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What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

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Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#71

Post by alistairSH »

az226 wrote: post #16

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…

What data do you have to support the assertion that affirmative action is no longer necessary to ensure proper representation of minorities on campus?

I'm open to arguments that there are better ways to achieve the goal of equitable access to higher eduction, but looking at enrollment numbers, the problem is far from solved.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#72

Post by alistairSH »

dahart wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "platitude" it's an aphorism. It reflects the principle--already ancient to Plato 2,400 years ago--that we don't solve injustice by shifting that injustice onto innocent third parties. If you can prove wrongdoing by specific people then you can punish it. But if you define treating someone differently based on skin color as a moral crime—which I think is necessary for a multi-ethnic society to function—the…

It feels like a platitudinal aphorism to me, it’s trite and cliche and overused and was delivered as if it’s insightful in hopes of ending the debate. Google appears to agree vigorously that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a platitude. One problem with that platitude is that there are plenty of ways that two negative things can balance each other out or become positive in some way. Aren’t you making deep cultural…

You’re also deliberately ignoring the point that there might be no such thing as innocent third parties, but only people who aren’t aware they’re part of the problem, even if it’s subtle and unintended.

I was about to post the same and that's 100% my take... sure, I didn't own slaves and I don't intentionally do anything racist... but I can absolutely acknowledge that by virtue of genetic lottery (white, with educated parents, etc) I had it orders of magnitude easier than the kids who grew up on the other side of town (black, less educated parents, etc).

I said it in another comment - affirmative action may not be the best solution, but it's tiresome to see people trot out the "2 wrongs" argument without proffering a better solution to the problem.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#73

Post by kxyvr »

ordx wrote: post #21

It puzzles me why US colleges are allowed to consider anything other than standardized test scores.

There's a wonderful exchange in the movie Interstellar that speaks to this:

    Cooper: You're ruling my son out for college now? The kid's fifteen.
    Principal: Tom's score simply isn't high enough.
    Cooper: What's your waistline? 32? With, what, a 33 inseam?
    Principal: I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.
    Cooper: You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?
The point being is that a person, and their future, should not be distilled into a single number like an SAT score because people are far more complex than a single number. I would also contend that splitting them into a few numbers, such as by subject area, doesn't help either.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#74

Post by treis »

chasd00 wrote: post #6

The price portion of this hits hard. My oldest starts college in 2 year and then his younger brother follows 2 years later. We make enough to not qualify for need based aid but not enough to just write a check, merit based aid + a meager 529 and our savings is their only hope besides debt. Further, both are male, hetero, only 1/4 hispanic, and my wife and I are not drug addicts or alcoholics so they'll get nothing fr…

It's a bit of an interesting Chesterton's fence. For most of human history your job is whatever your dad's job was (with a large degree of hand waving). It makes sense because there's at least some genetic disposition there and you're likely willing to train your children for free. Instead we pay strangers massive amounts of money for make work training that is often only loosely related to productive skills.

Obviously a lot of reasons to do it this way. But you gotta think at some point not working for 4 years while paying ~2x median annual wage has gotta go the way of the dodo.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#75

Post by foobarian »

exogeny wrote: post #35

Alright, I’m going to try to weigh in on this subject in good faith. Wish me luck! I grew up in suburban Pittsburgh and attended a very good public school. I had friends who lived only ten or fifteen minutes away but attended schools that were substantially worse by nearly every measurable standard. How should a university compare our applications on an apples-to-apples basis? Some people would say, “Just use standar…

> but if I were on a university admissions team

OK but what would your goal there be? What do you think an existing admissions team's goal is in various different universities? What if some desire to build an elite club but can't say it on record? And is that such a bad thing?

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#76

Post by onetimeusename »

az226 wrote: post #16

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…

Yes but there's some nuance. I don't think Harvard admission is necessary for Affirmative Action goals. We're talking about a tiny minority of people who attend. In my own opinion, we're looking at rival elite groups fighting with each other.

