Who Should Get into College?

City Journal ^ | Spring 2003 | John H. McWhorter

[Hobsonphile]

For many years now, elite colleges—taking their cue from the Supreme Court’s 1978 Bakke decision—have justified racial preferences in admissions by saying that they are necessary to ensure campus “diversity.” Get rid of preferences, “diversity” fans say, and top colleges will become minority-free enclaves; the spirit of segregation will be on the march again. The losers won’t just be the folks with the brown pigmentation, now exiled from the good schools, but all those white students who now will never get to know the unique perspective of people of color.

Nonsense on all counts. Correctly understood, diversity encompasses the marvelous varieties of human excellence and vision in a modern civilization—from musical genius to civic commitment to big-brained science wizardry. People who recognize the folly of racial preferences are no more opposed to diversity in this sense than critics of “gangsta” rap are opposed to music. What they do reject is the condescending notion that a diverse campus demands lower admissions standards for brown students, and that, in 2003 America, brown students need crutches to make it.

With the Supreme Court about to decide a case that could overturn Bakke and require colorblind admissions, once and for all, it’s a good time to describe what a post-affirmative-action admissions policy at a top school should look like—and explain why it would be fully compatible with minority success and real diversity.

[Hobsonphile]

McWhorter writes in The American Enterprise:

"The claim that racial preferences are necessary to compensate for past horrors creates 'tit for tat' applications of racial preferences that certainly won't solve this country's racial dilemma. It may make whites feel better, but it won't give black students the tools they need to truly excel. You can only learn to ride a bicycle by mastering the subtle muscular demands on your own. As long as the training wheels are on, you're not truly riding a bike... Black students will achieve their highest potential in school only by being required to do so.

Short of tough demands, top-rate black students will continue to constitute only a tiny coterie- with children of recent Caribbean and African immigrants heavily over-represented. Asian students never had any illusion that there was a way to the top other than through hard work, which is why they have succeeded in such large numbers. A culture in which black students are denied the stimulus of high demands is, quite simply, a racist one."

McWhorter, Sowell, and others understand that human behavior is INCENTIVE DRIVEN. Their voices are absolutely critical to this debate.

[Hobsonphile]

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[Hobsonphile]

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[happygrl]

Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America by the same author, a black professor at Berkley.

[Valin]

Who Should Get into College?

I don't know, my first thought would be smart people who can pay for it?
But then what do I know.

[mrustow]

What about people who are brilliant but broke?

[Valin]

Life is full of disappointments....this is one of them.

[PatrioticAmerican]

Does it matter? Most colleges have proven to be irrelevant.

[Malsua]

My comment?

My father made 35-40kK in 1985-90. WAY WAY WAY WAY too much for me to get any kind of aid, even though we were essentially cash poor. I had to pay for my education by working 40-60 hours a week making 3.35/hour to a max of $4.95/hour before I left.

Had he made 15k/less a year, I would have had a free ride. Stupid.

[Windcatcher]

It's not just colleges. Back in '83 I took the entrance exam for a prominent high school in the area. I ACED it. The principal came in a little later on and told me something to the effect of: "Well, we gave you a 99, but that's only because we don't give out 100's." They showed me around, and I spent the whole day there touring the classes and facilities.

The result? a $500/yr scholarship for a school that cost over $4000/yr. Their scholarships were given out purely based on need, not on academic promise or achievement. Another (lesser, but still ok) school offered me a half scholarship on a lessr amount of tuition, and there I went...