College ditches racial preferences, nobody notices for two years

rainerann

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I thought this was an interesting article and it makes a good point.

"What if a college stopped judging students by their skin color and nobody noticed?

That’s what happened at the College of Charleston, which started giving preference to “first-generation college” applicants rather than to nonwhite students two summers ago, The Post and Courier reports.

Civil-rights groups told the paper they never heard of the change at the South Carolina public college of 10,000 students, which upended at least a decade of practice:

According to Jimmie Foster, vice president of enrollment planning, the College of Charleston was using affirmative action in admissions, albeit sparingly, when he came to work at the school in 2008. It was one of many factors that admissions officers considered along with high school grade point averages, essays, extracurricular activities, and scores on college entrance exams. …
“The Admissions Committee recognized that our student-of-color enrollments were increasing substantially while we were infrequently using race as a factor in the admissions process. So we decided at that point that that holistic review process and all the other many diversity initiatives that we were using were already having a strong impact,” Foster said." https://www.thecollegefix.com/post/47364/

I think it would be a better approach to give preference to first-generation college applicants. It is a simpler way to approach the issue, and this helps remove bias.
 
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