Both the Washington Post, in an OpEd, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, in a long article (link requires subscription), discuss a new report issued today by the Century Foundation calling for affirmative action based on socioeconomic status.
Actually, despite most press attention being given to the call for economic preferences, the report actually recommends keeping racial preference but expanding it to include economic preference as well.
While socioeconomic preferences help produce some racial diversity, we have yet to find a credible procedure that can produce the level of diversity that exists today without purposely selecting African Americans and Hispanics at some point in the selection process….
… Hence, income-based policies are not effective substitute for racial and ethnic enrollment goals, unless low-income African Americans and Hispanics can be chosen disproportionately from the qualified pool of low-SES [socioeconomic status] students or chosen as a supplement to the middle- and upper-income African Americans and Hispanics currently enrolled. (pp. 59-60)
