Race
Why do universities think they are doing minorities a favor by these policies? The Center for Equal Opportunity strikes again, this time against grotesque racial disparities the University of Wisconsin undergraduate and law school admissions process:
The odds ratio favoring African Americans and Hispanics over whites was 576-to-1 and 504-to-1, respectively, using the SAT and class rank while controlling for other factors. Thus, the median composite SAT score for black admittees was 150 points lower than for whites and Asians, and the Latino median SAT score was 100 points lower. Using the ACT, the odds ratios climbed to 1330-to-1 and 1494-to-1, respectively, for African Americans and Hispanics over whites.
For law school admissions, the racial discrimination found was also severe, with the weight given to ethnicity much greater than given to, for example, Wisconsin residency. Thus, an out-of-state black applicant with grades and LSAT scores at the median for that group would have had a 7 out 10 chance of admission and an out-of-state Hispanic a 1 out of 3 chance--but an in-state Asian with those grades and scores had a 1 out of 6 chance and an in-state white only a 1 out of 10 chance.
CEO chairman Linda Chavez noted: "This is the most severe undergraduate admissions discrimination that CEO has ever found in the dozens of studies it has published over the last 15 years."
The studies can be downloaded on PDFs from the linked site. UW's lame response here.
I doubt this abomination will stop until higher education becomes more ideologically balanced. That is, it won't.
I live not too far from the Bastion of racial discrimination in college admissions - University of California at Berzkeley. This type of crap has being going on for years. John McWhorter, the first Africian American Professor at UC Berzkeley, wrote a book called "Losing the Race" that chronicles the issues at Berkeley due to the political correctness that dictates who gets admitted to the University. He believes himself to be a product of Affirmative Action and states that in the book. McWhorter writes that the tragedy of racial discrimination is that the student on the receiving of the racial preference in being admitted will mostly likely fail their classes and never finish their four years at Berkeley. Worse, however, this will discourage from even trying to enroll into a local Junior College where they would probably do better academically. Thus, they go through life seeing themselves as failures and never get further than a high school diploma. I am sure that the administrators and professors at Berzkeley are so proud of themselves.
However, some of these students actually are able with the help of politically correct professors to maintain the needed grades to pass classes at Berkeley and graduate. Some professors lower their requirements for minority students and pass them on.
I have often wonder if these professors and members of academia who try so hard to fill spots with minority students in order to look good or feel good about themselves would ever employ that student or better yet if the student was a doctor actually go to that student for major surgery. My guess is that that they would not. These professors only have to deal with them in school, not in the real world. The whole problem with academia nowadays is that there is a huge difference between their world and the real world.
Well, I suspect that the gap between academe and the real world is shrinking rapidly. Many state systems are cash-strapped, and most big universities are now on a corporate-style management system. A friend of mine at a middling-sized state school tells me there is more pressure than ever to bring in contract and grant money.
If liberals stay true to form, they'll drop the hypocritical ideological stances once their own nests become bare of feathers.
Your analysis may hold true for those colleges and universities located outside of the Stupid State.
Remember, UC Berzkeley is the bastion of liberal anarchy and ideology. They pretty much started the downhill slide of California in the 1960's. The last time I was in Berzkeley the Hippies are still walking University Avenue in their flare-leg jeans, peace t-shirts and long beards. The only difference betwen now and the sixties is that their beards are gray and they are wearing glasses because they are old.
There is always hope though. The latest polls in blue California show Obama losing ground slowly but surely.