Imagine two high school seniors with comparable grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities. One is black, has wealthy parents, attends a prep school, and resides in Manhattan’s affluent Upper West Side. The other goes to an underserved public school in Appalachia, is the son of an impoverished single mother, and happens to be white.
As it stands, elite universities would give the rich black kid a leg up over the poor white kid. That’s not right.
While it may seem far-fetched, this scenario is far more common than one may think — 71% of black and Latino students at Harvard come from affluent backgrounds.
If academic institutions truly want to increase equality, considering the economic conditions of applicants, not just their race, would make the most sense. Looking at race alone allows wealthy minorities to take advantage of the educational system at the expense of less fortunate white and Asian students. Switching to a class-based approach would prevent that kind of exploitation and still benefit nonwhite young people, given that they are overrepresented among the poor.
Despite its carefully cultivated liberal image, Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League does a terrible job at bringing low-income students into the fold. Only 4.5% of Harvard undergraduates come from the bottom 20% of earners, and that’s among the highest proportions for elite colleges.
Affirmative action has succeeded in making our academic institutions more ethnically diverse, though the practice has done comparatively little to address economic inequality. Giving poor students a boost in the admissions process could rectify this.
Meritocratic purists would argue that test scores and GPA ought to be the sole considerations when determining if someone should be offered a spot at a given university. This is a somewhat shortsighted position.
Consider this — two people are engaged in a footrace. One runner is wearing a backpack with a 45-pound plate in it, while the other is unencumbered. If they were to cross the finish line simultaneously, would it be fair to say they are equally skilled runners? On paper, their time was the same. The one being weighed down, however, is obviously the superior athlete as he or she achieved the same result as his or her opponent despite being at a disadvantage.
We can apply this same logic to the college admissions process. A student that had to work full time to support themselves and still managed to eke out a 3.8 GPA is more impressive than another student getting a 4.0 within the context of a stable, upper-middle-class family. Performing well in spite of obstacles is evidence of academic potential and should be rewarded by admissions officers.
Affirmative action, in its current form, is both counterproductive with regard to determining the difficulties experienced by individual applicants and ineffective at combating societal inequality. Considering things such as income, the quality of the school one attended, geography, family structure, and work history would be far more conducive to recruiting truly disadvantaged students (and more fair) than naively assuming that race can be used as a blanket proxy for hardship.
Colleges could still make progress toward this end without totally uprooting existing procedures. Partnering with organizations that aim to provide low-income students with access to elite education, organizations like Quest Bridge, would be a commendable first step for many institutions.
