Look at class, not race.
Look at class, not race.
I s the college-admissions system in the United States fair? Many people would say no — for a variety of reasons. From legacy admissions to athlete admissions to the contentious policy of affirmative action, the system is hardly objective and, arguably, not meritocratic enough. Although elite colleges in the United States are proclaimed to be the best in the world, it is ironic and unfortunate that the admissions system is so mistrusted. Specifically, the topic of affirmative action has drawn significant ire across the country as a practice that undermines meritocracy and simply shifts discrimination.
Over the past two decades, the purpose of affirmative action has developed from a mechanism for reparations for African Americans and Native Americans to a policy of “diversity.” This change can be traced to the 1978 Supreme Court case Gratz v. Bollinger, in which the Supreme Court accepted the argument that racial and ethnic diversity can constitute a compelling state interest. The immediate effect of this change was to create race-based affirmative action, since increasing the representation of certain racial minorities in student bodies was prioritized. While the intention behind this initiative was to provide poor minority students with greater opportunities for education, the actual result from this decision was increased racial diversity coupled with a lack of socioeconomic diversity in elite American colleges.
Take the most prestigious educational institution in America and perhaps the world: Harvard. The university conspicuously lacks socioeconomic diversity, with 67 percent of its students coming from the top 20th percentile of the income bracket and only 4.5 percent of its students coming from the bottom 20th percentile. The median family income of Harvard students is $168,800; elsewhere in the Ivy League, the median family income of students is even higher — at Yale, $192,600, and at Brown, $204,200. Despite decades of affirmative-action policy, diversity of the socioeconomic kind is hardly a feature of America’s most elite private institutions.
Some progressives, such as Harvard professor Cornel West, argue that race-based affirmative action fosters greater socioeconomic diversity because minority students are disproportionately poor. For instance, in an interview with the Washington Post, Natasha Warikoo, a sociology professor at Tufts University, argued that affirmative action provides more equitable opportunities for underprivileged minorities to receive a top-notch education. The main problem with this argument is that Warikoo simplistically assumes that white people are rich and racial minorities are poor. By her logic, a system that advantages racial minorities will serve poor students as well. The facts, however, belie this assumption. At Harvard, according to the scholar Richard Kahlenberg, “71 percent of the black and Latino students come from wealthy backgrounds”; Harvard’s internal analysis, Kahlenberg notes, found that admissions officers’ preferences for African-American students were considerably greater than for students of any race with family incomes of less than $60,000. The original purpose behind affirmative action was to provide students who had little resources with greater opportunities to succeed. Currently, the students who attend Harvard and its peer institutions are as wealthy as they have always been — except now, more are members of racial minorities.
My own experiences as a student at Yale align with the numerical data on affirmative action and socioeconomic diversity in prestigious American colleges. At Yale, my peers and friends — white, black, Latino, and Asian — mostly come from cushy suburbs, attended prep school, and enjoy the benefits of wealth. Summer vacation and winter breaks are for extravagant trips to the Caribbean or Europe. Yalies will frequently travel to New York City on weekends to attend concerts with steep ticket prices and eat in expensive restaurants. The few students I know who come from low-income families often lament the lack of socioeconomic diversity at Yale and the unique obstacles they face. While Yale is racially diverse, the campus does not empirically represent the various economic classes in America. If Yale and other elite colleges ostensibly cultivate the next generation of leaders and change-makers, is it not essential to include students who attain high levels of achievement despite limited resources and opportunities? Progressives and supporters of race-based affirmative action argue that race is a proxy for socioeconomic status. But how is a proxy more indicative than the thing itself?
If quality education is the key to success, then the transformation of a race-based affirmative-action program to a class-based one would be a more effective policy for providing better opportunities to students most in need. An extensive economic study called the “The Equality of Opportunity Project” was spearheaded by Harvard economist Raj Chetty to better understand economic mobility and inequality in America. One of the most important findings from the study was that the likelihood of a child from the bottom 20 percent income bracket reaching the top 20 percent has decreased significantly, especially in comparison with other nations. Chetty notes that the chance of achieving the American dream in Canada is twice as high as in America. The reduction in economic mobility for the average American is astounding and troubling. Establishing a college-admissions system that incorporates students from every economic background could be the first step to making the American dream attainable once more.