“The university admits minorities who otherwise would have attended less selective colleges where they would have been more evenly matched. But, as a result of the mismatching, many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools are placed in a position where under-performance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete. Setting aside the damage wreaked upon the self-confidence of these overmatched students, there is no evidence that they learn more at the university than they would have learned at other schools for which they were better prepared. Indeed, they may learn less.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin
A further step away from any pretense that higher education is a meritocracy:
Since 2015, College Board has been experimenting with new metrics on its SAT college entrance exam to evaluate students based on 15 nonacademic factors, including school and neighborhoods’ crime, income, and single-parent statistics, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
The 15 factors do not include race, College Board told WSJ, but all of these socioeconomic factors heavily overlap with race, and racial differences were the driving reason for making these SAT alterations. At Florida State University, using this dashboard boosted nonwhite enrollment 5 percent in the past year, said campus administrator John Barnhill.
He told WSJ “he expects pushback from parents whose children go to well-to-do high schools as well as guidance counselors there. ‘If I am going to make room for more of the [poor and minority] students we want to admit and I have a finite number of spaces, then someone has to suffer and that will be privileged kids on the bubble.’”
Go here to read the rest. Of course all this flapdoodle is to allow colleges to take race into account, while piously claiming that race is not a factor, to get more blacks and hispanics into schools their grades would prevent them from entering. Who takes it in the neck? Poor and middle class whites and Asians. Blacks and hispanics who fail to graduate because they are at colleges they are academically unprepared to attend. Upper class whites and Asians, by hook and crook, as the admissions for moola prosecutions demonstrate, will always make certain that their special snowflakes get into elite schools. Contemporary liberalism is all about virtue signaling while making certain that someone else pays the price.
Twenty-odd years ago, Richard John Neuhaus visited a private college in Minnesota with a vigorous AA program. One of the faculty explains to him that the minority students are commonly wretched due to their academic problems, the view of minorities held by other students isn’t improved by contact because most of the minorities are ‘messed up in various ways’. “We’re doing it for us”.
Years working around such people persuaded me that the driver of this is that the faculty despise their natural clientele and it’s injurious to their self-image to acknowledge that to earn a living, they have to teach people they despise. So, this inane social work enterprise is tacked on.
I think at this point a critical mass of blacks regard AA programs as a gesture of deference it would be ‘disrespectful’ to remove.
If there is some area of American life which Lyndon Johnson et al took an interest in that emerged uninjured from their attention, I do not know what it is. And, of course, the appellate judiciary corrupts everything it touches.
“If there is some area of American life which Lyndon Johnson et al took an interest in that emerged uninjured from their attention, I do not know what it is. And, of course, the appellate judiciary corrupts everything it touches.”
Instead of Great Society, the Johnson fiasco should have been called “Great Society Ends”. The one thing I will say for JFK is that he had little respect for the Liberal Intelligentsia, knowing how often his father had bought and sold them. Johnson, with his huge inferiority complex, was in thrall to them. He should have listened to his mentor, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. After hearing Johnson talk about how brilliant the Kennedy appointees were, Mr. Sam responded: “Well, Lyndon, everything you say may be true, but I’d feel a whole lot better if one of them had ever run for sheriff.”
I assume that in Art Deco’s comment AA is being used to denote Affirmative Action and NOT Alcoholics Anonymous. It would be best to make that distinction clear.
This will backfire because they won’t pass and graduate. Or the college will lower the high academic standard to make sure the worst students pass. Not good either way.
I’m being charitable here: Affirmative Action and most other fatuous fantasies, a.k.a. purposely counter- productive policies, 99.94% of the time result in: “Do-Gooders Doing Damage.”
I am a racist. Years ago, I rated a bright, young black on job performance. I told him he could do better. He did and over the years, he (merited it) advanced ahead of me. Yeah. I’m a racist.
I assume that in Art Deco’s comment AA is being used to denote Affirmative Action and NOT Alcoholics Anonymous. It would be best to make that distinction clear.
I’m referring to racial preference schemes, not Alcoholics Anonymous.
It never occurred to me before, but I worked for years on a campus on which heavy-drinking by students was an enormous concern, but never heard hide nor hare about an AA chapter on campus. Not sure what to make of that. There were a half-dozen congregations around that campus and I don’t think any of them were hosting an AA chapter either.
“Well, Lyndon, everything you say may be true, but I’d feel a whole lot better if one of them had ever run for sheriff.”
I assume Rayburn was referring to subcabinet appointees and White House aides. Except for the egregious appointment of his brother to run the Department of Justice, Kennedy’s cabinet was composed of middle-aged men drawn from various establishments. Four of the 10 were prominent elected officials.
Art Deco said he never heard of an AA chapter on campus: neither hide nor hair. Yet every submarine base (that I have been to) has at least one AA group. And within 5 miles of where I am sitting right now there are 3 AA groups with meetings every night of the week. And just about every Catholic Church and quite a few Methodist Churches in the area sponsor AA groups. Furthermore, even the Catholic Church within the left coast city where my company headquarters are located sponsors an AA group. But AA groups in Academia? None? Wow! That says a lot given that the incidence of alcoholism is no respecter of social or economic class, or of education level, or of religion or race or ethnicity.
PS, the new addiction isn’t some new drug, however, but sterile sex without consequence.