Why Affirmative Action should be Banned

Affirmative action should be banned because it harms minorities and discriminates against non minorities. The solution is to ban any kind of race based, gender based, or economic based affirmative action. Colleges should judge the applicants only by their educational standards and determine if that individual meets the college’s academic requirements. Whatever gender, race or economic class a student belongs too shouldn’t matter.

Affirmative action in college is the strategy of promoting members of society who belong to a race that has faced institutional discrimination in the past.

The intended goals of affirmative action were to help these minority students get access to higher education and promote diversity within the colleges. However society began to realize that the practicality of affirmative action was becoming outdated, because in 1964, the 88th United States Congress enacted The Civil Rights Act which “outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin and  “required equal access to public places and employment.1 This made it harder for colleges to implement affirmative action, but they still found ways to do it. There have been dozens of cases on affirmative action regarding college admissions, for example in 1978, “Allan Bakke, a white man, had twice applied for admission to the University of California Medical School at Davis and “was rejected both times, despite having the required academic achievements, while minority applicants were given preference.2 The result of the affair was that Bakke was admitted and “the rigid use of racial quotas at the school violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.2 Another affirmative action case that seemed to violate the constitution was Grutter v. Bollinger. “In 1997, Barbara Grutter, a white resident of Michigan, applied for admission to the University of Michigan Law School. Grutter applied with a 3.8 undergraduate GPA and an LSAT score of 161. She was denied admission. Later in 2001, “The judge in the Grutter v. Bollinger case ruled “the University of Michigan Law School’s admissions policy . . . unconstitutional.4 These examples demonstrate how affirmative action treats non-minorities unfairly, even though they work hard in school.

Affirmative action does more harm than good to minority students because they are often being mismatched. This means they are getting accepted into higher level schools without having the appropriate academic requirements to succeed. For example, a black student with an 80th percentile on standardized tests would excel at any average American college. However, if that student applied and got accepted to a school where students are averaging at the 99th percentile, than the classes they take are most likely going to be too difficult for them. This example is apparent due to this fact: “When black students who scored at the 90th percentile in math were admitted to M.I.T., where the other students scored at the 99th percentile, a significant number of black students failed to graduate there. Another fact that supports this claim is black students that obtained race preferences at the University of Texas “placed at the 52nd percentile of the SAT” which is a score of roughly 1050, even though a score of “1240 on the new SAT places [students] below average at the University of Texas. Minority students are also more likely to not complete their academic careers in engineering and science. Piggy backing off of that fact that black students have a lower SAT percentile than non minority students, “An aspiring science or engineering major who attends a school where his entering academic credentials put him in the middle or the top of his class is more likely to persevere. . . than an otherwise identical student attending a more elite school where those same credentials place him nearer to the bottom of his class. These minority students could have very well gone to a school that matched their academic levels and succeeded, but instead fail or drop their academic goals. Society can not afford to lose these gifted student’s that would otherwise help the country grow and prosper due to demographic representation.

Diversity in college is an obvious good because research from “the Gates Foundation, Carnegie Mellon and Harvard University demonstrate links between academic achievement and diversity. These links; “Exposure to new ideas . . . cultures and people from different backgrounds9 promote “creative thinking, expands academic discourse, enhances self-awareness and better prepares students for a global economy.9 The greater issue is how colleges attain diversity. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, “60 percent of the wealthiest students complete their studies and graduate, only about 16 percent of low-income college students graduate. This means that students growing up in low income environments likely go to schools that don’t provide a quality education, unlike wealthier schools. These students just simply cannot afford to go to these better schools because of their parents financial issue. For these low income minorities to get a better opportunity to go to college, they must be saved from these failing public schools they are enrolled in. This is apparent due to this fact: “Among top scorers?”those scoring between a 750 and 800. 60 percent are Asian and 33 percent are white, compared to 5 percent Latino and 2 percent black. Meanwhile, among those scoring between 300 and 350, 37 percent are Latino, 35 percent are black, 21 percent are white, and 6 percent are Asian. In order to save these minorities, “[universities] can narrow the critical skills gap by empowering parents to choose their schools. Universities can do this by sponsoring programs that help low income minority high school students prepare for college. Bruce Wydick, an economist, discovered that “intensive college preparation programs are the only way to increase minority representation in selective schools without harming minority graduates in the entry-level labor market.12 The University of California already has a system for this. They institute “programs that provide tutoring and counseling to local students who might not otherwise get the assistance they need.12 This proposal to the issue is a much better solution than affirmative action because it doesn’t mismatch the students.

The solution is to ban affirmative action all together.  “California, Washington, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, and Oklahoma are states that “currently ban race-based affirmative action at all public universities”13 and minorities are thriving at these schools. The problem of minorities being mismatched and dropping out are no longer relevant at these schools, because at the University of California, there is a “an increase in the number of black and Hispanic students graduating, including an increase of 55% in the number graduating in four years and an increase of 63% in the number graduating in four years with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher.Another thing that shows affirmative action bans terminates mismatching is the fact that in Ohio, a state that does not ban affirmative action, “saw 67.3 percent of black students graduate in the Class of 2016 while “African-American students had a graduation rate of 73.1 percent in California, a state that has banned affirmative action.

In conclusion, Colleges should judge applicants solely based on their academic criteria and leave race, gender, economic, and anything else out of it. This will prevent minorities from failing or dropping out due to them being mismatched. As for keeping diversity within the colleges, universities need to help out the unfortunate students that cannot afford to go to the better, more expensive schools by providing tutoring and counselling. They also need to empower the parents of these students to encourage them to succeed and to take school seriously. This will ensure that minorities will succeed in a college suitable for them and that everybody from all backgrounds will have a fair shot at attending and succeeding in college.

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