I
don’t intend to discuss the relative merits of Affirmative Action in this space
– mostly because that’s really a political issue and not a business topic, but
also because I don’t believe that I have anything particularly profound to say
on the subject. The case can certainly be made that some consideration is due
to any number of minority groups for the discriminatory practices that they
have experienced and in many cases continue to experience – but one can also
quite reasonably argue that any policy that does harm to any person who has
never themselves done anything wrong is not just, and solving injustice by
creating additional injustice makes no bloody sense. And the whole situation
becomes more complex as the number of groups seeking to gain a competitive
advantage for themselves rises…
In
this specific case, it does not seem reasonable to require one specific group
of applicants to have much higher performance in order to receive the same
consideration, especially if you consider the popular image of Asian students
as quiet, studious, incredibly hard-working and single-minded to be a damaging
stereotype (as some advocates clearly do). But, at the same time, it is
difficult to explain why being represented in the student body at nearly 400%
of your relative representation in the general population is discriminatory.
Certainly, there are other minority groups that do not enjoy anything like this
level of disproportional admissions, and one could easily imagine any or all of
them filing complaints about the preference that is apparently being given to
their Asian-American counterparts…
The
University has responded to the allegations by stating that their admissions
process is based on a holistic reading of all of the applicant’s scores,
grades, activities, abilities, writing skills, academic skills, and so on,
including whether or not it believes that a given applicant would be a good fit
for their program. This is actually very common among elite schools, and may be
the only reasonable way to choose between the literally hundreds of applicants
for every position in the incoming class. Unfortunately, this doesn’t address
the specific complaint the coalition is making; it also doesn’t answer the conflict
at the heart of the matter. Is it more important to have a diverse student body
(or work force, for that matter), or to provide a completely level playing
field for the students who are competing for admission to that school?
On
the one hand, no one wants to have to tell any specific applicant group that
they will need scores 140 points higher (let alone 450 points higher) than
another specific group to be considered for admission. But by the same token,
no one wants to tell members of any specific applicant group that none of them
are going to be admitted because the incoming class is now made up almost entirely
of people from one or two other groups. This is the specific injustice that the
Affirmative Action programs were intended to fight in the first place, but now
we seem to have reached a situation where we can’t correct the injustice being
done to one applicant group without inflicting an equivalent (or even worse)
injustice on another. How can we possibly reconcile the desire to have a
diverse student body with the need to offer every applicant an equal chance at
admission? Or, for that matter, how can we correct the current inequity without
making things even worse?
It’s
worth thinking about…
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