When I was applying for colleges I was in a room with three (latino female) students. We were all discussing with an adviser about scholarships and what not. All 4 of us got about a 3.0 in high school, but I had a 32 on my ACT (School was not my thing). You would think if anyone was getting scholarships it would be me, but instead they took a half hour talking about scholarships the other students could get for being latino and female.

Never sat right with me. Not that I deserved a scholarship but I was more qualified than they were.

So I'm against quotas. But if you must have them make them on a socioeconomic level and not a race/religion/sex/sexual orientation criteria.

the bill is stupid and the students are smart but can do much better

And think about what these quotas do:

The smartest, most productive students may not get the chance to go to college. These people may not become employed in fields that could use their intelligence - especially in science and engineering. Instead, these fields get the also-rans of lower intelligence, but were given schollies because they had a certain skin color, or had a specific background that was less represented.

This is why certain countries lag behind in science and engineering: If you aren't putting the best & brightest to solving your nation's most important challenges, then your going to fail to develop as quickly as possible.

I would also note that there *are* plenty of different scholarship foundations out there. I think that the reality is that they need to be promoted more for what they can do, rather than the university providing scholarships simply due to race. I understand the 'diversity' argument of having a larger base for ideas, but if these ideas are all from stupid minorities (and I mean that in the way of "less intelligent of another racial/sexual/gender group who was rejected due to said features"), then society is in a worse position, not better. I could care less who someone liked, what other country they came from, or their ancestors did, or their gender.. But I would generally like a very intelligent person researching a cure for cancer, not some moron that failed in school, but got a free ride because they were lacking morons of a certain skin color.

Well I wouldn't say the smartest and most productive students can't go to college.  It's more like more deserving lower "smart" level people.

The geniuses will get in, just at a lesser college.

Also it's not really "different ideas" so much as "different ways of thinking".  HOW you go about problem solving and how you think about problems etc. 

Sorting by race is an imperfect but somewhat effective way of sorting for this.

http://www.crosscollaborate.com/2010/05/diversity-improves-collaborative-problem-solving/

Sounds good. Positive discrimination is just as bad; universities should address the cause of the discrimnation, not force it another way.

In the UK they are now doing the same for poor students. The thing is that poor students get enough bursaries sho that if they have the grades to go they are already going. So all this means is poor students with bad grades will get places over richer ones with good grades. Again, please tackle the cause which is underperforming schools in poor areas not allowing kids to get good enough grades as they are capable of.

I reckon my Nepalese friend could pass off for a Native American, cheap cakes FTW!

I'm pretty sure there was already a Supreme Court case Bakke v. UC Regents saying the Universities could take race into account for admissions, but race couldn't be the only factor. So if a black student has the same grades as a white student, and the university wants to increase their diversity on campus, it's all within their rights.

Colleges should be color blind and unable to distinguish between genders. So should the rest of the world.

Actually they ruled that the UC system was unconstitutional, but it was possible to have a constitutional system like that, though one hadn't been defined.

However, a California law in 1996 outlawed such practices.

So legally they couldn't.  Although they do anyway, since it's kinda hard to regulate this kind of thing outside of political theatre.

The only problem is, based on the price scale; Whites pay full price and the "inferior" races pay less based on how much more inferior they are compared to whites. I know that's probably not the intention, but it is certainly implied.