Replies

I'm glad I was a TA back in grad school before the University of California had so many affirmative action admits. At least I saw almost no minority students in my history 'honors' sections. As a grad student, I did see a fair number of the "old style" black faculty and senior graduate students -- the ones admitted to college before about 1967. Those men and women, who had to be as good or better than the other students, were uniformly talented and hardworking. I remember being very friendly with several of them, because we had mutual interests and exhanged ideas -- we related as fellow scholars rather than considering race.

I used to have great hopes for the race relations and a variant of affirmative action I supported (i.e. identifying talented minorities and giving them any necessary remedial or background work in the community colleges until they could come up to the university meeting normal standards -- perhaps more expensive an approach because it would have meant subsidizing people for an extra year or two, but ensuring the integrity of the university's standards).

Then, I started seeing the affirmative action admits in collge, in law school, and affirmative action hires in the legal world. I have become very disillusioned, and don't believe any sort of real racial reconciliation is possible until special treatment issues (affirmative action, reparations, etc) are dead and buried many years hence.

I absolutely agree with your approach of bringing talented minorities up to standard. That gives students who may have been disadvantaged in primary and secondary school a fair chance, without trashing the uniform standard for all students at the college.

I think part of what we're seeing, though, has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the Baby Boom causing colleges to be overbuilt. With the reduced demand now that the rabbit has gone through the python (the Baby Boomlet of the offspring of the Boomers just didn't produce the same kind of numbers) colleges below the first rank are out touting for customers.

My daughter is a freshman in high school who scored very well on her PSAT and the Duke Talent Search/SAT. Every week the mail brings a new glossy color brochure from some college or other, inviting her to summer school, pre-college courses for credit, etc. The colleges are on a serious campaign to rope student prospects in early. (It won't work with my girl. She prefers to spend summers rock climbing, kayaking, and hiking the AT. She just got hired as an instructor for her high school's "Discovery" program - sort of Outward Bound for Everybody culminating in a five day backpack trip.)