9 ms·

The second order effects of affirmative action's repeal are going to be very entertaining. You can get a sneak peek by taking a look at the student body at a sc

• deleted 4y ago
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• duvenaud 4y ago
  As a STEM academic, I can say that I've never seen or heard of ongoing AA for men in any STEM program in any institution whose policies I'm acquainted with. So it seems to me to be misleading to claim, or at least hard to believe, that very many men in college have been beneficiaries of AA for men.
  • Manuel_D 4y ago
    For technology focused universities, women usually have higher admission rates than men: https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give-you-an-admissions-edge/#:~:text=MIT's%20acceptance%20rate%20for%20women,Carnegie%20Mellon%20(21%25%20v https://www.collegetransitions.com/blog/can-your-gender-give...
    • rajin444 4y ago
      Because there are many programs deliberately designed to benefit women - as in, their public stated goal as well as taking direct (as opposed to indirect, i.e requiring height or strength) steps to limit their benefits to women. The same is true of many minorities.
      • MrMan 4y ago
        if women are a minority doesnt that make a mockery of the term?
        • howinteresting 4y ago
          Minority isn't just numerical, it can also mean having a minority of power. For example, in South Africa Black people were (and still are in many ways) a minority even though they were a numerical majority.
          • Manuel_D 4y ago
            One would be pretty hard-pressed to argue that women hold "minority of power. For several decades now, women have had higher college enrollment rates. And among the two youngest generations, the gender pay gap has actually reversed with women out-earning men [1]. One could very well make the argument that discrimination favoring women isn't affirmative action, but rather "punching down" so to speak. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-earn-more-men-same-age-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/aug/29/women-in-20s-e...
            • howinteresting 4y ago
              Only 30%ish of US state legislators are women. Abortion rights we're just taken away in a number of states. That's a pretty naked display of power.
              • Manuel_D 4y ago
  • pokepim 4y ago
  • michaelt 4y ago
    Not in STEM departments, no. Why would you run a pro-male affirmative action programme in a department where men were already over-represented? But there's affirmative action for men in nursing, teaching, social studies, and similar female-dominated departments. There are active campaigns to recruit more male nurses - and male teachers are more likely to be promoted. I also know first-hand that vocational ballet schools recruit equal numbers of boys and girls, so they can teach partnering - despite the fact they probably get 30 female applicants for every male applicant! Of course, a male might find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action is only applied in areas like ballet and nursing which they're not interested in - but that's the whole point of affirmative action. And if you find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action for female-dominated jobs only provides low-paid, low-status jobs - then feminists are very much in agreement with you about the unfairness of the situation :)
    • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > if you find it unfair that the pro-male affirmative action for female-dominated jobs only provides low-paid, low-status jobs - then feminists are very much in agreement with you about the unfairness of the situation :) This is an interesting point, how much of the salary is determined by presumably impartial market forces, and how much of it is just status and social signalling. We know status and social signalling play a significant role, otherwise behavioural economics and marketing wouldn't exist. We also know that the diffrence between salaries of rank and file staff and C-suit executives have increased 15x in the past 20 years, without any corresponding increase in productivity There is good reason to believe that if you could magically shove high-status men into nursing; nursing salaries would go up. But it's hard to see how it would happen unless we'd have equivalent of the draft for low status jobs.
      • duvenaud 4y ago
        >We also know that the diffrence between salaries of rank and file staff and C-suit executives have increased 15x in the past 20 years, without any corresponding increase in productivity Seems like evidence against the claim that status plays a significant role in setting salaries, unless their status has also increased massively in that time.
• weaksauce 4y ago
  > I think 50% of the population suddenly realizing they were beneficiaries of affirmative action this whole time—and subsequently understanding the nuances of discrimination in this country—will ultimately be a good thing. I doubt that if they haven't figured out it's a nuanced thing by now that they will figure that out after the second order effects come into play.
  • okwubodu 4y ago
    Maybe I’m more optimistic than most. In any case, the gymnastics needed to explain why one was totally wrong and the other is absolutely necessary will bring about an era of US dominance in the sport.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    Why not take these non-specific, hypothetical people at face value? If they say they want merit based admissions and that's what we get then they should be happy.
• givemeethekeys 4y ago
  And, it'll be awesome. In the short term, the few black kids and women who end up in engineering will get respect for making it into the program. And, hopefully a few years later, they'll no longer be looked at as diversity hires.
  • etchalon 4y ago
    People were accusing people of being "diversity hires", or having "slept their way to top", or similar dismissive nonsense long before AA was in wide use.
    • givemeethekeys 4y ago
      Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires. I don't think affirmative action affects "sleeping their way to the top".
      • HelloMcFly 4y ago
        > Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires. I mean... this isn't what AA does at all.
