> I don't understand why they require ethnic proportions to stay close to population averages.
Thank god, I hope it means the world is a different place.
First, I'm guessing you're about 30 yo. (Sorry if I'm way off.) When I applied to colleges in late 1981, there were still some dumbass amounts of discrimination for being black. Affirmative action occurred in the 60s/70s to try and rectify some of that.
It was a given back then that admissions would overlook somewhat lower SATs if you were otherwise promising, and if you could be identified as being from a disadvantaged background. The downside was that some completely kickass guys I knew felt that they had been admitted because of their skin color.
I assume there's still discrimination out there, but perhaps it's a lot less than 30 years ago.
First a bit of background. I come from India where they practice reservation which I think would be considered much "worse" than affirmative action over here. The way the system works is that a certain percentage of seats are reserved for people from certain (usually lower castes). So for my engineering examination, I wrote a common exam conducted by the government along with about 80,000 other students from my state. Among the 80,000 about 35k or so did well enough to be given a "rank". The rank means exactly what you think it means.
Now, students are allowed to choose the college they want to go to in the order of their ranks. However, reservation means that people like me, who don't "have a reservation" have to choose seats from the general quota. The general quota was, believe it or not, 20% of all seats. Out of my class of 140 EE students, we had 29 students who came through the general quota. About 15 more seats were available to students who were willing to do without the government subsidy.
Side note: Because my education was subsidized by the state government, I paid about $300 dollars a year in fees. The ones who went without the subsidy paid about $1200 dollars a year. All
All the remaining 100 or so seats were reserved for people from one or another of the reserved castes. For people in the general quota, the lowest (highest numerically) rank admitted to my department was 114. For a person coming from a reserved quota, the lowest rank admitted was 29xx.
At the time I felt this was grossly unfair. I busted my ass to be ranked in the top 100 among 80,000 candidates to get into this place and these guys were admitting students who weren't even in the top 2000 simply because they were born into the right family.
Over time, I've come to realize that I enjoyed a great many privileges these other kids did not. I had sporadic access to the internet, I had parents who were reasonably supportive of my studies, I knew English really well. I didn't get the 90th rank simply because I was awesome. I got it because I was lucky enough to be born with (some) privilege in a third-world country.
Many of my classmates from disadvantaged backgrounds have gone on to become competent engineers. I realize now that they fully deserved their chance.
It's not clear to me that qualified people who lose out (i.e. not get a place anywhere) would be so greater in number that they would outweigh the doubts created about people who may or may not have had a helping hand through affirmative action. Those kinds of doubts are pernicious and likely affect that person's social groups and career for many years; while unambiguously able people would be held up a year at the very worst - but most likely just having to attend a different college than their preference.
I chose my above words carefully: It was an issue of SATs, not qualifications in general.
Prior to affirmative action, SATs were the be-all-and-end-all of equilibration for GPAs; A GPA of 3.9 at the Bronx school of science was not the same as 3.9 at Rural High. Along came some studies showing that the SATs (esp English) had some cultural biases.
The admissions depts were truly trying to figure out: Which candidates will have the biggest impact after graduation? SATs were called into question as a predictor of that, and that "standardized" tests were maybe not so standard after all.
Also which candidates have the greatest opportunity for growth by attending that school vs not. Global opitimization can mean admitting a slightly less accomplished student who will do better with that degree than without, where a more accomplished high school will end up at the same academic/professional outcome even without the special support from the institution.
Its easy to point out the EAP kid who can't hack it in college. But I've never heard of anyone bemoaning the "qualified" upper-middle class fratboy who flunks out of school in a drunken haze.
Thank god, I hope it means the world is a different place.
First, I'm guessing you're about 30 yo. (Sorry if I'm way off.) When I applied to colleges in late 1981, there were still some dumbass amounts of discrimination for being black. Affirmative action occurred in the 60s/70s to try and rectify some of that.
It was a given back then that admissions would overlook somewhat lower SATs if you were otherwise promising, and if you could be identified as being from a disadvantaged background. The downside was that some completely kickass guys I knew felt that they had been admitted because of their skin color.
I assume there's still discrimination out there, but perhaps it's a lot less than 30 years ago.