FREE ESSAY ON ETHNIC DIVERSITY

ETHNIC DIVERSITY

Affirmative action can be defined as action taken to compensate for past unfairness in the
education of minorities. The current system of affirmative action allows universities to
admit applicants from certain ethnic and minority groups with lower credentials. The main
purpose of affirmative action is to produce a diverse campus population that is
comparable to today's society. The use of race as a facto by which someone is admitted to
college in the long run will compromise the quality of the university. Implicating
affirmative action to solve the problem of diversity on today's campuses has lead to the
creation of problems. The discrimination against Caucasian and Asian American students a
long with the toleration of lower quality work produced by African American students and
other minority students is an example of the problems caused by Affirmative Action.
Although affirmative action intends to do good, lowering the standards by which certain
racial groups are admitted to college is not the way to solve the problem of diversity in
America's universities. The condition of America's public schools is directly responsible
for the poor academic achievement of minority children. Instead of addressing educational
discrepancies caused by poverty and discrimination, we are merely covering them up and
pretending they do not exist, and allowing ourselves to avoid what it takes to make a
dent in them--augmenting Head Start, improving high schools and spending more equally
among schools (Jacoby 36). The implication of racial preference has given high schools
permission to replace the tradition of achievement with a culture of entitlement. The
feeling of the absence of enthusiasm for achievement is illustrated by John O'Sulllivan
editor of the National Review hen he said, Restoring high standards in high school will
take time; but it will not even begin until the corrupting influence of racial preference
is removed. By not admitting under qualified minority students to America's premier
universities, for example Stanford, hey have not been sent to exile. There are an
enormous amount of top quality schools which they can attend and still achieve their
dreams. Students admitted under the affirmative action plan are accepted with SAT scores
200 to 300 points lower than that of their Asian American and Caucasian competitors. The
undergraduate admission process at the university of California at Los Angles is based on
two standards. These standards are academic rating which are test scores and grades
second are the supplemental ratings. These sees the students socioeconomic or educational
disadvantages. UCLA then ranked each perspective student from 1, the highest, to 6, the
lowest. UCLA accepts 40 to 60 percent of their students strictly on academic premise, but
they do not achieve desirable diversity with theses students. The second group of
students accepted contains those whose combine academic and supplemental rating give them
an overall high score. In this group students with a low academic and high supplemental
rating could till be acceptor. Of the 6,801 students accepted on their academic criteria
lone, only 77 or about 1 percent were African American. Of Asian American and Caucasian
students 81 percent had an academic rankings of one or two. For the African American and
Mexican applicants less than 13 percent of those admitted had an academic rankings of 1
or 2. UCLA is significantly lowering the standards by which they are accepting minorities
in order to achieve diversity. It is ludicrous to try to establish racial report
nationalism in university entrance as a test of a system's excellence. The most important
thing is the number of students who graduate with good marks. Once admitted, the
performance among affirmative action students and other students differs. Among white and
Asian American students, at lest 80 percent of them graduate within 5 years. Less than
half of the enrolled African American students graduate in that amount of time. In the
class of 1990 admitted at UCLA, the average Caucasian grade was just above a B while the
African American average was just above a C. It is unreasonable to think that the
students admitted through affirmative action will be bel to produce the same quality work
that the better qualified students can. Studies done at the department of education how
that Hispanics will leave college early due to scholastic pressure at a 2:1 ratio
compared to Asian American and whites.
Admitting students with lower high school grades and SAT scores decreases the chance of
acceptance by better qualified applicants. The admittance of laws qualified students
produces anger and frustration among students who have worked hard to uphold demanding
standards and except the university to do the same. In accepting these students with
lower scores there is an overall effect on society. Student who are not as qualified will
produce inferior doctors, lawyers, and professional people. In an attempt to launch more
minorities int o the professional world, affirmative action is producing a work force of
laws qualified individuals. As students progress through the college experience and move
on to professional universities and graduate schools, academic ability becomes the
dominant criteria. The use of affirmative action in theses situations is obsolete. After
4 years of college the students should have a chance to catch up. Although antiquated,
affirmative action is still predominant in acceptance to medical and law schools. The
competition for acceptance to medical school is fierce. Students who ere a product of
affirmative action were admitted with college grades below a 3.0 and MCAT scores under
the 16th percentile. Caucasian or Asian American students with the same credentials would
have been turned away. Over 30 years ago 99 percent of students in the United States
medical schools were non-Hispanic whites and now 33 percent of the students enrolled in
the nation's 125 allopathic medical schools being to racial and ethnic minority groups.
Currently there are 3 applicants for every United States medical school that to which the
most qualified are not always awarded. The same pattern is seen in admission to law
school. Students who are black and Hispanic are more likely to be accepted with LSAT
scores below the 19th percentile and college grades less than a 3.3. A student in the
Georgetown Law School was looking into the admission files and discovered that there was
in fact a reasonable gap in the scores. The White and Asian American applicants had
higher scores than the African American and other minority groups had. Recent studies
show that with out the implication of affirmative action minority enrollment in law
schools would drastically drop. The standards for non-affirmative action acceptance at
the LTT Law School were s follows: a median LSAT score in the 93rd percentile and a
median college GPA of 3.5 or higher. The number of minority students who would have been
accepted through without the use of affirmative action is less than 17 percent Mexican
American and very few blacks. Minorities accepted through the use of affirmative action
also show inferiority in their performance in law school. A fewer number of African
Americans and Puerto Ricans passed the bar than did Whites. If these students are unable
to make the grades in professional schools after having 4 years of college to catch up,
then perhaps they are out of their league. Affirmative action admits students from chosen
racial groups that are not as qualified as their competitors. Discriminating against
other students is not the way to sole the growing problem of ethnic diversity. The
students who are admitted through the use of affirmative action generally recieve lower
grade, and smaller percentage of them go on to graduate. With a wide spread problem of
diversity and the double standards involved in choosing minority students for college,
accepting more African American students does not solve the problem. Affirmative action
is not the solution; it is a way of ignoring the problems with America's educational
department. The government needs to initiate the improvement of precollege education and
eliminate affirmative action.