SOYOUWANNA KNOW ABOUT AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN COLLEGE ADMISSIONS?

Affirmative action is the practice, usually by institutions, of giving preference to racial minorities or women when hiring employees, giving awards, or deciding whom to admit. You knew that, but we like to start with the basics. Affirmative action arose out of a desire to bring minority groups into institutions and professions that had traditionally been dominated by white males. It first appeared after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s as an attempt to accompany the new legal equality gained for minorities with social and economic equality.

The first kind of affirmative action involved setting racial quotas, deciding on a specific number or percentage of members of a given minority group that a company or institution had to accept. These racial quotas improved diversity to some degree and inspired some great jokes on All in the Family, but were considered too crude by many people. Now affirmative action usually involves using racial, gender, socioeconomic background, and/or sexual orientation status as a positive factor in hiring or admissions decisions. Affirmative action policies pop up all over the place, but we're going to focus on its use in the college admissions process.

1. LEARN SOME BACKGROUND ON THE ISSUE

Racial quotas for public colleges were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the case of Bakke v. California. Since then, public colleges seeking to increase diversity have used other types of affirmative action. While private universities have more freedom in their admissions decisions, they generally find that other affirmative action policies are a better way of achieving diversity than quotas because they allow for greater flexibility and more fairness.

Affirmative action in the college admissions process has, in the decades following Bakke, been primarily an ethical rather than a legal issue. So long as the decision process did not employ strict racial quotas, colleges could choose to accept whomever they wanted. This is changing however; California's Proposition 209, passed in 1996 with 54% of the popular vote, prohibits any use of racial preferences in government hiring and public school admissions. More than a dozen states are considering similar legislation, and Federal courts in Texas and elsewhere have also brought into question the legality of using race as a determinant in academic admissions.

Insofar as the question is an ethical one, the bulk of the disagreement is over whether or not affirmative action increases fairness in the admissions process. Additionally, the debate over affirmative action raises the question of what role diversity in student bodies plays in both the academic mission of a university and in the quality of life on campus.

Affirmative action in evaluating college applicants has supporters and opponents on both sides of the political spectrum, but generally speaking it is more popular among liberals than among conservatives. To help you make your own decision about the issue we've listed the arguments for both sides. Let's start by looking at some of the arguments in favor of affirmative action.

2. HEAR SOME ARGUMENTS IN FAVOR OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

"Affirmative action allows for fair evaluation of candidates by making up for existing social inequalities."

The Argument: Critics of affirmative action often say that it makes it easier for members of some groups to get into college and harder for others. However, the purpose of affirmative action is to increase the admissions rates of minorities that are under-represented in America's colleges. This under-representation is attributed to various social factors: students from families where few people have pursued higher education are less likely to excel in high school; children who come from communities where English is not regularly spoken face a large disadvantage in reading and writing; and students from school districts with lower funding tend to perform poorly on standardized tests. Affirmative action does not make it easy for students from a disadvantaged background to get into college; it merely makes up for some of the difficulties.

The Response: First of all, college is an academic environment and schools should choose applicants based on their ability to thrive in that environment regardless of their backgrounds. Secondly, lowering admissions standards for certain minority groups perpetuates stereotypes that members of those groups are less intelligent because it implies that nobody from these groups is smart enough to get into college on his or her own merits. This sort of stereotyping perpetuates the inequalities that affirmative action seeks to eliminate.

"A diverse student body creates a better learning environment."

The Argument: A lot of the learning done at colleges comes from sources other than textbooks and professors. Students can learn a lot from one another, but only if the student body contains representatives of a wide range of backgrounds. Colleges go out of their way to make sure that their student bodies contain athletes, political activists, and musicians so that each student brings something different to the community. Affirmative action assures that members of all ethnic groups are present within a college.

The Response: Racial diversity does not necessarily lead to diversity of opinion. Students with different interests and talents make campus life vibrant and ensure that a variety of activities are pursued. Race is a purely external characteristic and has no effect on what a person brings to a community. Colleges should try to accept students who have many different interests and will voice a wide range of opinions, but affirmative action is not the best way to achieve this goal.

"Lowering standards for under-represented groups raises the quality of the student body."

The Argument: While affirmative action lowers admission standards for certain minorities, its purpose is to counterbalance academic disadvantages faced by those groups. Individuals who benefit from affirmative action must achieve academic excellence relative to other people with similar backgrounds. Affirmative action therefore creates a student body that has tremendous academic potential.

The Response: Affirmative action is based on race, not academic background. There are many factors that a college should take into account when making admissions decisions. In particular, colleges should consider difficulties a student has overcome, such as growing up in a community that does not expect its members to pursue higher education. Affirmative action does not help students based on the number of obstacles they have faced, and therefore does not achieve the goal of creating a student body with the greatest academic potential. By focusing on race, as opposed to judging students purely on merits, affirmative action necessarily lowers the academic quality of a student body.

3. HEAR SOME ARGUMENTS AGAINST AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

"It is unfair to judge applicants on anything other than their merits."

The Argument: There are several factors that a college should take into account when considering applicants, such as grades, test scores, and extra-curricular achievements. However, an applicant's race is not a legitimate factor to take into consideration because it is outside of the student's control. It is impossible for a college to consider every aspect of a student's background when making admissions decisions. Why focus on race in particular, as opposed to the thousands of other aspects that differentiate students from one another?

The Response: The purpose of the college admissions process is not to reward merit but to get the best overall student body. Insofar as affirmative action increases the diversity of the student community, it makes for a better learning environment.

"Affirmative action does not lead to true diversity."

The Argument: Diversity of opinion is important in an academic community, but racial diversity is not. Affirmative action provides an advantage to some people because of the color of their skin, an attribute not relevant to the academic mission of a college. There are many factors which constitute a student's perspective, but affirmative action gives preferential treatment based exclusively on race, a purely external characteristic.

The Response: Race and ethnicity are incredibly important in American society and it would be foolish to think that a community made up entirely of individuals of one race could provide the same range of perspectives as a racially diverse student body. A person's race does affect his or her outlook on issues, so racial diversity is necessary if the full range of ideas are to be expressed on a college campus.

"Affirmative action does not help really disadvantaged groups."

The Argument: In many cases, affirmative action does not achieve its goal of helping disadvantaged minority groups. Instead, it perpetuates socioeconomic inequalities by making it easy for members of racial minorities from privileged backgrounds to get into prestigious colleges while not helping members of the lower classes.

The Response: This is only true part of the time. While minority students in top colleges are disproportionately from middle and upper-middle class backgrounds, this is true for white college students as well. Affirmative action does not cure all of America's social ills, but it can help eliminate the gaps between the average incomes and education levels of different races. Furthermore, this is not an objection to affirmative action itself, but to the manner in which it is being employed. This objection could easily be addressed by making affirmative action more sensitive to economic background as well as race.