Affirmative Action aka Race Based Admission

10/22/2023

The name Affirmative Action is putting lipstick on a pig to make what is essentially a race based admission. 

An ideal society looks to an individuals accomplishments to place them in the right role. Not their immutable characteristics. 

But lets start at the beginning where maybe there is a way to find a midpath. 

The fundamental question in my view is - What is the purpose of public college ?

My view is that a country has a fundamental goal to produce graduates who can serve the country by being the most skilled in the field of study they take up .  This allows for the country to flourish as they would go on to increase productivity in the country. To be able to place the most skilled - the country should focus on the skills and test it in some standarized fashion to select who gets admitted to proceed. 

Note that not everyone needs to go to college. And there are many paths to success in life.

The prevailing counter arguement is that there is "systemic racism" in the country that needs to be countered by race based admissions. What the purveyors of that philosophy miss is that  race base admissions are just a continuation of "systemic racism" - just targeting a different set of people. A better approach would be to keep a immutable characteristic blind "standardized test" and then ensure that those who claim to have been affected by the "systemic racism" be better prepared for that. Basically - run prep camps in school to enable the kids to meet the academic needs of the university, instead of lowering the standards to let anyone in.