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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/68748
Description
Title
The Justification of Special Admissions Policies
Author(s)
Kahane, Ernest Seth
Issue Date
1981
Department of Study
Education
Discipline
Education
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Education, Philosophy of
Abstract
This dissertation addresses the problem of presenting a satisfactory justification for special admissions policies using race or sex as often decisive criteria for entrance to higher educational and professional school opportunities. The issue of special admissions policies has engaged debate and has eluded any social or philosophical consensus.
My approach to the debate involves proposing an interpretive framework to understand the debate and to allow a resolution to it. I am proposing that the special admissions debate can be understood as an evolving and implicit argument about equality of educational opportunity. My dissertation proposes to resolve the special admissions dilemma by developing a more satisfactory view of equality of educational opportunity which involves working through and developing implicit arguments within the special admissions debate.
As I show, different conclusions about the justifiability of special admissions policies are dependent on views about equality of educational opportunity. One position, which I label the "academic qualification model of equality of educational opportunity," has been used to argue against special admissions policies. By developing internal assumptions of this position, a reinterpretation about equality of educational opportunity can be forwarded which allows a satisfactory justification for such programs. Thus, a concern of my thesis is to show that there is continuity and conceptual evolution reflected within the special admissions debate about equality of educational opportunity which has not been explicitly addressed or developed. As I show, the implicit argument about equality of educational opportunity holds the key for a satisfactory resolution of seeming opposed positions. Other strategies of argumentation are examined and shown to be unsatisfactory. In my final chapter, general implications which can follow from my analysis for medical school practice are proposed.
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