“Most people can see the wrong in what this professor was doing, but overlook the similar programs that colleges have institutionalized more broadly.”
You’re right; I remember watching some “endangered minorities” occupying seats for a semester or two (before dropping out) that could have been used by a real student who instead received a rejection letter. Today any “endangered minority” can get into college by simply finishing high school with a “gentleman’s D”; since teachers can’t grade them honestly (at any point in their lives) the result is a semi-literate (or outright illiterate) “student” lacking the most basic skills.
A whole side industry has sprung up at colleges where the token students spend many semesters taking high school classes (with no college credits) to get them up to the level of white high school graduates (in other words, so they have the same classes required of white applicants up front). After a year or two of this many give up anyway (with no credits).
Even at the top colleges, professors may be disallowed from failing minority students anyway. (I know an adjunct at Harvard who was told this expressly.)