The people who embraced these policies embedded them deeply in the system for this very reason.
From Minding the Campus:
The Damage from DEI Will Last a Generation. Eradicating It Is Still EssentialThe Trump administration’s efforts to roll back “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) on college and university campuses have gotten a lot of attention, and rightly so. There has also been significant pushback, with many institutions simply faking compliance by renaming their DEI departments while pursuing the same Marxist agenda. Still, I think conservatives can be forgiven for feeling like we’re gradually winning on this front.What we tend to overlook is the damage DEI, in its various guises (like “Affirmative Action”), has done to American higher education and society at large for more than a generation. Even if Trump and future Republican administrations succeed in completely dismantling the DEI regime, we will still have to live with the fallout for at least another generation.That’s because the real problem with DEI-based admissions, hiring, and promotion policies is not that they lower standards for minorities; it’s that they lower standards for everyone.For example, let’s say you’re a DEI honcho at a university and your goal is to increase the number of black students in your medical school. Since blacks, on average, don’t score as high on the MCAT as whites or Asians, that means lowering the required score for black applicants. You can do that—or at least, you could do that—without also lowering the required score for white or Asian students. Institutions do it all the time and have for years. Most applicants either don’t notice or don’t complain. They just go elsewhere.However, once students are on campus, you’re faced with a dilemma. Those who score lower on the MCAT are statistically less likely than their peers to perform well on exams and other evaluations. The only solution is to lower the score required for a passing grade, from, say, 80 to 70. Or maybe just move to a “pass-fail” system, as some medical schools are currently doing, essentially eliminating grades altogether.The problem is that you can’t do that just for black students. Unlike different admissions criteria, which you can attempt to justify using high-sounding bureaucratic jargon, having different grade requirements for different groups of students would be too blatant. Everyone would notice—not least, the students themselves. You could very easily have a mutiny on your hands.So now all your students—not just the black students or the women or whoever—must master only 70 percent of the material to pass, whereas they used to have to master at least 80 percent. How can this not produce a generation of doctors who are less knowledgeable and less prepared than their predecessors?
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