The changing demographics of the country are also changing student populations. As an example, in 2022, more than 33% of the students at the University of Texas at Austin, which automatically admits any Texas high school student in the top 6% of their class, were from historically underrepresented populations. And universities that value diversity may continue to try to create a diverse student body.
But in the past, when schools have eliminated affirmative action, Black student numbers have dropped off, both because of changes in admission policies and because Black students have felt unwelcome in those schools. This matters to the larger pattern of American society. As Black and Brown students are cut off from elite universities, they are also cut off from the pipeline to elite graduate schools and jobs.
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Al Franken made a good argument for affirmative action in Lying Liars. He hypothesized two children running a foot race, one of which the beneficiary of intensive training since he could crawl, the other without decent shoes. If they tie, is it really a tie? Or does the one without the benefit of wealth and privilege demonstrate more latent ability? Therefore, perhaps the finish line shouldn't be parallel to the road.
But that's the sort of nuance conservatives defy by definition and "fair means fair" despite the fact that elite colleges have always existed to keep out the riff-raff. Jeff Selingo has an anonymous quote from a Harvard administrator in "Who Gets In" along the lines of "Harvard admissions aren't designed to ensure the Harvard student body is elite; they are designed to ensure that only the elite make up the Harvard student body." Standardized testing was originally created to keep the Jews out of the Ivy League. The Stanford-Binet intelligence test was named after a eugenicist by a eugenicist.