Universities are meant to create an environment that promotes creativity, while providing training necessary to succeed in the real world. Affirmative action is policy that has been implemented to aid in the achievement of this mission. The policy involves providing additional resources or opportunities to underrepresented groups. It is often critiqued as being discriminatory against high-achieving individuals, because it favors a student who may have lower test scores but belongs to a group that is not proportionally represented at the institution. However, a blind admission process effectively discriminates against lower classes, as well as other underrepresented groups, because of biases in testing.
A system without affirmative action would judge applicants based purely on test scores and other accolades. This seems like the most intuitively fair process on the surface, but it quickly falls apart upon deeper analysis. The problem with this intuition is the assumption that standardized tests are unbiased. The SAT, for example, is written in favor of wealthy white communities. It offers prompts that are likely to be encountered in the daily routines of upper-class households but are unlikely to ever be encountered by less wealthy students. In numerous studies, it has been shown that students with equal reading levels will earn drastically different scores dependent on the median income of their neighborhood. This means that wealthy children are able to get higher test scores not just because of higher-quality education, or access to tutoring, but because the test implicitly favors them.
Affirmative action offers the solution to this discriminatory practice. Schools will take an individual’s cultural and economic background into account. By balancing test scores with these factors, the school can gain a more complete understanding of a student’s aptitude for success, which is what the SAT is meant to do. The general conservative argument is that colleges should only care about test scores and grades because these represent the intellect of applicants. The truth is actually quite different. By only considering scores and grades, not the circumstances that surround them, universities would fail to recognize generations of oppression and discrimination that has left poor communities permanently disadvantaged.
The blind application process also fails to consider the importance of diversity within an educational community. Numerous studies have shown that creativity within a group is most dependent on diversity of backgrounds between those group members. In many college classes, there is a focus on collaboration and creativity. These skills translate well to professional life, so this makes sense. It is, therefore, in the best interest of the college to create a diverse population, so their students will learn to appreciate views originating in different backgrounds than their own. If a school admitted without affirmative action, their population would include significantly less economic diversity. This forces alternate backgrounds to become more rare, leaving students with less understanding of the world outside of their own class.
Clearly, students and universities benefit from affirmative action. Students are able to be measured on a more balanced scale, which understands that we cannot control the circumstances we are born into, and therefore the opportunities we are afforded. Universities are able to utilize differing views to accomplish their mission of creating an inclusive and creative culture. Affirmative action is the best way to allow these developments in education. It may be by allocating more scholarship money to African-Americans or by reserving more spots for women in STEM programs. With proper implementation, these policies will open the door to high-quality education for many disenfranchised communities. Higher access to education increases the knowledge of our nation and will directly lead to an increase in quality of life.
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