Reading Michael’s post makes you wonder why it’s regarded as so critically important to get more “minority” students into schools like the University of Michigan. Does it mean that they receive a superior education? They get to take useless classes on subjects like 70s television and they will find it harder to see a professor if they should want to talk about course material. Is there anything particularly beneficial or transformative about going to an elite university as opposed to a less prestigious school?
Several years ago I did a study on the general education curricula at the schools in the University of North Carolina system. Students at the flagship schools get a vast smorgasbord of courses to choose from, many of them narrow, trendy and of dubious educational value. Students at the small, non-prestige schools, where the budgets don’t allow for a huge number of professors teaching their favorite niche courses, had no choice but to stick mostly with the kinds of courses that are the building blocks of a well-rounded education. And their classes would be taught by professors, not given over largely to grad students.
Other than giving leftists something to cheer about, what is so gosh-darned important about “affirmative action”?