[JumpCrisscross]

> what affirmative action should be... helping people out based on their individual situation

Also, just helping them out. Nobody gets hurt. This isn't creating an allotment of seats for foster kids. The selection process, and thus odds, are the same for them and everyone else.

[bushbaba]

Generally state colleges will take any applicant who meets the pre-set bar. Where as tier 1 universities are more a zero sum game.

[KRAKRISMOTT]

University of California, Washington, and Texas are hardly uncompetitive. Their admission rates are very low for the good programs.

[johnnyanmac]

UC's are a huge exception, yes. The better equivalent is the CSU system and even then it's relatively competitive comared to other public unis.

[JumpCrisscross]

> UC's are a huge exception

UNC Chapel Hill, UVA, Virginia Tech, College of William & Mary, Georgia Tech, UT Austin, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin Madison, Purdue...

America has a solid stable of top-tier public universities.

[johnnyanmac]

yes that is a good list of 20+ universities (if I throw in the prestigious UC's) out of... 1700 public institutions.

Pareto heuristics suggest there will be about 300 "good" universities that people compete over compared to the other 1300 we can't name.

[bushbaba]

Those are universities and not colleges. Cãnada College, Foothills college, De Anza College are examples of “community colleges”.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Those are universities and not colleges. Cãnada College, Foothills college, De Anza College are examples of “community colleges”.

Community colleges are rarely described as "state colleges." The latter refers to state-backed higher education institutions, from De Anza College to the University of Pennsylvania.

The delineation between colleges and universities varies regionally. Nowhere does it solely signify exclusivity. In America, there is an accreditation difference that largely pertains to graduate school.

[j45]

Maybe the new affirmative action is visible minorities or other groups just get free education?

But then you’d need a K-12 system that doesn’t fail them or set them up for not succeeding by getting them into lower stream courses.

[JumpCrisscross]

Free prenatal and neonatal care seems like an obvious first step. It's literally taking care of the unborn and babies, so they have a healthy start to life. (I similarly believe education, school breakfasts and lunches, and pediatric care should be free.)

[ttfkam]

We could sidestep all the drama by letting anyone who meets the academic qualifications attend public universities and colleges without tuition (or at least an insubstantial fees). We might actually end up with a system like we had 75 years ago… but with less overt racism and sexism.

[j45]

It would be great.

But K-12 delivery would need to be reasonably similar quality everywhere, and it’s not, and that would take a decade or two of waiting.

[INGSOCIALITE]

This is exactly correct. Fairness and equality.

[j45]

Equality is very different than equity.

https://onlinepublichealth.gwu.edu/resources/equity-vs-equal...

[JumpCrisscross]

> Equality is very different than equity

How old are these definitions?

I've only seen them used this way in public policy circles, and left-leaning ones at that. It's also totally discontinuous with the treatment of equality in classical literature.

Put another way, isn't equity just a masking term for top-to-bottom wealth transfers?

[j45]

Hm, if you’re looking at left or (by your own omission right) and don’t have one to share yourself I’d be thinking about the why behind your common.

Would you say Equality and equity are the same?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Would you say Equality and equity are the same?

It depends on with whom I'm speaking. Even the Wikipedia page for the former is a disambiguation [1].

The historical (and international) use of the former is closer to that of egalitarianism [2]. I fail to see what is gained by redefining equality and creating the term equity when equal opportunity vs. equality of outcome has decades of scholarship behind it, to say nothing of being clearer on first glance.

I don't know enough to render judgement. But it smells like the tail-chasing semantics the social sciences love, randomly re-appropriating jargon instead of debating the underlying problem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism

[j45]

Appreciate the response!

In any conversation, inter-discplinary or not, agreeing on what a word means is important.

For me, there is a difference between equity and equality.

As you mentioned, people will hammer on the lens of the interpretation without being aware of it, or not being able to explain the core of it.

I would start with the idea of access to education and access to opportunity to apply education to uplift current and future generations.

Removing built in barriers that have been in the public education system (based off the industrial education system to keep turning out reliable and obedient factory workers by omitting certain information) is one place to start.

Still, not every baby starts at the same start line, and not everyone has the same headwinds, or tailwinds. Some argue its impossible to make everyone equal or equitable, but there are some parts of that spectrum that will never be able to to even be close to equals in average, and the conversation starts around that, and those who are in a position to more default succeed by failing upwards, and those who are not.

There's a lot of focus on breaking ceilings. I often wonder about how it looks for the average person, however that is defined to access opportunity compared to someone who is not a part of the majority, for example.

The interpretation on whether this should be made equitable for everyone, or only to a certain degree is definitely a topic of discussion.

[BurningFrog]

I think "Equity" was launched to the general public 2-3 years ago.

[themitigating]

In 1968, H. George Frederickson articulated "a theory of social equity" and put it forward as the 'third pillar' of public administration.[4] Frederickson was concerned that those in public administration were making the mistake of assuming that citizen A is the same as citizen B; ignoring social and economic conditions.

Using the term launched, similar to how tech companies launch products, implies a conspiracy to bring this word to the public's attention

[BurningFrog]

All I know is that this word used to mean "shares in a company", and then, over a month or two, it meant "everyone having the same outcomes".

[j45]

It’s still only 2-3 years old on the meme learning platforms