For the sake of an argument, there is some merit to diversity preference: if a disadvantaged candidate made as much progress agains the headwind as a regular candidate, it stands to reason they are more capable. Thoughts?
The only disadvantaged population (overachieving children of poor immigrants, mainly European and Asian) is discriminated against through affirmative action in the admissions process and apparently also for scholarships.
If your goal is to help disadvantaged people, you should be giving out some combination of need- and merit- based scholarships.
The second part assumes class is the only disadvantage. Perhaps preference for poorer student is the only type of affirmative action accepted by both major US political parties. And I agree money solves a lot of problems, but it doesn't fix every race and gender issues. The best example is all of the famout actresses bringing awareness to sexual assault.
citation?
https://www.theroot.com/black-immigrants-overrepresented-in-...
Can't remember the article I original read. I went to MIT and of the handful of black students I knew well, half were foreign.
A good question to ask, though, is why were they lying about it? What message were they trying to send by saying they did not give any merit based awards? What made them instead decide to do the opposite of what they said they were doing?
Legacy WASP types have had no problem running many institutions, and most of them are pretty average in terms of capability.
* Higher for domestic students
* Higher for female students, even though female students had greater savings
This doesn't seem to be a case where they are helping people facing a headwind.