The SFFA lawsuit targeted Harvard specifically and made the claim not that Affirmative Action was a problem but that secretive racial policies to help whites at the expense of Asians were. There wasn't any direct evidence of it and it's kind of laughable to think Harvard would do that. The SC didn't evaluate that claim and just struck down using race for admissions. But that doesn't mean you can't ask people to write a diversity essay about their race and grade them on that.

Harvard's present demographics[1]:

    Of students in the class who self-identified their race, 11.5 percent
    identified as African American or Black, 41 percent identified as Asian 
    American, 11 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, and nearly 2 percent 
    identified as Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.
I don't know why they collate it like this. This doesn't include international students who aren't identified by ethnicity. So based on percentage of the demographic, it would appear this is saying whites underperform on admissions substantially compared to everyone else which seems unlikely to me.

[1]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/class-of-2029...

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#77

Post by Aunche »

digitaltrees wrote: post #49
az226 wrote: post #16

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…

You didn't think the 50% admit rate for athletes, 40% admit rate for deans interest ie large cash donors, and 35% legacy admit rate were "the whole think"?

Legacy and donor admissions aren't the gotcha against race neutral admissions that you think they are. In fact, they go hand in hand. It's not a coincidence that the universities with strong legacy preferences all practiced affirmative action. Legacy students actually have slightly better grades and SAT scores than average, but this would unlikely to be the case if they used purely merit based admissions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#78

Post by dahart »

alistairSH wrote: post #72
dahart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like a platitudinal aphorism to me, it’s trite and cliche and overused and was delivered as if it’s insightful in hopes of ending the debate. Google appears to agree vigorously that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a platitude. One problem with that platitude is that there are plenty of ways that two negative things can balance each other out or become positive in some way. Aren’t you making deep cultural…

You’re also deliberately ignoring the point that there might be no such thing as innocent third parties, but only people who aren’t aware they’re part of the problem, even if it’s subtle and unintended. I was about to post the same and that's 100% my take... sure, I didn't own slaves and I don't intentionally do anything racist... but I can absolutely acknowledge that by virtue of genetic lottery (white, with educate…

Thank you. Yes the whole problem and confounding factor with this argument is that racism exists, and emerged on its own. If we choose Laissez Faire, we already know the outcome, and it’s bad. The notion that we should do nothing to fix it and let the chips fall where they may would amount to institutionalized racism as opposed to institutionalized (positive) discrimination. Plus affirmative action can and should end, whereas racism does not without changes.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#79

Post by triceratops »

kxyvr wrote: post #73
ordx wrote: post #21

It puzzles me why US colleges are allowed to consider anything other than standardized test scores.

There's a wonderful exchange in the movie Interstellar that speaks to this: Cooper: You're ruling my son out for college now? The kid's fifteen. Principal: Tom's score simply isn't high enough. Cooper: What's your waistline? 32? With, what, a 33 inseam? Principal: I'm not sure I see what you're getting at. Cooper: You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?…

The SAT has 2 components with separate scores. The SAT score is usually the sum of both, but there's no reason colleges can't weight one section more than the other.

If you really care about multiple dimensions, add more types of standardized tests - general science (or specialized - separate physics, chem and bio sections), history, geography, whatever.

Or tell students to take the standardized tests that most closely map to their preferred major.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#80

Post by arjie »

ordx wrote: post #21

It puzzles me why US colleges are allowed to consider anything other than standardized test scores.

You can invert nearly anything in the US with the right justification. You can cite the environment to ensure roads don’t have bike lanes, you can cite anti-racism rules to treat individuals by their race, to protect a man from a small home you can put him on the street. It just is how it is.

The framework to do it was introduced to prevent Jewish people from going to universities where it was found that when it was impossible to keep the Jewish people under 25% of enrollment it rapidly became possible once they accounted for well-roundedness.

The Jewish people of the age, like Asian people today, seem to have been narrow and pointed like a spear where others were like a sphere. Such is life. We aspire to spherical homogeneity. Other shapes need not apply.

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