Affirmative Action Based on Income and Class?

Very interesting article about the last educational barrier...

How Much Do You Pay for College? - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

 

"....Admissions officers, for example, paid close attention to racial and ethnic diversity, but little to economic diversity. William Bowen, a former president of Princeton University, and his colleagues reported in 2005 that being an underrepresented minority increased one's chances of admissions at selective colleges by almost 28 percentage points, but that being low-income provided no boost whatsoever..."

The race card strikes again - is anyone surprised at its almighty power? God help you if you have the audacity to be a poor white kid.

 

Interesting article. I was one of those students whose parents made too much to qualify for pell grants etc but they had too many other bills to pay to help me out in school. Good thing I lived in FL with low tuition and rent costs because I was able to pay my way through school working 32-35 hours per week during the school year and 46 per week during summers.

 

I dislike the words diversity and fair as they are deceiving and dishonest. People should be rewarded for hard work and not because they are a certain color, sex, sexual orientation or come from a certain social or economic background. People should be judged, promoted, and rewarded based on their skills, abilities, effort and track record.

It's been my experience that people simply don't want to put in the effort or they make poor life choices. Let's reward hard work and smart choices. Let people learn from their mistakes. Let people learn that laziness and bad decisions don't pay off.

Anyone in this country can work, go to college and pay their own way. If they choose to do so. They may not be able to go to the college of their choice or finish in 4 years, but they can get a degree.

 

You missed the point of the article. It is not a matter of reward, it is a matter of helping. Some people start out in life at a disadvantage, and need some serious help to overcome it. I was born in very poor circumstances, and without people helping me along the way, and giving me encouragement, I would not have made it. I was given hope by a member of the Salvation Army, who encouraged me to go to college; sort of a precursor to "yes, you can". It costs nothing to encourage a person who is in a hopeless situation to tell them that there are ways to improve themselves. My parents did not see a way for me to attend college, nor even think that it was possible.

Not everyone is born to rich parents. I see nothing wrong with considering socioeconomic background for selective admission to elite colleges. Socioeconomic background is a better discriminator (no pun intended) for diversity these days as compared to race or sex quotas.

If you look at programs to help individuals in disadvantaged categories as a form of handicapping (as in golf), it is a way to equalize their opportunities. Not all poor people are fat lazy slobs who expect everything to be handed to them, they just need a helping hand.

 

You lost me at "yes you can".

 

I meant "yes, it is within the realm of your possibilities." Really, I should have said "yes, we can," to echo from the first Obama campaign...

 

The truth is that economically disadvantaged students are at a disadvantage when it comes to college entrance exams. They are less likely to be read to and academically encouraged by their parents. You can blame the parents all you want, but the child did not ask to be put in this situation. Poor students also tend to attend poor schools. I can tell you from personal experience that there were differences between two middle schools I attended that were in the same district and only a few miles apart. One had mostly economically disadvantaged students and the other was mostly middle class with a sizable upper middle class student body. In my honors courses, I noticed that there was a significant difference in the difficulty level of coursework. I switched in the middle of the school year and was far behind at the new school, especially for honors mathematics. Just imagine how much students in regular courses are unprepared for the SAT/ACT. Besides, grades have been shown to be a better predictor of college success than SAT scores. High grades at least somewhat prove that the student is willing to work hard even though he or she is not exposed to all of the big words on the verbal portion of the SAT due to cultural differences. This is why I like the Top 10% rule in Texas. If you graduate in the Top 10% of your class, then you're guaranteed admission to any public university in Texas.

 

I got the point of the article. For the same product/service, some students paid $18,000 and some paid $56,000. The "discount" was based on their race, gender, etc. The author wants to "increase socioeconomic diversity" and shift from a race-based approach to a class-based one.

I believe we need to get rid of all types of discrimination, including diversity. The definition of discrimination is the "prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex." We need to judge people for who they are not what they are. The article was not about encouragement. It's about some people getting rewards for being a certain race, gender or from a certain class.

I was not born to rich parents. Neither of my parents are college educated. I worked very hard to pay my own way through life and college. I did not get or take these rewards because I did not earn them.

 

Another kind of affirmative action . . .

I read an article not too long ago, I could probably find it if necessary, in which a different kind of affirmative action was being described. This article reported that there were so few qualified males applying to universities that they were forced, according to gender provisions in current AA laws, to accept males who were on paper unqualified and turn away females who were better qualified. This was for the purpose of maintaining some preset gender balance on campus. So, somehow it's better to have stupid guys getting degrees than smart girls.

OK ................

College Admission: Tough Times For Girls? - CBS News

The Answer Sheet - Do college admissions officers discriminate against girls?

Affirmative Action for Boys - TIME

girls rule and boys drool.:argue:

 

That must be why girls graduate from High School and College at higher rates than boys do, correct? That must be why the unemployment rate for girls is lower in the 18-35 cohort than it is for boys?

The numbers don't add up to female victimhood in education. We recognized a problem back in the 70's that our girls were not getting a fair shake (Raising Ophelia) so we changed schools. Now we have a problem the other way around in that it's our boys that are falling behind. We gonna change schools again? Nope, we'll change boys...no more longer recesses, no more masculinity for boys. Just drugs for "ADD/ADHD" or whatever mallady is "wrong" with being a boy in a female centric education system.

 

Except Affirmative Action doesn't require quotas. Quotas are illegal. Affirmative Action also does not require that an organization lower its standards. Affirmative Action simply requires that organizations not discriminate and try their best to recruit underrepresented groups.

You know what? Those with parents wealthy enough to pay for their college education didn't earn their positions in life either. They just happened to be born in the right families. So, I have absolutely no problem with colleges giving scholarships and aid based on need. Societies that don't have this kind of aid have low social mobility. People are basically locked into the class they are born in. Trust me, our set up here in the U.S. is much better than the caste-like systems one would see in developing countries. These countries will never get to our level if they don't build a middle class.

 

I just quickly browsed through these articles, but I didn't see any statistics comparing the qualifications of admitted males and females. William & Mary definitely had a lot more females apply which could explain the lower admission rate. Until other criteria are posted, we cannot assume that less qualified males were admitted over more qualified females.

 

"Facts and Myths of Affirmative Action" - HigherEdJobs

By the way, I think that affirmative action based only on socioeconomic status ignores the fact that racism and sexism still exist. There are studies that prove that employers discriminate against applicants with ethnic names.

'Black' Names A Resume Burden? - CBS News