Free «Demographic Makeup» Essay Paper

A common phenomenon in the society is to recruit personnel in various institutions based on merit. In most cases admissions to public colleges and Universities, consider the grade attained from high school level, thus taking the best grades. To avoid misunderstanding, the institutions have a minimum set grade below which they cannot admit a student. The case is not different in the employment market. Employers would be interested in high quality production and therefore they would not hesitate taking the most qualified applicants for the relevant position. However, in the recent past, other factors have taken shape in determining recruitment and admissions in various organizations and learning institutions. This is demographic makeup. The underlying question is whether the act of demographic makeup is relevant to organizations and learning institutions.

The relevance of preferential selection takes different perspectives. In some cases, it becomes necessary to overlook the issue of merit especially when it comes to the equal representation of disadvantaged people in the society. This is whereby preferential selection becomes the tiebreaker. For instance, a well-represented recruitment or admission must contain the disadvantaged gender, people with disabilities, and/or people facing racial discrimination. In such cases, merit may not yield this equal representation and therefore preferential selection becomes relevant. The criteria of demographic makeup in this case apply multiple factors when considering a certain population in selection. These factors include gender, religion, race, family background, ethnicity, geographical location, native language among others.

Preferential selection based on demographic makeup may not be in the interest of many organizations since they are more interested in high performance. The issue of preferential selection it to the advantage of the society but in most cases, the selection is at the expense of the organization in question. Although lack of relevant opportunity may be the sole reason of not attaining the required merit, many organizations will be reluctant in recruiting based on preferential selection. The organizations fail to understand that most of these discriminated people have better talents than their counterparts selected based on merit. Therefore, such a situation requires a law to compel the few organizations not willing to recruit with equal representation. A municipal or state law will force the entire organizations meet the set requirements since they risk losing their operational licenses.

Quality performance in any organization depends on a blend of creative inputs. This is diversity. Preferential selection guided by demographic makeup ensures diversity in the organization and therefore high performance. Based on merit, diversity is minimal or in some cases missing because, applicants from the same region, gender, or race may have enjoyed a better opportunity to excel compared to their counterparts in other regions. Still on diversity, if different people with different demographic characteristics interact, they develop better social dynamics, which, in turn improves the overall performance of the organization. Learning from different cultures and communities promotes harmony among the entire society thus ensuring creative performance.

Organizations targeting to serve diverse communities must be prepared to recruit personnel across all the communities. For example, customers will be willing to purchase from businesses where they can get their own person working in it. Profit making organizations ought to be careful on the equal representation of all society stakeholders, otherwise they lose customers. In this case, preferential selection is inevitable since not all stakeholders will produce merit able persons.

The University of Michigan is living example of an institution that decided to overlook the issue of merit in the admissions to the school of law and partially on various undergraduate courses. According to the university management, the move was to ensure a diverse student blood, which will promote performance. After a heated debate over the move taken by the University of Michigan, the case finally landed at the Supreme Court of the United States of America in 2003 (UM News service, 2003).

Two cases, one challenging the preferential selection in the school of law and another challenging preferential selection in other undergraduate courses. The main factor considered in the selection was race. The University sought to have all races equally represented in the university. The University of Michigan emerged with victory in the law school related suit, with four out of five Supreme Court judges voting in favor of the University move (UM News service, 2003). However, the other suit did not favor the University with three out of six judges voting in favor of the University. The judges who voted against suggested some modifications, meaning that the issue stood firm for modifications (UM News service, 2003).

The University president congratulated the Supreme Court for the affirmative action taken to promote diversity in the learning institution. Quoting the strength in diversity, the president said that the University management is willing to modify the undergraduate program to rhyme with the Supreme Court ruling. She said the modifications suggested by the Supreme Court judges were valid and applicable across different cultures (UM News service, 2003). The University administration blamed the white applicants who filed the case to challenge the move, citing that such people are major stabling block to racial diversity in learning institutions.

In conclusion, the decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the move by the University of Michigan to use preferred selection in favor of merit presents a new dawn of diversity in learning institutions. The decision as well set a very important precedent useful in future decisions to cases challenging similar moves (UM News service, 2003). The affirmative action will substantially reduce racial discrimination in the United States and in the whole world at large. The need for diversity will promote demographic makeup in preferential selection.