Reading this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the on-going affirmative action lawsuit against Harvard, this line (buried deep in the article) jumped out at me:
An applicant’s race, they [Harvard admission officials] said, can help, but not hurt, his or her chances of admission.
Earlier in the article, the author pointed out that Harvard has 37,000 applicants for 2019, 8,200 with perfect GPAs, 2,700 with perfect verbal SAT scores, but only 1,700 spots to offer entering students.
If you’re a student of opportunity costs, you immediately see the problem: It is impossible for an applicant’s race to “help, but not hurt,” the applicant’s chance of admission to Harvard.
If one applicant’s race helps that student’s chance for admission, it reduces the number of slots remaining available for other applicants. If an applicant’s race does not help them, their chances of admission–all else equal–are lower because there are fewer slots available. In other words, it’s hurts the chances of “not helped” applicants because there is a limited number of total slots.
The Harvard admission officials’ comment could only be true if there was no limit on the number of students offered admission. With no admissions cap, admitting one more student with “Attribute A” would have no consequence for the admission of applicants without “Attribute A.” Capping admission makes slots a scarce resource, which means there is an opportunity cost of offering a slot to any one person in the form of fewer remaining slots for others. Consequently, any criteria that advantages one (group of) applicant(s) necessarily hurts the chances of an applicant not matching that criteria–including race.
So in Harvard’s case, if race helps anyone, it must hurt others. By definition. Because opportunity costs.