Say you are deciding who gets into a college. To simplify say you have only one metric, GPA/test scores. What do you do?
- You might have a student from a wealthy family, comfortable upbringing, two loving parents invested in his well-being and education, with money to spend on extracurriculars, and a nice school with all the trimmings. He has 3.8/4 GPA.
- You might have another student from a lower-class family, with, say, trouble at home, parents shouting, no money for extracurriculars like music or sport, studying in a shitty dilapidated school. He has 3.5/4 GPA.
Whom do you choose? It's definitely not so simple! In fact, remember that you are choosing people to come to college: an environment where they will all have equal access to resources, including professors, study materials, facilities, etc. I argue that you should choose the student which is more likely to make the most out of those resources.
In this situation, wouldn't a better predictor of success in higher education be, instead of overall GPA, the difference in GPA compared to students in the same cohort? Wouldn't that be (a) a better measure of "merit" and (b) a better practical investment in someone who is more likely to excel and make the best out of the resources/opportunity invested?
Just an example to illustrate that one dismissive sentence cannot possible solve this issue.
You choose the one with 3.8GPA. We did this for years when Asians were in the latter group, and now that Asians are ahead, we’re acting like broad racial discrimination is justified because high GPA proves privilege not talent.
If however you want to make GPA weighted by household income instead of identity I say knock yourself out, because that would still greatly reduce discrimination compared to the status quo. It will never happen though because DEI is designed to fuck over the Asian working class while leaving the privileged classes alone. The whole point is to fuck over poor Asians , that’s the reality and truth of the system you apologize for.
>I argue that you should choose the student which is more likely to make the most out of those resources. ... the difference in GPA compared to students in the same cohort?
The entire point of equality is that we are all one cohort: Regardless your race, gender, background, or creed you will be treated the same as the next guy in line; and there is only one line.
It totally is discrimination, but it's discrimination based on facts. What we have now is even if the first student is from an ethnic minority, and the second is from an ethnic majority, the ethnic minority student would be preferred.
> The entire point of equality is that we are all one cohort
Well but we aren't. One of the strongest predictors of academic performance is parental income. Burying your head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist is not a satisfactory answer.
If you aren't rewarding effort, skill, and talent there is no incentive to be successful. You pick the 3.8 GPA, aka the guy who performs better.
>Well but we aren't. One of the strongest predictors of academic performance is parental income. Burying your head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist is not a satisfactory answer.
If the objective is to further equality, then the answer is to treat everyone the same with no arbitrary separators because that is the entire point of equality.
With regards to university admissions, the performance measure in question is one's GPA or whatever objective measure the university wants to use.
Income brackets can become a consideration if we are discussing financial assistance programs, but that is tangent to admission.
Any program that favors people of a certain race or gender, either minority or otherwise, is literally racist and/or sexist and should not be tolerated.
