The defenders of “affirmative action” (more accurately, admissions preferences for students from certain groups regarded as deserving because of the way they were treated in the past) say that their practice is laudable, since there are “educational benefits” to everyone if the student body is “diverse.”
As Steven Hayward observes in this post on PowerLine, there is one prestigious American university that doesn’t do such preferences — CalTech.
How sad that CalTech students don’t get the benefits from diversity that students at Harvard, Yale, Princeton et al. enjoy.
Or maybe CalTech grads are every bit as able to deal with “people who don’t look like them” as are the graduates of schools that use racial preferences. Maybe they don’t need the university to facilitate social interactions with people who are different.
If there’s anything to the “educational benefits” argument, it should be possible to pinpoint them by comparing CalTech grads with those of peer institutions. When the Harvard and UNC cases come before the Supreme Court in the fall, one or more of the justices might wonder about it.