Diversity In Colleges

Is racism thriving in higher education? Some say it is through controversial policies of affirmative action adopted in many universities across the United States. Affirmative action dates back to the early sixties and was originally created to protect the educational opportunities of males regardless of their background (A Brief History). This came to fruition under the Kennedy administration when in 1965 he signed Executive Order 10925 (A Brief History). This order was later revised by president Lyndon B. Johnson with executive order 11246 including non-discriminatory policies in the work place and branching out to protect women (A Brief History). Today affirmative action is used to increase diversity in higher education, and offer underprivileged
Referring to the court case Fisher v. University of Texas, Jason L. Riley—in his article, “Scalia Was Right About Race Preferences”—mentions evidence brought to light by a Justice involved in the case. Riley states, “racial preferences can handicap some black students by placing them in elite schools where they don’t have the same credentials of the average student and struggle academically” (Riley 1). Due to the fact that the aforementioned students were admitted because of their race—rather than their merit and prior education—they find the higher-level academics extremely challenging. The students are wholly unprepared for the work ahead of them, due to their relatively limited primary education, when compared with the education of their more privileged peers. Further evidence of this disparity between the education of students admitted under affirmative action, and students who were not, is displayed in Martin Trow’s paper, “Preferential Admissions in Higher Education”. When speaking about the advantage given to minority students in admissions he states, “The average black student admitted, for example, had SAT scores 250-300 points lower than his or her white and Asian classmates and a substantially weaker high school grade record as well” (Trow 295). Despite the unsatisfactory scores received from African
While speaking about the policies and formulas used in the affirmative action process, Trow’s paper touches on this double standard. He states “but among those who fell in the B range, 69 percent of Asians, 62 percent of whites, and 94 percent of blacks and Hispanics were admitted. Looking at range C, only 19 percent of Asians and 17 percent of whites were admitted, while 77 percent of the blacks and Hispanics got in” (Trow 299). The range mentioned in Trow’s paper references a scoring system that meshes standardized test scores and high school grade point averages to produce a letter ranking of your academic qualifications. As the letter rank falls the percentage of white and Asians students accepted sharply drops, yet the number of minorities accepted only decreases by 17 percent. To accept one race over another—despite academic similarities—is mildly racist, and shows that institutions don’t expect the same level of academic excellence form minorities as they do from white and Asian students. Essentially, minorities are only valued for their skin color and the increased diversity they bring to the school, rather than their intelligence. This is also unfair to disadvantaged white and Asian students, who may be coming from challenging backgrounds. These standards vary to such an extent that Richard