By Josh Averbach ‘18

Since the end of the civil rights movement, colleges and universities have given preferential treatment to Black and Hispanic applicants in a practice known as affirmative action. Later this year, the Supreme Court will rule on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a case that may, if the court gets it right, end racial preferences in college admissions.

Affirmative action in college applications is a flawed policy for two main reasons. First, it actually hurts some of the minorities that it intends to help. Second, poverty, not race, is the primary reason why many minorities struggle to succeed. Therefore, schools should give a slight edge to the poorest applicants, irrespective of race, since such a policy would address the true barriers to academic success.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, affirmative action sometimes hurts the minorities it intends to help. This occurs when certain blacks and Hispanics are admitted into schools that they lack the academic credentials to attend, and struggle at these schools as a result. This is evidenced by data from the Department of Education, which states that at public colleges and universities, in 2006, black students were over 20 percent less likely than white students to graduate within six years without transferring. While this gap is too large to be attributable only to affirmative action, it is likely that affirmative action exacerbates the problem of struggling minority students.

Proponents of affirmative action argue that because there is a discrepancy in academic performance between white and minority students, minorities are inherently disadvantaged in education, thus, making affirmative action necessary. While this discrepancy is a troubling piece of data, a deeper look reveals a different picture. According to the New York Times, studies show that the racial achievement gap is shrinking, and is significantly smaller than the academic gulf between poor, middle-class, and wealthy students. From this information, it can be inferred that the racial discrepancy is not the result of minorities being inherently disadvantaged in academia, but a symptom of the fact that poor people, who are disproportionately likely to be minorities, are disadvantaged.

Common sense corroborates the idea that poverty is a larger barrier to academic success than race. There are many factors that can serve as obstacles for poor people in education. Among them are bad schools in poor areas, inability to afford tutors or supplies, and family breakdown. These are all class-based obstacles that transcend race to affect poor minorities and whites alike.

For those three reasons, it is clear that schools should transition from the current system to one that is essentially merit-based, but gives very limited help to poor applicants, regardless of their race. Quotas should not be used, and no otherwise completely under-qualified applicant should be accepted because of class. Both of those would create the problem of under-qualified students at too-difficult schools. Class should only be a factor for students on the border between acceptance and rejection.