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Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

latimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#361

Post by wnc3141 »

I think it's worth considering how much economic mobility is tied to economic status prior to college. I find a purely race based admission system fails to identify that, and in place gives an easier solution to building diversity compared to giving discounted education to those who can not afford it.

Of course there remains issues of opportunity for students of color, who are more likely than white students from disadvantaged backgrounds. However economic status, or rural/urban based admissions would capture many of these inequalities.

Of course this all comes from a conversation that supposes college should be as scarce as it is, and that the earnings benefit from college should be as large as it is.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#362

Post by MichaelDickens »

oluwie wrote: post #331
bouncing wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America has long had most of the best universities in the world. Getting rid of all standardized tests and instead relying on (heavily inflated, or not) grades, combined with bullshit essays, is going to significantly undermine that.

Standardized tests have been known for years as an very unfair way of judging students. People with resources to prepare and study for those tests often end up with inflated scores than for people who don't have the resource to prepare for them. High school grades have been consistently found the be #1 leading indicator of how well a student is going to do in college.

So you're saying the SAT gives a bigger advantage to people with resources to prepare, compared to a GPA which is the result of many assignments and tests across four years? That does not sound remotely plausible to me.

SAT + grades is a stronger predictor of college performance than grades alone. AFAIK this is a pretty uncontroversial finding. For a review article, see Frey (2019), "What We Know, Are Still Getting Wrong, and Have Yet to Learn about the Relationships among the SAT, Intelligence and Achievement."

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6963451/

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#363

Post by peterfirefly »

Maxion wrote: post #220
jlawson wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth bearing in mind that if affirmative action helped his father become a doctor, it also prevented someone else's father from becoming a doctor. I wonder what that person could have achieved.

As someone not from the US, this whole Affirmative Actions seems to just be reversed racism. I.e. in the end more-or-less still unfair. Better to just remove race all together, and e.g. require college admissions by law to be judged without knowing the applicants name or ethnicity. To me as an outsider, the US focuses wayyyyy to much on race. Race really does not matter, and no matter how much the US claims to be rac…

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#364

Post by chimeracoder »

mcpackieh wrote: post #233
skrebbel wrote: post #162

The concept of affirmative action is foreign to me (quite literally so). I only know it from American media, and I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. But anyway, my question for the Americans here who grok this stuff: I assume the intent is to help disadvantaged people have opportunities that more priviledged people…

> I've come understand it to mean "positively discriminate based on race, so long as it's a minority race" - please correct me of I'm wrong. More or less, but not precisely. How do you define a "minority race"? Universities in America discriminate against Asian Americans despite them being a minority of the American population generally, ostensibly because they're over-represented in universities.

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#365

Post by solardev »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #325
solardev wrote: post #120

I often wished universities (and other organizations) would use a scoresheet-like "matrix of oppression" to determine someone's background difficulties. Like okay, you get X points if you're this race, Y points for that. Z points if your parents were poor. Or if you grew up in these bad zip codes. Or if your dad was gone and mom was an addict. Whatever. As an Asian American of relatively privileged (middle class) upb…

The who is more privileged game is not a fun one to play. Watched a white male friend and a white passing Hispanic female friend get into this argument before. He grew up poor in a rural area, only one parent worked a low paying job and the other was the care giver. She grew up middle class in a city, parents were college professors. There are a ton of other factors but even at those basics it got complicated. Is a m…

For me, the goal wouldn't be to rank the oppressed against each other, but to provide resources for all those who need it.

I think of it less like a tournament and more like food stamps: below a certain income, food becomes difficult to afford, and aid is helpful (I was on food stamps for a short bit and really appreciated it). It doesn't really matter WHY their income is low, just that society can help them with food.

College aid is similar, except that admission seats aren't as easily fungible as tuition dollars. Same for job spots, I suppose.

Let's say you have 100 openings of something. A candidate would be scored across the board, mixing demographics with performance. 10 points for an essay. -3 for bad GPA. +5 for a bad zip code. +3 for being a woman. -6 for wealthy parents. Whatever. In that way all those factors could be considered.

But yes, the exact numbers would be difficult to arrive at. Maybe we could try to statistically model those based on their impact to lifetime earnings, updated every census or whatever. It wouldn't be easy. At all.

Is it legal? I don't know. But the law can change. More to your point, I'm not even sure if this is a GOOD or ethical idea. Just a thought for discussion.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#367

Post by VirusNewbie »

93po wrote: post #295
mcv wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Some of those descendants are very successful now and some descendants of slave owners are probably very poor now. And some people are descendants of both. And then I learn about the Jim Crow period, and then you hear that even the GI bill explicitly excluded black people,…

> Have things been made right by now? I have no idea. Ask any black person and there's your answer.

John Wood Jr. would be a good person to listen to for getting a very interesting answer to this very complex questions.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#368

Post by csa »

mchannon wrote: post #34
Flatcircle wrote: post #10

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.

> Double-digit increases of Asian students at top tier universities, primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite students.

I will gladly bet the under on double digits for Ivies, MIT, and Stanford.

5% max, possibly as little as 2% — that is, 26% might increase to 31%, but more likely 28%-29%.

Whatever the number is, the increase for whites will probably be greater in both percentage and absolute number.

That said, I agree that the demographics that will lose these spots are non-white, non-Asian groups.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#369

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

The only way affirmative action makes 'logical' sense to me is if people believe in biological differences of intelligence between races. Not saying I believe this, but it's the only way I could think of to logically allow for AA.

Because now you have "Race A" paying the same tax rates for public university as "Race B", yet their children could be biologically limited (on average) in comparison.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#370

Post by jeltz »

hospitalJail wrote: post #223
flowerlad wrote: post #47

It is important to note that Harward’s admission policy that is the subject of this case was designed to favor White students over Jewish ones [1]. Today it is being used to discriminate against Asian Americans. Colleges are already prepared for this ruling. Many, such as the University of Washington have abandoned standardized tests because such tests compell universities to admit the kinds of students universities…

This ends up moving the burden onto individuals. If you have an Asian Medical Doctor, they are AAA. If you have a multiple minority Medical Doctor, they are not necessarily AAA, they could be As. Which one do you want to do brain surgery on you? Without Affirmative action, you'd trust a multiple minority doctor equally to an Asian doctor. I wonder what the cost is on the healthcare system/US citizens when we have wor…

The one who is the best surgeon which could be any of them judging from my experience from other jobs. All the best programmers I know did well in school and on tests, but beyond a certain point test scores mean very little and other factors not measured by tests matter more.

I would not want a doctor who did poorly on tests, but a doctor who is great at tests vs one who is top in the country probably does not matter.

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