people to do increase diversity (which often focuses on aesthetics rather than actually changing things). But we are kidding ourselves if we think that they won't face precisely the same resistance.
Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)
A win for meritocracy - https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/new-chart-illustrates-graphic...
Then the headline should be: "Legacies are banned from top tier private schools". Around 25% of admissions in Ivy League schools are legacies. Unsurprisingly, this does not seem to outrage certain parts of society that much.
I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.
Worth noting that while affirmative action has been banned, we still have proxies for race (aka legacy admissions) which overwhelmingly favor rich and white students. And given the historical discrimination of elite universities, this ban on affirmative action without addressing legacy admissions or historical harm will only increase the number of white students at universities. We can't pretend that eliminating race…