It needs to be made clear that favoring the economically disadvantaged regardless of race would not only *still* benefit black applicants, but would *begin to* benefit disadvantaged black applicants to a meaningful extent.
Up to now, universities have contrived to clear the diversity bar by favoring upper-middle-class applicants whose sole qualification as diversifiers is skin color. Some are children of immigrant families untouched by America's original sin (though perhaps touched by the sins of other enslaving nations). Anyway, race-based affirmative action never served a reparative purpose to any great extent.
We must also recognize that disadvantaged students will tend to need robust preparatory programs to give them a fair chance of getting through a university and not just into one.
Finally, we need to remember that elite universities are destinations for only a small fraction of American students. Many go to colleges and universities that admit the majority of applicants. Many would benefit most from well-funded community colleges.
This is a hard problem as there are many conflicting criteria. I doubt any strategy will be perceived as “fair” or “appropriate” to all constituent groups. I think in the end, selective schools will have to use some sort of random draw. They set a published simple coarse filter to eliminate students who the school thinks have low probability of success (GPA lower than 3.xx for example), and then do random draw from there. If the sample is large enough, you will get the representation of the applicant pool in the randomly drawn sample. If a student “wins the draw” they have a week or 2 to make a decision. This gives a bit more certainty in enrollment numbers to the schools and they can redraw again with a smaller number of remaining spots. The student also gets a financial aid package when they get the “congrats you won the lottery” letter. This gives no advantage to any student as long as they meet the coarse filter. It is also simple and takes little time. Th school can publish their applicant pool and selection pool stats. This will likely reduce their traditional quality metrics (GPA/SAT/ACT for entering students) unless they set the filter very high, so rankings will change (or maybe they will use better metrics that really measure school quality)
Numbers do not tell the whole story. One problem that elite universities seem to ignore is maintaining diversity in the STEM fields. Students coming from mediocre or poor high schools are often at more of a disadvantage in the STEM fields (than in the liberal arts) when competing against peers who are products of high schools that offer more STEM opportunities.
Step 1 should be to get rid of legacy and recruited athlete preferences.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jensheycke/p/time-to-end-legacy-and-recruited?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
It needs to be made clear that favoring the economically disadvantaged regardless of race would not only *still* benefit black applicants, but would *begin to* benefit disadvantaged black applicants to a meaningful extent.
Up to now, universities have contrived to clear the diversity bar by favoring upper-middle-class applicants whose sole qualification as diversifiers is skin color. Some are children of immigrant families untouched by America's original sin (though perhaps touched by the sins of other enslaving nations). Anyway, race-based affirmative action never served a reparative purpose to any great extent.
We must also recognize that disadvantaged students will tend to need robust preparatory programs to give them a fair chance of getting through a university and not just into one.
Finally, we need to remember that elite universities are destinations for only a small fraction of American students. Many go to colleges and universities that admit the majority of applicants. Many would benefit most from well-funded community colleges.
Here's are quick stats from data that Harvard was forced to release:
43% of white students were admitted because of legacy, dean's list, or recruited athlete preferences.
75% of these students would have been rejected without those preferences.
This is a hard problem as there are many conflicting criteria. I doubt any strategy will be perceived as “fair” or “appropriate” to all constituent groups. I think in the end, selective schools will have to use some sort of random draw. They set a published simple coarse filter to eliminate students who the school thinks have low probability of success (GPA lower than 3.xx for example), and then do random draw from there. If the sample is large enough, you will get the representation of the applicant pool in the randomly drawn sample. If a student “wins the draw” they have a week or 2 to make a decision. This gives a bit more certainty in enrollment numbers to the schools and they can redraw again with a smaller number of remaining spots. The student also gets a financial aid package when they get the “congrats you won the lottery” letter. This gives no advantage to any student as long as they meet the coarse filter. It is also simple and takes little time. Th school can publish their applicant pool and selection pool stats. This will likely reduce their traditional quality metrics (GPA/SAT/ACT for entering students) unless they set the filter very high, so rankings will change (or maybe they will use better metrics that really measure school quality)
Numbers do not tell the whole story. One problem that elite universities seem to ignore is maintaining diversity in the STEM fields. Students coming from mediocre or poor high schools are often at more of a disadvantage in the STEM fields (than in the liberal arts) when competing against peers who are products of high schools that offer more STEM opportunities.