One of the complaints about race-base affirmative action programs is that instead of targeting ethnicity, the programs should be focused on giving poor students a break.

The College Fix Editor Nathan Harden offers a scathing critique on the reasons colleges focus on race rather than fiscal diversity.

Richard Perez Peña of the New York Times reports today on the efforts of elite public universities to recruit the poor–some do a better job than others.

Opponents of race-based affirmative action in college admissions urge that colleges use a different tool to encourage diversity: giving a leg up to poor students. But many educators see real limits to how eager colleges are to enroll more poor students, no matter how qualified — and the reason is money.

“It’s expensive,” said Donald E. Heller, dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University. “You have to go out and identify them, recruit them and get them to apply, and then it’s really expensive once they enroll because they need more financial aid.”

And there you have it. In a few sentences–the reason why it’s so much easier for “compassionate” liberals to recruit wealthy and upper-middle class blacks and Hispanics via race-based affirmative action programs than it is to actually go out and help the economically disadvantaged regardless of color. It comes down to money. By focusing on skin color, they can act as if they are helping the disadvantaged, but continue to cash those big tuition checks each semester.

This is the dirty little secret of race-based affirmative action in college admissions–most of the ethnic minorities who benefit are not from among the poor, but rather from among the upper class.

Higher education is a business–never forget that. And it’s a very lucrative enterprise for those who rise to the top administrative ranks. Focusing on skin color lets them carry on with the pretense of helping the underprivileged, all the while enriching themselves and leaving the nation’s poor–weather black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever–locked away outside their Ivory Tower.

It is time for our nation’s elite university administrators to lay aside their fixation on race and embrace a new color-blind kind of “affirmative action” based solely on a student’s financial need.