[tokenadult]

what is one to think when affirmative action programs are in place?

I wish I could be 100 percent sure that today's affirmative action programs operate like the first one I heard of (in 1968), when the idea of the program is that it connected students who didn't have college-educated parents to colleges that easily gained applications from children of alumni, but didn't get many applications from first-generation college students. Then what I would think of anyone admitted under an affirmative action program is, "It's only fair that he is here too, even though he didn't have the advantage I had of being a third-generation college student." But it's not clear now, college-by-college, just what happens in detail when the admission committee meets to decide whom to admit.

The great majority of United States colleges admit nearly all of their applicants. Hundreds of colleges have explicit open-enrollment policies. So this whole issue only pertains to a small subset of the most desired colleges, colleges that reject the majority of their applicants.

[amichail]

FYI, the whole idea of affirmative action used to bother me enormously.

But not so much now that I realize that working for others is not a desirable goal.