I did not work in college admissions.
I was SVP of marketing operations for an entertainment/ electronics corporation, and I completed grad school in 1987.
And no, I did not see the epidemic of favoritism towards Black students that you are constantly harping on back then.
In fact, I was one of only three Blacks in my graduating class, and all three of us were working professionals that had the necessary academic credentials as well as the ability to pay our way through the program.
As for now, my grandchildren who were both valedictorians in high school are enrolled in their first year of college, and they, like me received no special consideration for admission, and have the family resources and support to pay their way through without student loans.
As I said before,
Tschüss, and happy trails.
First, I did work in admissions, for several years, and saw what went on.
And if you have grandchildren, you went to college in the 70s and before, and you’re saying you didn’t see the blatant favoritism back then. Well, that’s because it wasn’t as blatant back then. We didn’t see all these extreme identity politics, where people are first measured by their skin color and secondarily by their qualifications or competence.
I worked in admissions in the 2000’s, when the favoritism, based on race, was blatant. Admissions test back then WERE devised so that blacks could score as well as whites, or close to it. (In some instances, where blacks were not scoring as well, and it became hard to justify their admission over better-qualified whites, they simply abolished the test.) And since I left that field, things have gotten even worse.
It’s time to let blacks succeed or fail on their own merits, and admit people to college based on academic credentials only. As I’ve said before, I’d support some consideration given to high-achieving kids from poor or modest backgrounds, so that for example if a black and white both had the same GPA and test scores, and one slot remained, it would go to the poorer student. As it currently stands, it goes to the black student, regardless. In fact, it goes to the black student with POORER grades and scores.
Time for everyone to compete on merit, with some allowance made for poor backgrounds. Race needs to be irrelevant.