In the US their Supreme Court has outlawed positive discrimination to get student race ratios closer to that of the general population. It is a complex issue, with both sides making great points. I am however OK with the decision, because it might prompt a better system to take over.
The #1 racial problem these days is inequality. Outright racism has long been on the decline, but subconscious or unintentional racism still occurs. So while physical harm and outright exclusion are relatively rare this century, the inability to access opportunities is still a problem. That lack of access applies to people of some colors, and many people who lack wealth.
Conceivably, most US colleges are color-blind when deciding admissions if the students came from good schools, and ticked all the boxes of “good”. Which means that well-off students with good grades shouldn’t have a problem getting into schools.
Here’s the plan:
- Divide the average taxable earnings into 10 groups, each covering 10% of the adult population
- Require the latest tax return of your parents to be part of your application
- Divide the applications into their wealth tier
- Decide who gets in by the normal criteria, until each tier is full with 10% of the students being admitted
Yes, some people will cheat… but with tiers it is quite hard. They won’t know how competitive each tier will be. And they will be fighting to get into a school that is suddenly not so exclusive.
And the other obvious problem is how will the poor kids afford to go to a good college? Not so easy when a much bigger proportion of them need a scholarship. Possibly, fees are tied to wealth to some degree. Ideally, the government funds higher education.
But the end result would be great. Poor people are more likely to not be white, so this replaces race-based affirmative admission policies in a round-about way, and for the GOP to stop this, they’ll need to declare themselves to be pro-rich.