Jeffrey Rosen posted an article about racial quotas in the New York Times magazine today...

I think that part of the article is true. He says "selective universities can't achieve colorblindness, diversity and high admission standards at the same time. They can achieve only two out of the three goals" which I think is empirically shown. However, he goes on to claim that if universities must choose colorblindness, they will forfeit high admission standards over diversity. I just don't think this is true. In public universities the question becomes almost an entirely practical one: will the university be able to accomodate an increased number of students that results from the lowering of admission standards? Though Rosen uses the example of the infamous cultural heritage Rice essays, how many public universities read more than a handful of the admissions essays written by applying students. It all comes down to numbers in some way, the question is just what numbers to use. In Texas, the numbers are rank in graduating class. I haven't seen a study about what effect this has had on the diversity of the university system (and I hadn't realised that students got into every Texas university rather than just some Texas university), so I'd be interested to see. My gut feeling is that it won't have a big difference, because a lot of the students they are trying to attract can't afford college and many of them would have gotten in under older systems as well.

I find even less support for the argument that private universities will seriously decrease admission standards, both because the courts can't make them be colorblind and because most private universities care more for academic standards than diversity. I think that if universities that receive federal funding are told that they have to ignore race, they will continue to basically operate in the same way, using essays and other things to meet unwritten racial quotas.

If you buy Rosen's premise, I think this article would be an interesting support of affirmative action. But I don't buy the article.