      • dragonwriter 4y ago
        > Well, affirmative action mandates diversity hires. No, it doesn’t.
        • deleted 4y ago
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        • nullifidian 4y ago
          Disparate impact jurisprudence does https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dead-end-of-disparate-impact https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-dead... "Despite this assertion, the development of the Griggs doctrine has proved anything but friendly to meritocratic objectives. Although the Supreme Court has never held that all workplaces must be racially balanced, lower courts and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which is charged with administering Title VII, have firmly embraced the presumption that the racial profiles of particular workplaces should reflect the racial composition of the broader population." "Recently, prompted by the racially adverse impact of measures of verbal and abstract analysis — areas in which some minority groups underperform — experts have also developed alternative instruments that employ audio or video techniques, or that make use of so-called "assessment center" protocols based on job simulations, real-time problem solving, or actual work samples." "Although few disparate-impact lawsuits are actually filed, and though defendants win most of those that are, the specter of disparate-impact lawsuits nonetheless dangles like a Sword of Damocles over employers' heads. The prospect of onerous, unpredictable, and protracted litigation provides employers with a strong incentive to find some way to avoid being sued. One temptation is to satisfy diversity targets by relaxing personnel-selection standards across the board. Firms can also switch to more haphazard staffing methods that tend to obscure informal affirmative action or other race-conscious practices. Some of these tactics pose the risk of yielding a less effective work force, while others (such as the use of race-based criteria) are legally suspect or even expressly forbidden under Title VII."
• tzs 4y ago
  > Once AA is overturned, that's it—hands off the scale Or change it so it is not race based. Instead make it geographical. Say you want to admit 1000 students from the US. Partition the US into 1000 districts, with 1 student admitted per district. Gerrymander the district boundaries to make sure that you get the racial demographics you want. Have fun watching the Supreme Court try to explain why that is not OK but it is OK to gerrymander congressional districts to ensure Black people are underrepresented.
  • jimmygrapes 4y ago
    sounds like the solution is to mandate that black (and asian and so on) people are required to be evenly distributed rather than congregate in enclaves susceptible to gerrymandering. or, wait. that's not good, is it. or is it?
  • mancerayder 4y ago
    Make it geographical or conscious of class, parental income and geography. That would go so much further in the goal of reducing inequality and increasing fairness than classifying people forcibly on something which we used to say wasn't a scientific classification, race.
    • scarby2 4y ago
      > conscious of class, parental income and geography. This is going to be a pain in the ass and you'll just lead to people gaming the system. How about we just aim to make a high quality collage available to all who want it and extremely cheap and easy to finance so it's available to all?
      • nradov 4y ago
        High quality college should be available to all who want it and who are actually college material. There are a large fraction of college students who don't belong there and only matriculated to meet parental expectations or because they didn't know what else to do. As a taxpayer I am unwilling to finance this waste.
• Georgelemental 4y ago
  Women outperform men on GPA, SAT reading, and ACT humanities sections. Men do better on SAT math and ACT STEM sections
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    The difference is pretty small though. Like 30 points on the SAT
    • Georgelemental 4y ago
      Small differences in mean generally mean larger differences in number of people above a high threshold.
    • jkhdigital 4y ago
      Small differences in the means of two normal distributions still result in huge differences at the tails. Suppose the top 10% of SAT math scorers make the best engineers. This population will be overwhelmingly male even if there is only a modest difference in the mean scores.
• sublinear 4y ago
  I think there's a bit more to this. A lot of men simply don't need a degree when they take up the family business, go to trade school, or start a military career and that's fairly common in the south. I wouldn't call most of those guys disadvantaged. Drop out rates for the disadvantaged can be high as well regardless of affirmative action getting them in. The difficulties are cultural and I agree that making this situation clearer is a net good.
  • zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    This sounds like the argument that women don’t need degrees because they are just housewives or secretaries
    • randomdata 4y ago
      As if a man in this day of age would let a woman into his kitchen to make him a sandwich without a degree. One needs qualifications to show ability.
      • selestify 4y ago
        What? Given increased rates of male virginity, it's more as if a man in this day and age would deny a woman from entering the kitchen
        • deleted 4y ago
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        • randomdata 4y ago
          While it was intended as a joke about the workplace, you raise an interesting perspective. Indeed, establishing bonds with a homemaker is increasingly considered a risky activity, particularly for men, primary due to the courts establishing precedent for ongoing support payments even after services are no longer rendered. Perhaps increased rates of male virginity really is the result of increased scrutiny? Certainly in the workplace we've seen increased rates of job vacancies, yet employers will do everything in their power to try and avoid hiring you. This is especially apparent in tech (at least until recently) where companies couldn't hire fast enough, but also put the Leetcode screws to you to ensure that they couldn't find anyone to hire. This does suggest that we're becoming increasingly risk averse or that the stakes are higher.
