University of Colorado Boulder's alternative to race-based affirmative action

One successful example of a university which implemented a system based on class rather than race is the University of Colorado at Boulder. According to an article entitled, CU-Boulder's Alternative To Race-based Affirmative Action Yielding More Diversity, “a pair of researchers at CU devised a system that looked at students’ experiences of disadvantage, such as their parent’s income and education level, and also looked at whether they had achieved beyond what was expected of students like them when it came to grades and tests like the ACT.” This criteria was used as a determining factor with regard to acceptance. The most interesting result of this program was the discovery that, “the class-based plan yielded a group of freshman that was not only economically diverse—with a larger proportion of poor students—but also slightly more racially diverse than the previous race-based plan.” Based on this evidence, it appears that a class based system may in fact be a better alternative to race based affirmative action, as it could improve overall diversity of college campuses.