The Economist flags an Israeli study on it:
The researchers concluded that the programme works. It has increased the diversity of the student bodies at top universities by helping the poor without increasing the risk of admitting unqualified applicants. Students admitted through the programme “are not falling behind academically, even at the most selective majors,” the authors found.
Israel is a unique—and uniquely small—country with its own social complications, and there is no guarantee that a programme that works there would work in America. But the study offers some hope for those who seek to create more diverse student bodies and perhaps improve social mobility without explicitly privileging groups based on race.
Leonhardt, who provides the above chart, contends that traditional affirmative action is on the way out:
[H]ere’s the paradox for defenders of today’s affirmative action: Their best hope of salvaging some form of it is to make race secondary and class primary.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the Supreme Court, has signaled some openness to letting institutions consider race, so long as race doesn’t dominate their decisions. And in today’s version of affirmative action, race dominates. The standard way that colleges judge any potential alternative is to ask whether it results in precisely the same amount of racial diversity, rather than acknowledging that other forms of diversity also matter.
An affirmative action based mostly on class, and using race in narrowly tailored ways, is one much more likely to win approval from Justice Kennedy when the issue inevitably returns to the court.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, editor of The Future of Affirmative Action, supports a class-based system:
Shifting from racial considerations would substantially increase socioeconomic diversity. While those in the bottom socioeconomic half currently enjoy access to just 14 percent of seats at selective colleges, that would rise to 46 percent under socioeconomic affirmative action, 31 percent under a top-10-percent plan, and 53 percent under a program combining the two.
Achieving racial diversity by such alternative means is a matter of fairness and equity: While race matters in allocating opportunity, class is an even more significant barrier to success. Although the achievement gap by race used to be twice as large as the achievement gap by income, today the reverse is true.
The Dish 