Posted on 10/23/2024 3:46:20 AM PDT by karpov
The aftermath of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) has put a spotlight on the capriciousness of admissions practices at selective colleges. In SFFA, the Supreme Court ruled that race-based admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. After immense consternation about the impact of the ruling, dire warnings, and earnest discussion about how colleges should respond, the truth is that we have limited insight into what’s changed, how colleges are actually responding, or whether they’re even abiding by the law.
Here’s what we do know: At MIT, black and Latino first-year enrollment plunged, while the number of first-year Asian-American students spiked. At Wellesley, black student enrollment fell by nearly half and that of Latino students by almost a third. At Boston University, where the share of black freshmen fell by two-thirds, university president Melissa Gilliam termed the numbers “concerning and disappointing.” Meanwhile, Yale, Princeton, and Duke saw a drop in Asian-American enrollment and no change in black enrollment.
What’s going on? Are the admissions departments at MIT, Wellesley, and BU staffed by bigots who’d been covertly awaiting an excuse to turn away black and Latino applicants? Is Yale using “holistic admissions” to circumvent the law and micro-manage the racial makeup of the student body? Are some selective colleges using Chief Justice Roberts’s “essay loophole” (allowing the use of race-conscious application prompts) to sidestep the law?
The answer is that we just don’t know. As has long been the case, selective college admissions is a big black box, an opaque system neatly hidden behind the cloak of “holistic admissions.” As a result, applicants have no way of knowing how they’ll be judged or what criteria really matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
The overrated IMO colleges are overpriced.
Cheaper and better options are needed.
Private colleges should be able to have the admissions processes that they desire as long as these are honestly stated.
It may be the zoo principle.
The makeup of your population at these facilities depends on the gathering efforts of those bringing in the subjects to be on display.
Votes are handled similarly in areas that allow the opportunity.
Gingerbread can’t catch me .
That’s an appealing principle but it was jettisoned decades ago. If a college receives any kind of federal money, including guaranteed student loans for admitted students or research grants for faculty, it is fully exposed to federal civil rights scrutiny. The liberals have practiced asymmetrical warfare on this front for years. Conservative and religious schools get put under the microscope. Liberal universities should not be exempt.
BTTT
“Private colleges should be able to have the admissions processes that they desire as long as these are honestly stated.”
Agree, as long as they don’t accept grants from the government or allow government-backed student loans, I’m all for that.
Never happen, though.
There are a few....Hillsdale, for one.
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