• okay_dude_321 4y ago
  • onos 4y ago
    All you need to do is look at UC system to see that there may indeed be an impact. https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-new-undergraduates https://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data-ne...
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    > I don't know, it's definitely some fairy thinking on behalf of the plaintiffs. Nothing will change. You'd have to be colossally fucking stupid, as an Asian kid, to think that these Republican motherfuckers are doing this for the benefit of Asians. They aren't doing it for the benefit of Asians. They aren;t doing it at all. The Supreme Court would be doing it to enforce laws against racism.
    • nobody9999 4y ago
      >The Supreme Court would be doing it to enforce laws against racism. You missed GP's point The Supreme court decides which cases it will hear. It does not decide what cases should be filed in Federal courts that may or may not end up on their docket. Whether or not GPs assertion is true (I don't know the facts of the case or the hearts/minds of those who brought it, so I make no judgement there) doesn't make their point moot, or your ignoring of their point less relevant.
• strken 4y ago
  When I was 18 I filled out the section of the form for rural applicants (in the Australian university system), but with the benefit of hindsight I wish I'd left it blank. I'm 95% sure that I would have made it anyway yet the 5% doubt is unpleasant.
  • jessaustin 4y ago
    Why does this bother you? Do you assume that the system is perfect, except for this particular benefit you believe it provides to rural applicants?
    • Akronymus 4y ago
      I assume it's a reocurring thought that maybe the commenter you replied to only got in because of the standards being lowered. Which is something I have heard of from quite a lot of people who may have benefitted from AA. And it's somewhat frequently paired with a huge amount of self doubt.
      • jessaustin 4y ago
        I was happy to write an essay about my experiences growing up on a farm for my Harvard admission packet. I couldn't care less about whoever hypothetical NYC chess-playing salutatorian I "beat out". ISTM these "special" circumstances very rarely contribute the bulk of any incoming class. Any "regular" student who really deserved admissions got it, and only marginal strivers with few must-have qualities complain about getting denied in favor of applicants with special circumstances. It's fine for these people to suggest larger class sizes (certainly in the case of Harvard they are correct; I don't know about the Australian system). Their self-interest is showing, however, when they start making lists of people whose test scores they beat by a few points. There's no reason to trust their judgments over those of professional admissions staff. That is doubly the case for those of us who may have been admitted for these reasons and then went on to collegiate success. Why the hell would we worry about the opinions of those marginal strivers? They should do their best at their safety schools.
  • stubish 4y ago
• gnicholas 4y ago
  The Supreme Court is not deciding anything with regard to sex-based discrimination right now. I would be surprised if it even mentioned anything in dicta (non-binding comments not necessary to the holding) about this topic. Also, if/when the question comes up, there is a different standard for sex-based discrimination than race-based. The former is subject to intermediate scrutiny, whereas the latter is subject (in general) to strict scrutiny. So it is plausible that the Court would determine that some sex-based discrimination is acceptable, and simultaneously determine that no race-based discrimination is acceptable.
  • civilized 4y ago
    It seems ridiculous for it to turn out that way. Let's make sure we have enough men in college, but it's wrong to increase the Black representation?
    • gnicholas 4y ago
      The rules about sex-based discrimination were not crafted for the purpose of college admissions. This is just how the law has evolved around treating people of different sexes and races differently. Another consequence of having the looser "intermediate scrutiny" for sex discrimination is that the FBI can have different fitness requirement for male and female recruits. Ditto for armed forces, and for laws relating to pregnancy.
    • klipt 4y ago
      Sex and race are just treated differently by law. The supreme court wouldn't allow drafting only black people, but it does allow drafting only men.
  • nonethewiser 4y ago
    The ruling almost certainly would include sex because it's part of the same law that protects against racial discrimination. Title VI of the civil rights act specifically protects these plus religion and nationality. If it applies to race (and it obvious does) it applies to all of them. It's honestly astounding that anyone finds this racism either moral or legal. It's precisely the same thing that the civil rights act forbids and for good reason.
• dmix 4y ago
  I don’t see a problem with more women getting into university if they have better grades. They already dominate humanities and STEM won’t be affected anyway, so job outcomes won’t be heavily affected. If we want to fix that then we need to help boys in elementary school, not dumbing down the admissions process. Sometimes reality is exactly what society needs to confront. I have the same view with censorship. I’d rather let the dummies embarrass themselves in public than hiding them in the shadows and pretend they wont all still believe that crap and never having the opportunity to have their ideas challenged. Taping over problems often hides the root causes while doing nothing to deal with it.