Answer Happy

In 1998, California’s ban on affirmative action went into effectin undergraduate admissions, and the effect at Berkeley wasconsiderable. In its first year without race-based preferences, theschool accepted its least diverse freshman class in 17 years,admitting 56 percent fewer blacks and 49 percent fewer Latinos thanin 1997. Six months later, in February 1999, several civil rightsgroups filed a class-action suit against the university on behalfof 750 minority students denied admission in the fall. The suitfocused on the school’s policy of weighting grade point averageswith credit for Advanced Placement (AP) classes, and pointed to thefact that many minority students attend high schools without APclasses. The school countered that it had no other way todifferentiate between all of its applicants with 4.0 averages. In1998, more than 14,000 students with 4.0 averages applied for just8,400 spots in the freshman class. Provide reasons for your answersto the following questions. Is diversity in student population animportant value in higher education? Is achieving it importantenough to justify race-based preferences in admissions? WasBerkeley’s system of weighting grade point averages with credit forAP classes fair to minority students who did not have access tosuch classes? Should admissions schemes take into account students’disadvantaged backgrounds?