Affirmative Action at Exeter
By ARYAN AGARWAL ‘27
Courtesy of Crossed Sabres
Affirmative action is one of the most polarizing issues in the modern United States. Within the last decade, race and background based policies within the workplace and educational institutions have stirred much controversy, even becoming a central piece of contention in American politics. Starting from as early as the 1940s, after issues of discrimination in WWII, efforts for underrepresented communities have been advocated for and even mandated by the government. During the 1960s, the civil-rights movement intensified diversity policies due to strong public duress. Companies and universities nationwide adopted these systems, some even creating quotas for diverse candidates. Most recently, on June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States essentially ended affirmative action, ruling that it was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. This article will be discussing the issues that arise as a result of affirmative action, and why we are heading in the wrong direction as a country.
The most important idea is that college admissions should be meritocratic. This is for a few very obvious reasons. Firstly, a meritocracy will bring the most benefit to society. See, universities at their core are meant to foster the future talent of our world. Those students that have shown promise in their years of high school are the people that can be expected to continue their growth through higher education, and eventually their career. Simply put, when colleges admit the strongest students, they are maximizing the output for society. Without merit, there is no other rational measure for how good a student is, and whether or not they should be admitted. Without merit, admission is random.
Additionally, a meritocracy is the only system that adheres to the cornerstone of American society: those who work hard should be rewarded equally. Any other system can thus be regarded as an injustice, something that is morally wrong and inherently corrupt. The admissions system in the United States is already cloudy enough due to a lack of transparency. Compared to systems like in India and China with objective national examinations like the JEE or Gaokao, American students are confused and thus often distrustful of these colleges where admission is subjective. There are issues with merit-based admissions in our current world though.
Yes, ideally this would be the system of admissions that would be optimal. Unfortunately, we live in a far-from-perfect world. When we talk about merit, we are talking about students› grades, standardized testing, extracurriculars, and essays. The problem is that all of these metrics require context, most importantly being income. Ones family income is one of the largest factors in future success. Those from less affluent communities will have worse public schools, lack of academic resources, and barely, if any, investment from their parents into after-school activities. By the time college applications come around, they have nothing to supplement the application, leaving them with considerably weaker chances of admission. These students are also more likely to have large commitments outside of their own personal interests. They may be required to work jobs, take care of siblings, and pick up groceries, all responsibilities that are necessary for their families but not very beneficial for their own «merit».
Compare that with a student with wealthy parents. The student will easily be able to attend private school, hire after-school tutors, go to violin and piano lessons, all eventually compounding into a competitive application. Note that these things aren›t necessarily a cause of the student›s own merit, but rather because they lived in an environment where excellent opportunity was readily available. Students in low-income households have to fight for the same opportunity.
This all is to say that if colleges today invited a meritocratic admissions system, the distribution of income of those students accepted would naturally skew towards the wealthier end of the spectrum. Of course, this shouldn’t be the case. We would be inviting a never-ending loop of poverty into our country, one where talented students are being hindered by the amount of money in their bank account, again contradicting the core tenet of the American dream. Thus there are problems with both systems, and that can seem like a gloomy reality.
So far, we understand that merit-based admissions is the gold-standard, but there are problems that first must be overcome if we want to implement something like it. The first thing is that even though lower-income and underrepresented students are disadvantaged, affirmative action is in no way a viable solution.
What affirmative action does is implement a short-term solution for a problem that is rooted in much deeper, systematic disadvantages to low-income communities. The first thing that needs to be done is problem-solving at the grassroots level; investment into lower income neighborhoods across the United States will mean that young students will grow up with the proper resources to nurture them and provide for their academic needs. That means that by the time they need to apply for college, they won’t need to worry about the disadvantages that they had when being raised because their applications are competitive. Rather than letting these kids go through transformative years without the proper help and then putting them into environments that they aren›t ready for, we should be helping them from the moment they set foot into elementary school. Eventually this will lead to organic diversity within these schools rather than the artificial diversity that we are settling for today.
Of course, merely writing about the core issue is quite easy. To solve it is much more difficult, especially for politicians. Throughout the years, as many things do, affirmative action has served as another political weapon in the United States. It has only further polarized our already divided country, and that tells us that we cannot rely on the government to make any big change soon. Rather, we all need to understand the issues that something like affirmative action is creating for us in the long term, and decide to start fixing problems from the source.
Changes in perspective, especially on issues that have permeated our nation for the past eighty years, can take multiple generations. It can be difficult to swallow the truth that the system that we currently use is fundamentally flawed and that it calls for immediate, transformative change. Truthfully, affirmative action addresses a big issue in a small way, and that is a problem which needs to be fixed.
