“[A Duke University study] found that among incoming freshmen at Duke who reported a major, more than 76% of black males intended to major in economics or the hard sciences, a higher percentage than among white males. Yet only 35% of black male students went on to obtain a degree in one of these majors, a drop of 41 percentage points. In contrast, the difference between initial and finishing proportions among white males was only 5 percentage points…

“Remarkably, the study found that this gap in attrition rates could be accounted for by looking at entry-level tests scores among students. Like other selective schools, Duke admits some black students with lower SAT scores on average than those of white applicants, but other black students who are admitted have academic credentials that match those of the typical Duke freshman. Not surprisingly, those black students with test scores similar to the white average were no more likely than white students to switch out of the more challenging engineering, economics and natural-science majors…

“Racial preferences in college admissions are not only legally dubious but also counterproductive. Students who would likely thrive at less selective institutions are struggling at elite schools… Proponents insist that no black middle class would exist in the absence of affirmative action, yet the track record suggests that racial preferences have resulted in fewer architects and scientists and physicians than would have existed in the absence of these policies.”
Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal

“Affirmative action was once a well-meaning policy designed to rectify decades of discrimination, but we are no longer living in the 1960s or even the 1980s. The policy has gone from one designed to rectify past racist policies to a racist policy itself as universities turn racial discrimination against academically overperforming demographic groups (namely Asians) in order to be more inclusive…

“What Harvard and North Carolina, along with other universities, are fighting for is the ability to implement racial quotas to preserve racial diversity, one of the more irrelevant forms of diversity that adds very little to higher education. Diversity of thought is far more important and far less of a priority. Diversity of class and socioeconomic status is also omitted, as 71% of black and Latino Harvard students come from privileged, high-income backgrounds. Pairing together rich black students, rich white students, rich Latino students, and rich Asian students is what Harvard argues creates an educationally stimulating environment.”
Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner

“[In a recent alumni letter, Harvard president Lawrence S. Bacow] falsely assumes that there is no middle ground between Harvard’s system of massive racial preferences and racial quotas, on the one hand, and a boring homogeneity, on the other. In fact, there is a vast middle ground…

“Indeed, it appears that there is at least one kind of diversity—socioeconomic diversity—that Harvard has little or no interest in. As SFFA explains, at trial it ‘simulated an alternative where Harvard eliminates its preferences for the white and wealthy [i.e., ‘children of donors, alumni, and staff/faculty’] and increases its preference for the socioeconomically disadvantaged. This simulation would achieve greater racial diversity without using race. And it would achieve something that Harvard currently lacks: socioeconomic diversity.’”
Ed Whelan, National Review