"Logical End Point?"
Justice O'Connor delivered the opinion for the 2003 affirmative action case Grutter v. Bollinger. When she closed the case by saying that the judges are "mindful" of the 14th Ammendment, and its purpose to do away with all "governmentally imposed discrimination based on race." That being said the judges believed that race-conscious admissions policies should be limited in time, and have a "logical end point."
In your opinion, what would be a "logical end point" for programs like affirmative action? Do you think they should still be used 10, 20, 50 years from now? Do you think there should even been an endpoint, or should this policy be maintained indefinitely?
Now almost 4 years later Sandra Day O'Connor reaffirms the idea that the future of affirmative action still remains "muddy." In a recent article on April 6 for The Chronicle of Higher Education, she notes that some private colleges end up being more diverse in their enrollment than public colleges. This trend seems "ironic" since private colleges are not covered by state bans on racial preferences.
What do you think might be some of the reasons that private colleges have more diverse enrollments than public? What do you think this indicates about the effectiveness of the policy?
In your opinion, what would be a "logical end point" for programs like affirmative action? Do you think they should still be used 10, 20, 50 years from now? Do you think there should even been an endpoint, or should this policy be maintained indefinitely?
Now almost 4 years later Sandra Day O'Connor reaffirms the idea that the future of affirmative action still remains "muddy." In a recent article on April 6 for The Chronicle of Higher Education, she notes that some private colleges end up being more diverse in their enrollment than public colleges. This trend seems "ironic" since private colleges are not covered by state bans on racial preferences.
What do you think might be some of the reasons that private colleges have more diverse enrollments than public? What do you think this indicates about the effectiveness of the policy?
posted by Frekinawesome at
1:33 PM
4 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
One compelling interest that has been accepted by the Supreme Court for use of Affirmative Action is to obtain the benefits of diversity in education. If private schools are indeed more diverse than the public schools (overall), then it may be justifiable to suggest that we no longer need affirmative action (to satisfy the compelling interest). However, it is difficult to estimate or predict how diverse public schools will be if affirmative action is lifted (we may still need it to acheive the accepted compelling interest).
I am surprised to hear that private colleges have more diverse classes of students. Was that in terms of race or something else (gender, religion)?
In my opinion, the entire topic is tough in that it is hard to say exactly what the right answer is...
In response to private colleges being more diverse, I don't think it is surprising at all.Those that are in private schools have a higher incentive to enrich the classroom experience by having a diverse student population. In this way, they have their own incentives for reputation, funding, etc. Further, private schools are (usually) prestigious and have very high standards. Many types of people apply to these schools, while more public schools may only bring in students from surrounding the area.
As far as policy effectiveness, I would say that we need whatever it takes to keep up diverse enrollment. Unfortunately, public schools do not necessarily have the same incentives that private schools do.
Yesterday (4/16) in class no one mentioned the observation that there is a disparity in diversity when you compare private schools to public schools in higher education. I fully believe that this is very ironic, but also logical since many different applicants from all over the country and world are attracted to the incentives and highly academic environments many private schools have to offer. I also believe that while public schools are trying to implement diversity programs in their schools, many begin to lapse after time passes because public schools become content very quickly after they establish these diversity programs and do not follow through. Private schools by their very nature do not need to explicitly create diversity necessarily, since their applicant pool many times provides them with many diverse students.
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