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Highest academic standards or greater racial diversity?

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This is moving the goal posts. The original post was about "racial" diversity and not "viewpoint" diversity. If people are of all sorts of different ethnicities, but all ultimately embrace the same views, whether they be evangelical Christianity or democratic Liberalism, there is no viewpoint diversity.

Originally posted by: Inspector Jihad
your response proves that you need diversity...cause you've never been in that kind of situation you dont realize that there is more to learn from each other than to go to a 'prestigous' university where you can mingle with a homogenous crowd with views that are exactly the same as yours.
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This is unfortunately true. After the faculty strike at Temple in the early 90's caused massive numbers of undergraduates to transfer, the university started admitting anyone who applied in order to fill the classrooms. The result was disastrous. Many entering students simply did not have the basic level of academic knowlege and skill necessary to pass their classes. This seriously damaged Temple's reputation, and it is only in the last few years that the school has made a huge comeback.

Allowing people without basic qualifications to enter a university is unfair to qualified students whose seats are taken and unfair to the the admitted unqualified students because there is a substantial chance that they are paying tuition $ while having no chance of graduating.

If Universties want to raise the number of minorities atending, they have every obligation to help disadvantaged minority high school students reach the base level of comptenecy needed to attend college. Such disadvantaged students, like those in the inner city, don't have the same level of teaching and support as kids in say, prep school. Give the disadvantaged kids the tools to help themselves, and give them equal support and resources as more fortunate kids (or as close as reasonably possible), but for heaven's sakes don't give out free passes. It doesn't help anyone.

Short-cutting minorities makes everything worse in the long run. It hurts the academic environment by allowing people who *do not* meet standards to attend university. I don't care if there are no people of _______ race at my school...I only want to see them there if they are on par with everyone else.
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While racial diversity is good, it's better to have a Native American who worked his ass off to get where he is studying with you rather than one who got in simply to be a statistic. AA promotes racism by giving minorities who actually earned their admission a demoted status among the rest of the class.
 
academic standards. If you can do laplace transform as a freshman in college I don't give a crap what color of your skin is, you're admitted.
 
This is why we have soo much trouble in the US now.

We have to make sure everyone gets a equal shot when not everyone is equal. I busted my rear to get good grades in high school and college. I busted my rear working to make a living.

When i owned my business i hired the BEST i did not care if they were white, black, Asian or whatever that did not matter. What did was what college and grades they received.

With AA and its like a business owner would think trice by hiring a minority. Did they get into and graduate college just because they are a minority? did they lower requirements for them (some are even trying to get this done)?

If they allow people who are unqualified into college then what? If they can not get in on there own then are they going to be able to succeed? if not are they going to have to have special classes and degrees?

The dumbing down of education is going to really hurt this country in time. Screw being PC and trying to get a equal number of races in. the best and brightest should be there. If not Community college is not that bad.
 
Higher academic standards. There are wayyy too many dumbys in college now. People who should never have gone to college in the first place are making it in and are just muddying the waters and wasting space for people who should be in college. Qualifications all the way, if you didn't make it by qualifications alone, that should mean you shouldn't be in college in the first place. You probably didn't study hard enough / care enough in high school to make it anyway.
 
Higher academic standards, by far. Here's an idea...if we can take a minority over a white person with equal scores, why not the other way around? An exclusively white university, no exceptions whatsoever...now THAT would be truely competitive and outstanding.
 
Originally posted by: qaa541
Qualifications all the way, if you didn't make it by qualifications alone, that should mean you shouldn't be in college in the first place. You probably didn't study hard enough / care enough in high school to make it anyway.
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This is exactly why racial/ethnic diversity should be promoted at colleges.

You mean to tell me that a black kid from the inner city who did work his ass off, but simply went to a sh!thole school and had little encouragement/help from his or her parents is going to have the same qualifications as a lazy white kid from the burbs whose parents made them do everything and went to a high school where even the lowest denominator was challenged?

Some people assume that a college applicant is 100% responsible for everything they put down on their resume... These people are sorely out of touch with the reality of millions of Americans.

In any case, I went to a university that prides itself on high academic standards and diversity. The two are not mutually exclusive.
 
I don't give a rats ass about who else is sitting in my class; I want to learn. I had a ton of diversity in my classes - I had professors from all over the world who were among the best teachers I've had. Dr. Chen (math prof) had an awesome Chinese accent that a lot of the freshmen hated... he was probably the favorite math prof among the math majors. I majored in engineering, science, and mathematics, and minored in computer science... I didn't need all that wishy washy group work where diversity in college might give me an advantage when heading to the job market.

But, if I had one of those pansy-ass soft majors for people who can't hack the hard stuff (sociology, psych, humanities, etc.) then perhaps diversity would have been important.

As it is, I face almost zero diversity on my job. Of the 6 or 700 people in my building every day, about 99.2% are white. Oh, wait a second; one of the two Chinese kids graduated. (great kid!) Make that 99.4% white. Diversity in this area means "oh, the Amish people?"
 
Originally posted by: Gigantopithecus
Originally posted by: qaa541
Qualifications all the way, if you didn't make it by qualifications alone, that should mean you shouldn't be in college in the first place. You probably didn't study hard enough / care enough in high school to make it anyway.
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This is exactly why racial/ethnic diversity should be promoted at colleges.

You mean to tell me that a black kid from the inner city who did work his ass off, but simply went to a sh!thole school and had little encouragement/help from his or her parents is going to have the same qualifications as a lazy white kid from the burbs whose parents made them do everything and went to a high school where even the lowest denominator was challenged?

Some people assume that a college applicant is 100% responsible for everything they put down on their resume... These people are sorely out of touch with the reality of millions of Americans.

In any case, I went to a university that prides itself on high academic standards and diversity. The two are not mutually exclusive.
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The problem is a lazy black kid from the burbs is getting credited as a poor inner city black kid.

And those poor inner city kids can go to community college and transfer to the college of their choice.. that's what I'm going to have to do and although that is my fault some of the blame I place on the university for affirmative action and accepting such a large number of international students (25% asian student body, not sure how many aren't American but any math/science class has me as the only one without a strong accent). I think the focus of public universities should be put back on educating the citizens of the university's state, and after that one can worry about diversity. Why don't we work to improve these inner city schools you speak of rather than give them a free ride? Why don't we work to change the attitude of a large portion of minorities that education isn't important? Affirmative action is a nice band-aid but it isn't stopping the blood from squirting all over the place.
 
"Hey, you went to XYZ School. That's a good school because it is a diverse school."

When will you ever hear that? From an employer?
 
UCLA: University of Caucasians Lost among Asians
UCI = University of Cambodian Immigrants
MIT = Made In Taiwan

Is there diversity if these labels are being applied?......
 
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