They already do that too, but it can't solve the racial distribution problem which colleges care a lot about: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/1995-SAT...
In my mind affirmative action's goal should be to break the cycle of poverty, where smart kids have poor/uneducated parents which holds them back and they grow up to be poor/uneducated themselves and so on.
It's my understanding that this problem disproportionately affects minorities (in particular black people), so solving for socioeconomic would "self select" (I don't know the proper term) for black people and avoid the issue of "Asian kid with poor/uneducated parents passed over for black kid with richer/educated parents" right?
Or is that just not a real issue? The article seems to mention pluses and minuses (e.g. "two college-educated parents (minus) from a major American city (minus) with aspirations to study either computer science (minus)") so it could be that the above hypothetical would never happen.
I don't know, I'm just struggling to understand why colleges would care more about solving racial distribution rather than socioeconomic distribution.
i do think a better way of measuring wealth is needed. maybe the amount of money you are deducting from your taxes. nobody who knows finance, aka the wealthy, has a large amount of taxable income.
They already do that too,
If you think they're discriminating in favour of low-income families I'm afraid you've fallen for a PR campaign. For all that the article talks about "the tireless efforts of places like the Harvard admissions office to change the face of elite society in America" their actions do not evince that.