How I Learned to Love Quotas (NY Times)

教育

米最高裁でアファーマティブ・アクションについての判決が迫っているが、記事はAAに懐疑的だった著者（大学の法学教授）が、実際的な面からこれを支持するようになった理由について。端的に言えば、大学側はAAが違憲とされれば学生の学力基準を下げてでも人種的多様性を維持しようとする結果がでているで、これは公的大学教育の崩壊を招きかねない、AAは認めてやるべきだというもの。

After the courts and popular initiatives began to ban affirmative action, I noticed that state legislatures and universities rebelled, deciding on their own that racial diversity is more important than meritocracy. In both California and Texas, the political pressures to achieve racial diversity proved so overwhelming that when each state's universities were forbidden to take race into account in the admissions process, they simply refused to accept the decline in black and Hispanic enrollment that inevitably followed. Instead, universities responded to the widespread political demand for diversity by devising plans that, in effect, lowered academic standards across the board. This response has had some success in keeping up minority enrollments, but at the cost of an even more serious compromise of academic standards than the relatively modest concession represented by affirmative action itself.

教育機関としてのアメリカの大学にはまだ希望がもてるね。