What Happens When You Ban Affirmative Action in College Admissions
As a non-american, your obsession with race confuses me for one very specific reason: it is all about involvement, and never about achievement. I wonder if this is a consequence of the &quot;every kid gets a trophy&quot; phenomenon, where merely showing up is seen as the key.<p>Not once in that article were graduation rates from colleges, or post-college outcomes, mentioned. Surely, that is the most important factor in improving racial outcomes, getting people into education that improves their lifetime outcomes.<p>It is weird to me that the US has made the inbetween goal the only goal, e.g. rather than aiming to close racial gaps in outcomes like income, lifespan, likelihood of being a victim of violence etc and promoting policies that can be shown to achieve that, the US has made the goal to close it in opportunity, assuming (hoping?) that will improve outcomes. Seems to me that more blacks and hispanics at college who don&#x27;t graduate or, almost worse, choose easier subjects with worse career options, perpetuates the problem rather than solves it. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectator.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;64739&#x2F;little-understood-engine-campus-unrest-racial-admissions-preferences" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;spectator.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;64739&#x2F;little-understood-engine...</a> has a good summation of this argument.<p>I don&#x27;t think it is really enough to make every college have the right racial mix, if what comes out the other end is a graduate pool that divides along not racial lines, but course lines. If Asians and Whites dominate the degrees that pay well, and Blacks and Hispanics the lesser degrees, we&#x27;ll be left with a population that is educated, sure, but likely in more debt without much improvement in earnings potential. That hardly seems like a great outcome to me, and seems the complete opposite of what the goal should be.