Prior to the Court’s decision to remand Fisher to the Fifth Circuit, which prolongs the battle over the legality of race-based admissions preferences, the social engineers in our midst were beating the drums for a shift toward a different kind of preference program — one that would boost students said to come from economically “disadvantaged” backgrounds.  

The same day that decision was announced, Peter Wood and Herbert London published a statement for NAS opposing such a scheme. In it, they provide strong reasons for concluding that class-based preferences are just as objectionable at race-based preferences.

I agree with their arguments and would add one more. The assumption behind both preference regimes is that it is a good thing, both for the individual students and the nation’s social health, for some students to be admitted to “better” colleges than they would attend in the absence of preferences. It is assumed to be more advantageous for a student who would have readily been accepted at, say, NC State to instead go to Duke, thanks to a preference. That assumption, I maintain, is usually mistaken. Rather than somehow making the country more socially just or at least helping the preferred student to better succeed, class preferences are apt to harm the students. Bigger, more prestigious schools do not necessarily give them a better education; often it’s the reverse. Also, “prestige” schools often have an inferior (and sometimes downright terrible) learning environment. That’s perhaps the main lesson of the recent book Paying for the Party.

“Progressives” take pleasure in thinking they can redesign society and improve upon laissez-faire. They’re almost always mistaken, and certainly so when it comes to shuffling students around to different colleges.