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Discriminate on class, not race

That’s an argument UO’s SAIL program has been making for 7 years now. The NYT reports it is gaining traction, because racial preferences have reduced SES diversity at elite colleges:

In fact, race plays a role unlike almost any other factor. An African-American student with a similar application to a white student received the equivalent of a 310-point lift in SAT scores, on a 1,600-point scale, according to a study of elite colleges by Thomas J. Espenshade, a Princeton sociologist. For Latino students, the margin was 130 points.
Recruited athletes and so-called legacy applicants also receive huge bonuses. 

But students who bring the other diversity that colleges claim to value — socioeconomic status, geography and perspective, to name three cited in the brief — receive no such advantage. …

The liberal critics of affirmative action believe that many of these approaches would be better than the current one. Racial discrimination obviously continues to exist. But the disadvantages of class, by most measures, are larger today. A class-based system would be more expensive, forcing colleges to devote some money now spent on buildings and other items to financial aid instead, but it would also arguably be more meritocratic.

In addition, giving special preferences on the basis on income or first generation in college is unambiguously constitutional. 3/10/2013.

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