To the contrary, Stanford, for instance, has ~22% of its student body "White or Caucasian", when it used to be 40% in 2016. This swing didn't occur simply because white students stopped applying.
Admissions departments will find proxies for race. The next year of Harvard freshmen will not be majority Asian. The admissions department won’t allow that to happen.
If true, an in-person English fluency and personality interviewing process, even a supposedly race-blind one, tends to skew heavily against a majority of, but not all, Asian college applicants.
That’s probably what your theoretical proxy will look like, if you’re correct.
This is something that actually got Harvard in trouble as alumni interviews rated Asians roughly similar to Whites, but the personality scores that the admissions offices gave Asians were lower even though they never met the candidates.
"Alumni interviewers give Asian-Americans personal ratings comparable to those of whites. But the admissions office gives them the worst scores of any racial group, often without even meeting them, according to Professor Arcidiacono."
Sounds like the equally-ridiculous "cultural fit" part of company interviews. Even if candidates pass all the measurable, competence-based criteria for the job, companies have the cultural fit card to play against those candidates for whatever unsavory reason the company wants to exclude them.
A proxy of zip code, maybe. That would be racially blind, a poor white kid in the midst of a poor black neighborhood would be just as likely to get in as their black neighbors would be.
If colleges stop considering standardized tests in order to keep the number of Asians down, is that illegal? Could courts force colleges to keep using the SAT?
> “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Roberts wrote.
Sure seems like proxies for race are if anything explicitly called out as being OK by SCOTUS rather than illegal.
Far from it, the point is that the lived experience of the individual matters, just not their race explicitly.
The court recognizes the effects of race and recognizes them as valuable when considering a candidate, just not their race per se. If you allow me to be a bit cheeky, it values the content of their character over the color of their skin.
Universities will come up with other justifications to keep their racial diversity high. If you’re from a certain area, single parent household, went to certain schools, etc.
Eventually some university will get sued for that, and we’ll see how the Supreme Court rules. I imagine it’ll depend on how egregious it is, and if there are any internal emails where admissions are openly talking about it.
Historically: Colleges were mostly establishment (liberal or otherwise)
1990s and 2000s: Asians do well on exams (and in workplace), take ever greater % of sets from establishment, competitively
2010s: Establishment realize that "BLM" and aim to give Asian seats to PoC, while also conveniently setting proportionately lower quotas for Asians so establishment retains seats they were losing
2020s: New ways found to prevent Asians from competitively winning seats (e.g., roadblocks on registration, etc)
more asians, less blacks and a bit less latinos at top schools, especially private ones. Will be interesting to see if they move toward an income based affirmative action.
When you say "income based affirmative action" do you mean an increase in need-base grants and scholarships, which already exists, or giving someone preferential admissions treatment because their parents make less money regardless of academic ability?
Asians are the poorest demographic in NYC, and yet score the highest in testing. So, activists will probably eschew this method as well because it will give Asians preferential treatment which they are loathe to do.
Just to echo what other people replied. Law is over rated.
If people are really interested in doing something - whether that's discriminating against Black people or discriminating in favor of Black people - they're probably going to find a way to do it. Laws will make a difference on the margins but if there are motivated people then they are going to start trying to work around this ruling today.
The biggest effect of this ruling is that it's a marker to let people know that opposition to affirmative action is serious. That will have more of an impact then the ruling itself.
It is sad that most comments to this continually focus on the racial identity outcomes.
What this really means is that some students who had better grades and test scores will get into their more preferred university, and some students who had worse grades and scores will have to settle for a more fitting less-preferred university.
Even though adcoms try to keep the same regime through other proxies, but they have to be very careful: 'But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.' (p. 39)
