WASHINGTON — Nine years after the Supreme Court said colleges and universities can use race in their quest for diverse student bodies, the justices have put this divisive social issue back on their agenda in the middle of a presidential election campaign.
Nine years is a blink of the eye on a court where justices can look back two centuries for legal precedents. But with an ascendant conservative majority, the high court in arguments Wednesday will weigh whether to limit or even rule out taking race into account in college admissions. The justices will be looking at the University of Texas program that is used to help fill the last quarter or so of its incoming freshman classes.
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You'll end up with a massive overwieght of Asian students if you go by test scores. I mean massive. It may not work that way (yet) with the demographics in Texas... but if state schools/ others were truly race blind then asians would have a large imbalance in univeristy populations.
Diversity on a campus is a desired outcome unto itself, regardless of test scores. It explains why Harvard rejects valedictorians regularly. But I believe colleges could achieve that diversity by focusing on accepting students from high schools in poor areas instead of looking at only race. The Latino child of a physician and a college professor does not need their race taken into account in order to gain entrance into college. But the child from Madison Park High School needs special treatment, regardless of race. In the end, this process would provide colleges with a racially AND socio-economically diverse campus.