Analyzing Affirmative Action

Nowadays, education is an important factor in our society. When society started educating themselves, knowledge was passed generation through generation. In past centuries, education was only available for certain groups of people like upper-classmen and clergymen. As time went by, education became more accessible to others, but discrimination existed and many minorities weren’t able to receive the education they deserved. Although there’s still some discrimination present in our society, education is now available to most people. A way in which it is assured that discrimination isn’t present in universities during the application process is by regulating the percentage of students that can get into the university according to their ethnicity. By doing so, the universities grant that their decisions weren’t biased according to ethnicity, they create a more diverse ambient for students and motivate spreading of knowledge, regarding ethnicity.
Universities have their own admissions policies, and they are free to change them any time they decide to do so. One of these policies is the percentages of ethnicities that they accept into the university. This policy wasn’t necessary a few decades back but some legal battle have forced universities into creating it. An example of it is the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. The instance that led to a legal battle was the fact that a student of Caucasian descent was rejected twice from the UC Davis School of Medicine in spite of having better test scores than many students that were admitted. Twenty-four years later, Hopwood v. Texas occurred, where four white students were denied admission to University of Texas Law School over students that were not as qualified a...

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...from the University of Georgetown, “At the country’s 200 most selective colleges, a mere 5 percent of students come from the bottom 25 percent of the income spectrum” (Leonhardt). The statistics derived from his study, show that students that have a better economical background have greater opportunities at superior universities. Economic background is heavily linked to ethnicities and with affirmative action minorities are given an improved opportunity of obtaining a place at a university.
Affirmative action is supposed to be about fairness, but with the passing of time, the main purpose has been shifted and many people consider it to be diversity. Diversity is very important when it comes to universities since it is incredibly known that a university with an assorted student body creates a better learning environment. This happens because of cultural diffusion.