College admissions committees can’t repair the damage caused by family dissolution.
This morning the New York Times published an extraordinary, data-rich article examining the outcome of diversity efforts at colleges and universities from coast to coast. The results, quite frankly, are sobering.
After decades of affirmative action, billions of dollars invested in finding, mentoring, and recruiting minority students, and extraordinary levels of effort and experimentation, black and Hispanic students are “more underrepresented at the nation’s top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago”. White and Asian students, on the other hand, remain overrepresented as a percentage of the population, with Asian students most overrepresented of all.
On the one hand, these statistics represent a staggering failure. It’s difficult to overstate the modern campus obsession with diversity. To judge from marketing materials, campus investments, and the explosive growth of diversity bureaucracies, increasing minority representation on campus isn’t just a priority on par with, say, a good math, English, or engineering department, it’s deemed to be an indispensable part of a high-quality college education. That’s the legal rationale that’s used to justify racial discrimination in college admissions — that there is a “compelling state interest” in creating a truly diverse educational experience.
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