[kortriephfhe]

> For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most.

Not a westerner. Why is this a bad thing at all? Giving college admission is like giving opportunity to improve someone's condition (teaching to fish), whereas welfare schemes are like giving a fish.

My country also suffers greatly due to many welfare schemes, all of that money could have gone to infrastructure and public education.

Disclosure: I also come from a poor background and have benefitted from both merit-based education and welfare schemes. But I think welfare is overblown. If the same money was put on education, my parents would have been educated one generation ago.

[kenjackson]

College in the US is generally not competitive. That is, learning is available to almost anyone who cares to learn. The community college system is very cheap. Only four years are expensive.

The debate about admissions into the top highly selective colleges is purely about who gets into the gates for networking opportunities and signaling (of the 1000+ colleges, affirmitive action impacts probably less than 100). So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn.

Further, financial aid generally is race blind. It’s only admission at these top schools where affirmitive action plays a role. So if your parents were in the US they could’ve been educated long ago. The only question is if it is at Harvard or Tennessee State.

[geraldwhen]

Financial aid is not race blind. There are no schools near me that have merit scholarships for white people, but plenty have merit scholarships for non whites.

I’ve researched this because I have kids, and where I grew up merit scholarships applied to all, but where I live now they will not receive any, at least in state. Unlike my parents, however, I’m not dirt poor and can set my kids up for success. If not for a merit scholarship, I likely would have followed my father and his father into a factory job.

[kenjackson]

Merit scholarships run the gamut. I typically don’t bucket merit scholarships in with financial aid because it is often need blind.

And while there are probably few if any explicit scholarships for white students there are several that have never gone to anything but. Lots of organizational scholarships where nearly everyone in the org is white. Or even large orgs that tilt heavily white such as DAR and the Elks Lodge.

And if you were to add up all merit scholarships the dollar amounts for those that are race based pale in comparison to those that aren’t. And adding in financial aid makes the numbers minuscule.

EDIT: When you say there are no scholarships for white students do you mean that whites are prohibited from winning any scholarships? Or that there are no scholarships exclusively for whites?

[geraldwhen]

There are 0 merit scholarships available to whites. All scholarships at the major state universities in my state have a race based restriction.

So the scholarships aren’t merit, or <race>, but race + merit, presumably to help filter out and select applicants.

I was shocked when I found this information; I assumed that most states had race-blind merit scholarships, but that isn’t the case I guess.

[dragonwriter]

> There are 0 merit scholarships available to whites.

False. There are both non-school private, school-based, and many state programs open to Whites, and, in fact, whites receive them disproportionately under many of the programs. [0]

> All scholarships at the major state universities in my state have a race based restriction.

Even if that’s true (and the claim is vague enough that is impossible to conclusively falsify without reviewing the scholarships available at major state universities in all 50 states), there is a big difference between “there are no merit scholarships available to whites” and “there are no merit scholarships funded at the major state universities in my unspecified state that are open to whites” (and even if the latter was true, there are non-school-specific merit scholarships open to Whites that could be used at those schools.)

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/07/merit-sc...

[geraldwhen]

I received state university scholarships for merit. My kids cannot because I moved and they are white. I’m not sure how this is reasonable in anyone’s mind.

[kenjackson]

What state are you in?

[kortriephfhe]

> So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn.

I have learned so much from what MIT, Stanford etc.. post online, and the material is top notch.

Speaking of IT/engineering, In my country most colleges are crap and the value of a good college mostly lies in provide mostly lies in a) the college hiring pipeline and b) the opportunity to sit in same classroom as many other intelligent people, and learn from them. Teaching is total crap.

So I wonder why you think college doesn't matter. From what I heard, ivy league colleges matter for getting hired in big company too.