If the goal of affirmative action programs is to help the disadvantaged, let's make sure that the disadvantaged -- regardless of race and ethnicity -- are the beneficiaries. That is the goal of this program.

Concerned that the barriers to elite institutions are being increasingly drawn along class lines, and wanting to maintain some role as engines of social mobility, about two dozen schools — Amherst, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, the University of Virginia, Williams and the University of North Carolina, among them — have pushed in the past few years to diversify economically.

They are trying tactics like replacing loans with grants and curtailing early admission, which favors the well-to-do and savvy. But most important, Amherst, for instance, is doing more than giving money to low-income students; it is recruiting them and taking their socioeconomic background — defined by family income, parents’ education and occupation level — into account when making admissions decisions.

AmherstÂ’s president, Anthony Marx, turns to stark numbers in a 2004 study by the Century Foundation, a policy institute in New York, to explain the effort: Three-quarters of students at top colleges come from the top socioeconomic quartile, with only one-tenth from the poorer half and 3 percent from the bottom quartile.

Race-based preferences are inherently immoral and contradictory to the spirit of US Civil Rights law and the Fourteenth Amendment -- in addition to often "helping" the most advantaged members of ethnic communities instead of those most in need. By focusing on actual evidence of need rather that blithely making the racist assumption that skin color is a surrogate for being disadvantaged, it may be that affirmative action programs may accomplish an important goal -- helping qualified individuals who truly need the assistance.

Posted by: Greg at 01:37 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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