Policy Review: A vs. E:

 Let us consider an imaginary university system, the Generic State University System.  Their board of regents is trying to decide between two policies for admitting students to degree programs whose graduates typically become wealthy professionals such as (but not limited to) engineers, scientists, lawyers, accountants, and the like.  Their foremost goal is to increase black participation in these professions, where they are underrepresented.

Policy A will result in a mean of 60 out of every 100 black applicants to these college programs being admitted, and about 16 of those sixty graduating and joining these well-paid professions.

Policy E will result in a mean of 30 out of every 100 black applicants being admitted, and about 24 of those 30 graduating and joining these well-paid professions.

Now, which of these policies is better for the black community?  I would argue that Policy E is better for the black community, because it results in 50% more blacks entering these well paid professions where they are currently underrepresented.

Which policy is better for everyone else?  That's also Policy E.  The number of available slots for admission to the GSU system is limited.  With Policy A, more freshmen in the GSU system will never graduate.  Those freshman slots are wasted when the students who filled them drop out.  They represent people of all other races who could have entered those professions and provided services to the rest of society, who now are stuck in lower-paid, less valuable work.  With Policy E, fewer slots are taken up by people who won't graduate, instead of more.  And with policy E, there are more highly qualified professionals providing valuable services to the community, both among blacks and among everyone else.

Policy A is affirmative action.  Basically, the rule is that a black student doesn't have to be as good as others to be ADMITTED to a university, but still has to be as good to graduate.  Blacks who would have a very good chance of graduating from (e.g.) University of California at Irvine or UC Santa Cruz, because they're smarter than 80% of the general population, and going on to a successful career, instead would be admitted to (e.g.) UC Berkeley or UCLA, which are geared to challenge students smarter than 99% of the population, where most people only(!) in the 80th percentile would fail, regardless of race.

In 1996, Californians passed an amendment to their state constitution, forbidding use of race in choosing how to fill any sort of government opportunity, including college and university admissions.  

That resulted in Policy E, or Equal Opportunity at the University of California system, in which people get opportunities based on how well they perform against a set of objective criteria, like SAT and ACT scores, high school grades and transcripts, and extracurricular load.  This is also what happens in sports, where the NFL, NBA, and MLB, not to mention track and field, all see blacks outperforming whites, and they do so according to objective criteria.

Four years after this amendment was passed, when the blacks who entered the UC system under this policy first started graduating, the number of black graduates increased by 55%, and they graduated with higher grades and in more challenging fields than under affirmative action.  

Unfortunately for the blacks and everyone else who benefited from equal opportunity, the California state legislature is trying to get the equal opportunity amendment to the California state constitution repealed.

Don't do it, California!