One of the primary justifications for affirmative action in higher education has been that the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and other similar tools used to determine academic potential at the college and post-graduate level reflect a cultural bias in their makeup that benefits non-minorities. Even to whatever extent that may have been true when affirmative action programs were first conceived, opponents of affirmative action in education point out that the appropriate solution to that situation is to simply reconfigure the tests rather than to continue using the same flawed tests and then overcompensate after the fact (Halbert & Ingulli, 2007). In education in particular, one of the effects of affirmative action in admissions is that it harms those minority students who would have qualified for admission without any artificial assistance. Specifically, public awareness of affirmative action in college admissions means that even the most highly qualified students of minority persuasion will be subjected to assumptions that their hard-earned academic credentials mean less than they would otherwise, because affirmative action programs in education taint their accomplishments.

In principle, the affirmative action concept was sound, because it sought to rectify a traditional form of social inequality and prejudice against members of minority races, ethnicities, and gender. In many respects, continued mechanisms...

However, the specific methods of mandating a specific number of openings be reserved for minorities and of reducing performance standards on objective measures of talent, skill, and aptitude within the relevant criteria for employment is a flawed manner of achieving a worthwhile objective.
Legislative efforts to reduce discrimination in the workplace and in education must focus on the front end by providing equal educational and other social opportunities as early as possible in life rather than on the back end by requiring changes in hiring and college admissions criteria. Improving the chances of disadvantaged individuals to overcome challenges early in life so that they have an equal chance to compete for vocational and educational opportunities is a much better approach than affirmative action policies in their traditional format.

Bibliography

Halbert, T., Ingulli, E. (2007). Law & Ethics in the Business Environment. Cincinnati: West Legal Studies. Healey, J.F. (2003). Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Class: The Sociology of Group Conflict and Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.

Schaefer, R.T. (2002). Racial and Ethnic Groups. New York: Harper Collins.

Schmalleger, F. (2008). Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.