Higher Education Inequality
What I want to focus on for my WP4 is how higher education, which is dubbed “the great equalizer,” actually creates more unequal outcomes for students. Diversity is often seen as an end to institutions, not a means to an end. As a result, students’ socioeconomic backgrounds are often ignored at the expense of focusing on affirmative action. In California, where affirmative action is banned in public universities, the students that are actually overrepresented are often White and not Asian American (relative to achievement). Although there are certainly other factors that play into admissions, the issue is that in other institutions, Asian American students (who are generalized into a broad category despite coming from various ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds) often undergo many obstacles similar to other minority groups, yet they don’t reap the benefits of White privilege.
The reason I’m interested in this issue is of course because it pertains to me to some degree. As an Asian-American student, I believe that the higher education admission system wrongfully places an emphasis on the ethnic background instead of socioeconomic context. It’s almost as if Asian American communities are punished for placing an emphasis on education. Although I do believe that diversity is linked to higher educational outcomes for everyone, the way that many institutions go about it actually drives inequality and is contrary to the mission statements of many universities.
What I currently need to explore is a middle ground between outlawing affirmative action entirely (as in California) and placing an outsized emphasis on it. Doing so will benefit all higher education systems and should hopefully lead to a monumental shift in the college admissions process. Although it is near impossible to create a perfectly egalitarian process since colleges (especially USC) will always prioritize legacy students, there are certain steps that be taken to increase awareness of these issues. From my experience, many students who aren’t Asian American simply aren’t aware of affirmative action at all.
