>And fwiw (and risking making this thread political), it's this issue that leads to a need for affirmative action. If most (or even many) jobs get filled through personal connections, and people from disadvantaged backgrounds don't have those connections, they're once again at a disadvantage. I think this is why so many of the "up from poverty" stories we hear include an individual or group taking an interest in a particular person. The mentor's connections substitute for the missing family/old school connections.

Indeed, connections are important to everybody, whether they are born into it, or lucky enough to have a mentor take an interest.

There will always be a need for affirmative outreach programs to bring disadvantaged kids into contact with the wider world.
It is a good thing.

Affirmative action programs have some successes to be sure, but there is a lot of collateral damage from the law of unintended consequences.

The victims of those unintended consequences are the usually the very minorities that the programs were trying to help.
Top league schools recruit top league minorities of course, but need more minority candidates.
So they recruit second tier minority candidates.

A few of the second tier minority candidates are disadvantaged, and it is a lucky break, and it all works out.
Many of these second tier minority candidates are from well connected, privileged families who know how to work the system.
These privileged kids would have done well in the world regardless if they graduated from a top tier or a second tier school.

Many more second tier minority candidates, are not simply not prepared and drop out.
That is a tragedy for them and for society.

GRADUATING from a second tier school instead of dropping out of a top tier school would have been better for everybody.

The other victims of unintended consequences are no less worthy.
It is obvious that some qualified white kids are crowded out by such programs.
Privileged white kids from well connected families will still get in of course.
So, who suffers?

What is not obvious is that the damage is along ethnic and class lines.

Low class, disadvantaged white kids who have done all the hard work and are actually prepared for a top tier school are crowded out. Kids who would have taken the opportunity and made something of it for themselves and their families are pushed aside.

Asian kids are also disproportionately crowded out.

After California banned racial preferences, the proportion of Asians at our top state universities DOUBLED from 20% to 40% of the student population.

Under the prior racial preferences scheme, a HUGE population of worthy, hard working, intelligent, and well prepared *minority* students were denied entry because of their Asian ancestry.
Is that social justice?

Thomas Sowell does a much better job of explaining this:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell060899.asp

Nobody doubts the intentions of affirmative action programs were good.

Substituting one set of racial injustices for another is poor policy.
Good intentions, no matter how worthy, do not excuse poor and unjust outcomes.