Affirmative Action in Higher Education - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1262 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2019/10/30 Category Society Essay Level High school Tags: Affirmative Action Essay Did you like this example? Affirmative action in higher education has been a very controversial topic in the American education system for several years. Many people around the world have constructed their own ideal definition of what affirmative action means to them, leading others to have a confused misconception of what the true meaning of affirmative action is. Affirmative action can be acknowledged as a form of â€Å"positive discrimination†. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Affirmative Action in Higher Education" essay for you Create order It is a policy that was created in 1961 by President John F. Kennedy to favor those who tend to be discriminated against in areas of employment and education. It is primarily appointed to help women, minorities such as Native Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals, and those that are disabled. In March of 1961, President Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925, establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. The mission of this executive order was to end discrimination in employment and education by the federal government and its contractors. It was this order that initiated our national commitment to affirmative action in both the workplace and in higher education— â€Å"our determination to take positive steps to extirpate all preference by race† (Cohen 12). Many people believe that affirmative action is a form of racism or discrimination in the school system, however it is actually a forum by which minorities have a better opportunity to obtain higher education in what can be presumed as a racist world. On the contrary, critics have insisted that affirmative action is ill-favored and objectionable. Barry Gross proclaims that it is unfair to the white males against whom it discriminates. He states that non-minority males are deprived of equal opportunity because affirmative action selects minorities or women candidates over more qualified non-minority males (Cohen 264). A various amount of critics and scholars provide impressive amounts of debatable ideas in regards to affirmative action in higher education. The efforts of affirmative action to improve the racial disparities in higher education in America does not create a practical solution but rather, it creates the same type of divided environment that was previously present in society due to racial disadvantages and it also faces the same struggle that it tries to extinguish. In this essay, I will concentrate on these problems in regard to the policy of affirmative action as well as delve deeper into how minorities of different ethnicities and sexualities are affected by the policy. Affirmative action may not be a practical solution to maintaining fair grounds for all people in the college admission process. It creates more of a divided environment in that the current forum does not reflect a level playing field for all people as promised by the program when it was first introduced. According to NPR, Americans were surveyed by the management consulting company Gallup. The findings from the survey indicate that Americans largely support the idea of affirmative action but also oppose preferential treatment for minorities in the college admissions process. 70% of Americans suggested that the ethnic and racial background of college applicants should not be considered but college applicants should be exclusively judged on their academic merit only, even if that ultimately means a smaller amount of minority individuals are admitted to college (Rozen 1). This is where the concept of affirmative action in higher education has many conflicting viewpoints. If college appl icants were to be judged solely on their academic merit, colleges all around the nation would not have a diverse group of students and it would prohibit several groups of people from obtaining the proper education that is needed in order to prosper and succeed. For this reason, college admission officers try to look at every single applicant with a holistic review so that everything about a person and their background is taken into account. With this approach, admission officers are able to look at the numerical and non-numerical aspects of an applicant so that they can admit interesting students of different demographics that have something meaningful to bring to the college’s community. In order to move forward towards a more just and equal society when in comes to acquiring a good education, it is imperative that the demographics of people that have been negatively impacted by discrimination are given the same opportunity that non minorities have already had for several decades. Chambers writes, â€Å"Even the strongest critics of affirmative action acknowledge that to advance toward a colorblind (racially just) and gender-free (sexually just) society, we will sometimes have to depart from the status quo, for example, by favoring qualified women or minority candidates over qualified men or non minority candidates when the qualified women or minority candidates have themselves directly suffered from proven past discrimination† (Chambers 202). Many men or non minority candidates tend to often dispute that affirmative action presents a form of â€Å"reverse discrimination† towards them and does not give them a level playing field to get accepted into col lege. Contradictorily, a majority of the student population at colleges in the United States are made up of at least 50% caucasian students somewhat proving that â€Å"reverse discrimination† in the college system and in affirmative action does not exist. Affirmative action is solely there just to give minorities a fair chance to go to college too. Furthermore, Jan Boxill, an American academic who was Senior Lecturer in Philosophy (ethics) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, builds upon this stance by stating, â€Å"Although these nonminority males may not actually have discriminated against women and minorities themselves, Boxill argues that they have benefited from the discrimination of others, for example, through unequal educational opportunities. Hence, women and minorities do deserve compensation for this unjust discrimination, and, moreover, affirmative action seems to be an appropriate form of compensation† (Cohen 265). Giving minorities more of an opportunity to obtain a good education allows for a more diverse group of people to have the required level of expertise to get a good job after college and pursue a successful career. In addition, even though affirmative action was created to help minorities, it is still hurting the chances of a large demographic of people from getting into college. Asians are one of the minority groups that are greatly impacted in the college admissions process. â€Å"Harvard uses the important personal rating to deflate Asian American admission chances, while it inflates the chances for blacks and Hispanics. A chart was displayed showing racial categories of students who had earned the highest academic scores. The top Asian Americans consistently received the lowest personal ratings, while the top African American applicants were awarded the highest personal ratings† (Biskupic 1). Asians are currently being discriminated against in the college admissions process because so many of them apply to colleges and tend to usually be well qualified in the numerical aspects of their applications. However, admissions officers do not believe that they are qualified in the non numeri cal aspects of their application. Asian Americans found that Harvard admissions uses racist stereotypes to describe Asian students. This method of unfair treatment led to a lawsuit being filed against the university for discriminating against Asian American applicants (Wong 1). It is assumed that if colleges were to accept even more Asian Americans over other minorities, the demographics of minorities at colleges would be mostly made up of Asians, which would conclude to a less diverse community. This is a big problem along with many others that needs to be addressed. Even though affirmative action was created to make a level playing field for all college applicants, it seems that it is slowly diverting away from its main purpose and actually hurting those that it is supposed to help.

