I went to a scholarship fair a few weeks ago at my school. I wasn't surprised that almost all of the scholarships that were available had nothing to do with merit or acheivement. If you are a Latin woman studying engineering, you have many more scholarship options than a white male in the same program. I have nothing against women or latins, but I do not have anything against men or white people either, so why the selectivity? It seems like the only applicable gauge of scholarship worthiness should be acheivement and personal merit. Otherwise, a very gifted student with a high potential might not get financial help which I believe he deserves more than a less gifted student. As a consequence, his potential might actually be lowered, since he will have to devote a larger chunk of time to earning money to buy food, instead of the academic pursuits which might be of more use to him - and society! - in the long run.
Of course, many people will refute my claims with arguments that it is more difficult for a black man to get into college than for a white man, or that there are less women in the engineering students than males, so the University must provide means for these "minorities" to have an "equal" opportunity. I wonder, isn't it racist to make blanket statements about a race, like "it is harder for black men to get into college"? Is it sexist to say that less women choose to study engineering? Is it convenient for you to call it sexist, or is it convenient for you to call it equality? Terminology aside, it's no secret that high school is free (and ridiculously easy) everywhere in our entire country. Any student who does well in high school is showing his merit as a student. Any student has the opportunity to do well. Students with bad grades chose to get bad grades. So, I believe it is immoral to give scholarships based on race or gender, since anyone capable of graduating from college is also capable of graduating from high school. The only pre-requisite to doing well in high school is the ability to read.
My ideal college wouldn't include any information about "minorities" in their recruitment information. On the "about" page at the university where I study, a prominent section of the page is devoted to "Student Demographics." Why would I care how many kids at my school are from India, and how many are from California? I don't care. Some day a school somewhere will get a clue, and their recruitment information will be something closer to, "We only recruit students whose current acheivements match our high level of excellence." I would rather study in a school where every student is qualified to study in a university, even if they are all of the same race, than a place where stupidity abounds, but there is a nice distribution between gender and ethnicity.
Maybe I'll write more on this later, but for now, content yourselves with two articles by Thomas Sowell: Supreme Farce and The New "Yellow Peril"
