Today, geography can be invoked to achieve racial diversity as well. Admissions officers should seek out applicants from inner cities with high concentrations of minority-group students. They also should seriously recruit from other urban neighborhoods and from rural areas and small towns, since each represents different values and life styles. Students from those backgrounds would enrich contemporary campus life just as much as classmates from Arizona and Alabama did when I was an undergraduate at Amherst College. Another factor that colleges rightly weigh is family economic circumstances.
Upward mobility is a noble American attribute.
That's reason enough to consider admitting students who are striving to rise above trying circumstances and who have cleared steep hurdles. The drive to succeed comes in all complexions and in a myriad of hardscrabble backgrounds. We all know that the world is becoming more interdependent. Global issues such as economic competition, environmental degradation, sustainable development, and population growth will impinge on the quality of our lives for generations to come. American students need to understand that those critical issues are viewed differently in various regions of the world.