1.Because of money issues, students from low-income families are going to school later (1/3 of undergraduates), which is correlated with lower graduation rate. Is this lower graduation rate a correlation or a causation of the fact that those who defer for a year tend to be coming from low-income families?

2.Why is it that students who enroll in 2 year colleges are, in theory, meant to continue on to 4 year colleges but very rarely do so? Are all the access issues a function of money?

3.College does pay off, according to Attewell-Lavin. Is this only for public institutions in which tuition is cheaper?

4.Justice Rehnquist argued that affirmative action is actually a quota system and is unconstitutional based on fact that this critical mass criteria isn’t being uniformly applied, and based on fact that there is almost equal amounts of students getting accepted as there are applying. (And that other colleges don’t use this policy and manage to be diverse.) Is he implying that those who are accepted aren’t qualified and are just being accepted based on race? Other colleges that manage to be diverse – is this because of where it is situated? Are there other factors at play here?

5.Justice O’Connor said that her decision (Grutter vs Bollinger) wouldn’t be needed in 25 years because it shouldn’t be a problem at that point. So is she saying it is not in the best interests of equality but is a necessary evil so that minorities can have greater access to higher education? In which case, it isn’t really about “critical mass” of minorities on campus benefitting the school, is it? Or isn’t it?

6.Yale (and others) recently opened up minority-only scholarships to all students and this is part of a trend to get rid of need-based scholarships. Why is this happening? What forces are at work here? Does anyone really think need-based is no longer necessary?

7.Now, Michigan College uses essays and not points and the essays have a lot to do with diversity – Is this a valid system that evaluates applicants successfully? What other options did Michigan have?

8.The article says that post-graduate people were strongest opposition to Proposition 2 – why do you think that is?

9.To say that without affirmative action, there would be immediate discrimination against blacks, implies that this rule was only ever to increase access, even thought colleges state it’s for diversity which is educationally beneficial. Is this a shifting of policy from educational value to value based on equality. Wasn’t this a bit fuzzy to begin with? Was it always like this but thinly veiled?

10.Texas found other way to boost minority enrollment – by considering things other than race, like taking top 10% of the every high school class.Another idea is to add preference for students who have overcome discrimination or prejudice. How will they assess this? If in essay format, students will learn to lie and write what needs to be said, even those who have nothing to say on the matter. Another idea is to look at socioeconomic background. Is this feasible? Is this the solution we’ve all been looking for? If yes, why aren’t more people doing this( Like University of CA)?

11.U of Texas says its new policy will specify that Native Americans will have preference. Why isn’t anyone up in arms about this? Is this whole question really a racial issue, thinly veiled as one about rights etc?

12.California Community Colleges have really great access but they also have really poor completion rates, possibly as a result?

13.Shulock argues that CCC should be able to access the money it is getting from students, not so that it can raise tuition but so that it can be more responsive to their needs and get more direct benefits, but is it inevitable that by putting money in the hands of these colleges they will get greedy and do just that – raise prices?

14.Does affirmative action hurt minority students by giving them access to universities where they can hardly keep up and are bound to be isolated by their peers for being less intelligent?

15.To what extend is politics a driving force in universities? It seems that a lot of what happened in Michigan was happening to the higher education institutions as a result of outside forces.

16.U of Michigan might start using Descriptor Plus, a program that groups people (data mining). And they will give preference to people from groups that are known to have lots of diversity and low SES. This method is working and black enrollment went up 12% even as total class size shrank. But is this leading to more segregation by profiling and making race a big thing and talked-about?