Post: #1

The New York Times just published a debate on how to encourage womens' participation in STEM fields. One columnist noted that women earn the majority of college degrees and don't need help. Reader comments jocularly suggested affirmative action for men in humanities, particularly womens' studies. Is it coincidental that the columnist is a conservative and looks quite pretty?

NYTimes Room for Debate

Post: #2

Disclaimer: I'm a black guy

I'm not really for affirmative action based on race, but as a libertarian I'm fine with schools doing it if they believe adding a black guy with a 3.0 is better for the school than adding the 100th white with a 3.5 GPA. If the value of the marginal black guy is better than adding a "higher achieving" marginal white guy, then it makes sense to get that black guy. It's like adding Bruce Bowen on your team instead of Allen iverson if you are the Spurs. Sure Iverson is better, but Bowen is better for the Spurs. But I doubt colleges look at that way.

Post: #3

Affirmative Action is contradictory with Equality

Post: #4

How about deaffirmative action for women so things go back to normal instead.

Post: #5

Often what replaces affirmative action is even worse.

For instance, in Texas, they got rid of affirmative action. Instead, they had a rule that if you scored within the top 10% of your class, you got a spot in UT. That way, they could still get a fair amount of 'diversity' so the thinking went. Except schools vary so much that you could be average at one school and in the top 5% at another. So it tended to favor so-so students at mediocre schools over brighter students at more competitive schools.

Another example is police and firefighter exams. The passing rates vary hugely by race, if the tests are made to be hard. This doesn't fly with the courts. So they dumb down the tests until the passing rates are close to identical for all groups. Of course, by that point, the test results are near meaningless; you'd be much better off with say, taking the top X% of each group, in what's known as race-norming, aka quotas.

To put it more concretely, imagine you run a security detail, and you need to recruit some guards. You need to impose a strength test, but any real strength test would necessarily discriminate against women. And you're not allowed to have that result. So your test ends up being, "raise your right hand." That's it. There's no more sex difference in strength! Of course, the results were meaningless. You would've been much better off by making applicants say, bench press and squat and then taken the top 5% of men and women, even though those top 5% of women would be far weaker than the corresponding men.

The problem with quotas is that they make the racial/sex preference explicit, whereas cheapening the test doesn't. It's a subtle point, but it's lost on all the mindless hacks who wade into the debate. And cheapening the test just turns the whole thing into a lottery; at best, it makes the decision based off things the test doesn't measure. Ivy League schools started caring more about bullshit 'extracurriculars' and whether you rowed crew or played the trombone after the SAT was dumbed down in the mid 1990s, aka 're-centered.' That effectively lobotomized the test's ability to pick out extremely brilliant people. High test scores became more common, so the colleges had to figure out other criteria on which to accept students. It's like if you were making a baseball team from the country's high school baseball players, and you were told who the top 1% are, in terms of pure skill. But that still meant thousands of players, and you only need 25. At that point, you'd say, "fuck, I don't know who's the best of the best, and who just narrowly made the cut. I'm just gonna pick whoever has hot sisters, and I'll make sure they come to our parties so I can bang them. Oh, guess that means no blacks or Asians, 'cause I only dig blondes." And that's not even irrational per se.

(10-01-2012 12:38 PM)Samseau Wrote:  Affirmative Action is contradictory with Equality

Depends. AA is consistent with 'equality,' if you mean 'equality of results.'

Post: #6

Any Affirmative Action policy needs to be race-blind and based solely on the parents income and education.

Really though, all affirmative action does is treat the symptom instead of the cause.

Post: #7

Quote:Depends. AA is consistent with 'equality,' if you mean 'equality of results.'

Depends on how you define "results"

Post: #8

Deleted. Off topic.

Post: #9

(10-01-2012 06:19 PM)P Dog Wrote:  Any Affirmative Action policy needs to be race-blind and based solely on the parents income and education.

Really though, all affirmative action does is treat the symptom instead of the cause.

I agree. What's the point to include those who aren't ready in terms of academics. They will dropout like flies by spring break, or take basket weaving courses to get a degree that won't make them employable. Universities, well the good ones will keep standards high. First year classes are usually taken in big auditoriums while 4th year classes you will have maybe a dozen in a class. Where have all the students gone?

In the end who suffers?

Universities can bring in quotas etc, but will it help those who are assisted through AA get jobs? Or keep them? No wonder countries and companies where AA type policies exist aren't competing.

Next thing you know you will have an AA policy in sports. You need to have this race or sex to be included on your team.

AA IMHO will do more harm than good. A few will reap its rewards while many wont.

School board funding, policies and community play an important part in educating the youth. This is where the policy makers need to look as opposed to
Looking at AA which is usually at the til end of a persons academic career.