I'm the founder of a startup, and I hire people I trust and people I have worked with in the past. It just so happens that most of these people have made it to

I'm the founder of a startup, and I hire people I trust and people I have worked with in the past. It just so happens that most of these people have made it to the CS/ECE/Math departments at my university (otherwise I wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with them). If I measure merit by how qualified I think they are, then I'm more inclined to hire people I already know, and this is just knock on effects of gender/race composition by major[1] and university enrollment in general. Any hiring/enrolling system that puts diversity above merit has to bare the opportunity cost of not having more qualified people, and for most companies/organizations this isn't a reasonable compromise. [1]: http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-UIUC/ http://waf.cs.illinois.edu/discovery/Gender-Diversity-at-UIU...