[LibertarianInExile]

Granted. But the feds have little or nothing to do with private universities like Rice, except student loans and research subsidies. Rice could admit students on the basis of their ability to walk and chew bubble gum, as far as I'm concerned. I would be less likely to hire a black Rice grad knowing what I know about Rice's admissions, just as I have less respect for a white UC Berkeley grad vs. an Asian one.

And that's the real problem: college admissions and degrees, state or otherwise, are a joke. Private schools are the only ones that are primarily affected by it, because if their graduates' education and/or ratings by employers suck, their grads make less money and alumni don't have money to donate. State universities keep on stamping those diplomas out regardless, because the states think it's worth paying for diploma mills.

Nevertheless, state and federal subsidy pays off not on the basis of sucking up to affirmative action, but first and foremost, on the basis of what politicians like. Witness Phil Gramm's Texas A&M payoff, buried in the Homeland Security Act, further evidence that Gramm is just another pork-barreling traitor in disguise, no matter what the neocons try to spout about Senator Enron being a "fiscal conservative."

I think ultimately the solution to problems with education involve ending affirmative action; however, I think we gotta get rid of all subsidies for schools before we bother with that. It's a matter of prioritizing what is the bigger problem with our country, and to me, eliminating all nationally subsidized research and education are way up on the list before discriminating against those who want it.

[Fish out of Water]

The university feared that openly defying the federal court could cost it $45 million annually in federal aid, about 15 percent of its budget.

This type of coercion makes things worse all the way around.

[Endeavor]

"Eliminating all nationally subsidized research. . ." is a particularly uninformed approach. Brilliant work, both in the basic sciences and in application science is performed by University researchers. That research is enhanced, in fact, is only possible, through government induced grants via funding agencies such as NIH, DOE, etc. Otherwise it would not occur, or would be funded by biased third parties with their own particular axe to grind.