Quote Originally Posted by cheeseburger
Acceptance to a college or employment should be based 100% on merit?
My personal opinion is that we must recognize that "merit" is a subjective term. Who has more "merit" - the student from wealthy 2-parent family who attended the best schools and took every ACT prep course available and scores a 28 on the ACT or the student from a broken home who attended a lousy inner city school while working 30 hours a week and scores a 26 on the ACT. Personally, I would rather have the student with the 26 operating on me because s/he achieves more with the opportunities s/he is provided.

However, you will actually find that current admissions policies are not the old style "affirmative action" policies of the past which have been held by the SC to be unconstitutional (see Gratz v. Bollinger (2003)). Instead, new admissions policies may take race into account as one factor to be considered to acheive "diversity," since diversity provides a better educational environment which is a constitutionally acceptable goal. Gratz v. Bollinger held that numerical “quota” admissions systems are not narrowly tailored to asserted interest in diversity.

fantassy