For the record, I am against race based preferential admissions for colleges and universities. They don't make any sense and their ongoing legacy isn't providing more opportunities, you saw the numbers in Michael Steele tweet. The legacy of affirmative action in secondary education admissions is that it provided an avenue for racists to minimize the accomplishments of black and Hispanic people.
That being said I absolutely believe in affirmative action in employment and race based preferential policies in housing and heath care
I think a diverse student body is incredibly desirable as part of a college education experience (and ultimately better for the country as a whole). I have no qualms with “preferential admissions” if they result in greater diversity. It just seems like that has not really been the case.
My answer would probably be to put way less emphasis on GPA and standardized tests, both of which are gameable at best and arguably influenced by systemic racism.
i mean, way less gameable that everything else.
i'd also push back on the idea that universities (at least ones that reject 19 out of 20 applicants) can't and haven't engineered pretty much exactly the diversity that they want. if you look at incoming classes at harvard, they hit within like 1-2% of the same %s of black, latino, asian and white student each year. extremely unlikely that is by chance (btw, incoming freshmen classes are like 15% black, i think the figures steele mentions must include grad and professional students).
i skimmed through this paper, which has a lot of interesting stuff on harvard admissions. one of the interesting points was that, within every racial/ethnic group, the addition of the "holistic" measures results in a wealthier cohort than if academic measures were used alone.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w26316/w26316.pdf
