College Admission Criteria & Discrimination Two recent citizen complaints received by t

Colleges, both private and public, use a wide variety of criteria in selecting among candidates for admission. Some of these criteria are overtly directed at race, and give preference as a means of redressing past discrimination. Others are overtly nonracial, but nevertheless have the effect of preferentially advantaging members of one racial group  often the dominant racial group, whites.

Preferences of both sorts have been separately challenged in the two citizen complaints, Enclosures One and Two. The writer of Enclosure One argues, criticizing racial preferences for scholarships, that "there are poor children of every race." In contrast, the writer of Enclosure Two is concerned about the "legacy" policies of private colleges, the widespread practice by which the children of alumni are given preference in admission. This practice automatically favors children of parents who as alumni (and therefore college graduates) o

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upreme Court's action in Ward Cove (1989). The Court majority held, in contrast to precedents going back some twenty years, that racially differential effects of hiring policies (happening, by coincidence, to favor whites) could show discriminatory intent only if the plaintiff could show that the differential was due to some specific policy, and not to the overall climate of hiring. We will return to the consequences of the shifting Supreme Court below, but the objection to this decision that must be raised her is that discrimination itself occurs most of all in the "overall climate" of society. Few whites go out the door saying "I'm going to discriminate against a black person today." Discrimination occurs mostly in unconscious actions and reactions. Much of the body of law dealing with the discriminatory effects of "standards" is related to hiring practices. In the cases of complaint we are concerned with here, however, our concern is with college admissions standards. In general, the standards for admission to a college bear some comparison to the hiring standards on a job. However, admission requirements to a college seem to be generally allowed to meet a less rigorous standard. For example, the cons
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1821
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)