The jurisprudence of affirmative action in higher education has been plagued by ambivalence and ambiguity. In 1978, the United States Supreme Court tried to quell the controversy over race-conscious admissions in the Bakke case. The Justices’ decision permitted institutions of higher education to continue their admissions practices, but the fragmented opinions hardly quieted critics of affirmat...

BACKGROUND Racial and ethnic minorities are underrepresented in the health professions. Affirmative action and educational pipeline programs play a vital role in increasing the diversity of health professions, addressing educational opportunity gaps, and reducing health disparities. Part 1 of this 2-part series discusses the need for educational pipeline programs to assist underrepresented mino...

Background The U.S. Supreme Court has recently heard another affirmative action case, and similar programs to promote equitable representation in higher education are being debated and enacted around the world. Understanding the empirical and quantitative research conducted over the last 50 years is important in designing effective and fair initiatives related to affirmative action in medical e...

Proponents of affirmative action policies in higher education argue that the beneficiaries of affirmative action could gain academically from positive peer effects, whereas critiques argue that they could fall behind due to competition with better prepared peers. I examine this hypothesis in the context of caste based affirmative action in college admissions in India. Admission to general educa...

Many countries mandate affirmative action in university admissions for traditionally disadvantaged groups. Little is known about either the efficacy or costs of these programs. This paper examines affirmative action in engineering colleges in India for “lower-caste” groups. We find that it successfully targets the financially disadvantaged: the marginal upper-caste applicant comes from a more a...

Affirmative action is an established principle that brings fairness and justice to admissions policies and practices by setting goals that encourage and pressure institutions and individuals to create educational and professional opportunities for minorities and women, if it were not for affirmative action, we would waste the talents of countless individuals who would be discounted because they...