ASAP is more important than affirmative action

GROWING UP IN Morris Heights, a poor neighbourhood in the Bronx where violence was omnipresent, Joel Cabrera thought his future would be either “death or jail, because that’s what the outcomes are here”. Middle school was like “a juvenile-detention facility”. High school did not interest him enough to finish. Had he stopped there, he would have faced a life on the edge of penury. Among high-school dropouts nationwide, average earnings are only $600 a week. To avoid that, Mr Cabrera enrolled in courses offered at his local community college. There he came across a scheme called ASAP (“Accelerated Study in Associate Programmes”) that sought to push pupils like him—city residents without family wealth or familiarity with universities—to complete two-year degrees.