ABSTRACT

Affirmative action is any policy or program that provides special consideration to historically excluded groups, like racial minorities. Affirmative action in higher education is largely understood as being synonymous with the explicit consideration of college applicants’ race. However, colleges can also give special consideration to racial minorities through the consideration of non-race explicit factors, such as first-generation status or removing legacy admissions. In this work, I use a survey experiment to assess US attitudes toward race explicit and non-race explicit admission factors. I find that regardless of racial identity, parents in the US tend to view colleges that consider ascribed characteristics such as race and legacy status less favorably than colleges that do not consider these characteristics. Colleges may be able to use non-race explicit factors to give consideration to the inclusion of racial minorities with more support from the general public.

摘要

平权行动是为历史上被排斥的群体（如少数族裔）提供特殊考虑的任何政策或计划。高等教育中的平权行动在很大程度上被理解为明确考虑大学申请者种族的同义词。但是，大学也可以通过考虑非种族明确因素，例如第一代身份或取消遗留录取，来特别考虑少数族裔。在这项工作中，我使用一项调查实验来评估美国对明确种族和非种族明确录取因素的态度。我发现，无论种族身份如何，美国的父母对考虑种族和遗产地位等归属特征的大学的看法不如不考虑这些特征的大学。