Dr. Richard Vedder, Director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity and Professor of Economics at Ohio University’s College of Arts & Sciences, published an opinion column in the New York Times’ Room for Debate on “Academic Merit is Most Important.” He writes:
I think good will likely come of a ruling against colleges in the Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas case. It is not only legal and moral but arguably great and virtuous to select students partially on the basis of socioeconomic criteria. Taking more poor students, for example, arguably promotes the American Dream of equality of opportunity, but also works to support minority admissions. It is unfair and wrong to accept a black child from a prosperous college-educated family with a $200,000 income while rejecting an equally qualified white person from a poor household with a $40,000 income where the parents never attended college. A color-blind admission policy accepting family economic circumstances as one criterion for admissions, however, is both fair and coincidentally promotes racial as well as economic diversity.
Read his column.
Comments