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Comment by news_to_me | Hacker News Reader

I don't think it's possible to have meaningful diversity of thought without diversity of background. That spans many attributes—race, economic status, where you grew up, etc. Race is obviously an important one, given how much it changes many people's experiences and perceptions.

I think diverse racial representation is important, but is maybe better viewed as an indicator of success rather than a metric to optimize. Especially at a university, diversity of thought and academic talent should be the primary factors (imo).

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I think I tend to agree. The place to put the thumb on the scales is pre-k-12, especially early on.

If we look at purely merit metrics at the bottom of the funnel at university, then based on the approach these universities are taking, Asians will have the best merit metrics, and Blacks the worst. I fail to see how this could possibly promote a good social outcome. People are going to notice and stereotyping is going to kick in.

People of the same background can vote for two very different political parties, which seems rather meaningful in term of diversity. Even people within the same house hold can vote for different parties, and its fairly common to hear people complain that other family members do not share their views about the world.

I would suggest to give this task of measuring diversity of thought to social scientists. If universities want to go by that metric then a rigorous and measurable definition should be the first step.

Allow the social science academics to determine the fairness of admissions into academics? Wouldn’t this just result in even less diversity?

Social science on a global scale determining a rigorous and measurable definition?

If you can't measure success then you can't evaluate it, and if you don't write it down then you can't critique it. Right now they use a few single bits of information, a person race, to determine diversity of thought. That would never be accepted in a scientific research looking at diversity of thought from a rigorous definition.

If they are truly looking for diversity of background, they can do that without race. If Yale focused on admitting smart, low income students they would have a much better diversity of backgrounds.

> The median family income of a student from Yale is $192,600, and 69% come from the top 20 percent.

I would be interested in seeing what the percent of students are from the bottom 20% of incomes

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