Government And Large Financial Institutions - 1937 Words

Research suggests that government and large financial institutions should not be allowed to regulate cryptocurrency, because eventually it will change cryptocurrency to mirror our current paper currency system, and ultimately remove the freedom and anonymity associated with the use of cryptocurrency. The use of Cryptocurrency has become more prevalent across the globe. Regulation seems like the next logical step in evolution and legitimacy, but this will ultimately lead to large financial institutions and government establishing the standards and determining the value. At that stage cryptocurrency may still be categorized as a decentralized form of currency, but the behavior will be that of a centralized system overseen by the same institutions who govern our monetary systems today. Many people think of cryptocurrency as a new and innovative payment system, yet it’s much like forms of money that the world has seen in the past, before governments and central banks exerted their control. In many ways, cryptocurrency completes the cycle started when money began to take hold in the Renaissance, when value and control was not determined by any government but rather by the issuers of notes and the customers who used those notes. One of the most popular cryptocurrencies available is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is regulated differently in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Canada, and the United States, and no country has currently backed Bitcoin. Launched in 2009, and founded by SatoshiShow MoreRelatedWhy A Company Is Big Enough997 Words   |  4 Pagesbenefits of having large institutions along with the problems that come with them. It will also mention the amount of concentration in the banking industry, the size of the firms and the market share they represent. 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The Dusk Free Essays

Norman Gortsby sits on a park bench at dusk, a time when, in his estimation, individuals who have experienced defeat in their lives can sojourn unrecognized. An elderly gentleman sits nexts to Gortsby, and Gortsby judges him to be a lonely person of no consequence. After a short time, the old man leaves, and his place is taken by a younger man, better dressed than his predecessor but equally downcast. We will write a custom essay sample on The Dusk or any similar topic only for you Order Now The man tells Gortsby a sad story of having gone out to buy some soap, then not having been able to find his hotel. Gortsby responds that he had once done the same thing, only in a foreign country, to which the man rejoins that in a foreign land, one could go to the Consul for help, but here at home, there is no help to be had, unless â€Å"some decent chap† would believe his story and lend him some money. Gortsby says he will lend the man some money if he can produce the soap as proof that his story is true, but the man cannot, and walks away. Looking on the ground, Gortsby spies a new bar of soap, goes after the man, and lends him the money. When he returns to the park bench, however, the elderly gentleman who was sitting next to him originally is searching the ground for a lost bar of soap. Two elements of humor that the author uses in this story are comic irony and satire. Comic irony occurs when the reader knows something that a character does not, and in this story is evidenced when the young man drolly ends his sad tale with a veiled request for mone. The man obviously has told his story to make Gortsby feel sorry for him and lend him some money, but Gortsby does not know for sure that his story is a lie. Satire is the use of humor to expose a human frailty. Gortsby’s inability to judge his counterparts correctly is comically pointed out in his unstated chagrin when he discovers that, through his own miscalculation, he has allowed the young man to outwit him with his sad story of woe. How to cite The Dusk, Papers