Diversity Smokescreen: The notion that a demographically representative college class makes for better education is a pretext for the real proposition: that certain people deserve reparations.

Digging deeper into the issue raises a fundamental question about the mission of a university. We believe that universities—and especially the more selective ones—should prioritize the following, in order of importance: the development of critical reasoning skills; the acquisition of a greater knowledge base and certain professional skills; and socialization. These priorities reflect centuries of precedent, including at institutions of higher education throughout Europe and Asia. The net result should be to turn out more productive individuals who can both achieve personal success and contribute to social harmony and national prosperity.

Some schools shuffle the order of these priorities or even radically deemphasize some of them. Doing so can produce graduates overburdened with debt and with lower lifetime earning capacity—and uncertain what to do with their degrees in gender or ethnic studies or “Disruption.” (Yes, such a major exists, at the University of Southern California, where the cost to attend is more than $77,000 per year.)

If universities stuck to their traditional priorities, the admissions criteria that matter most would be academic achievement and potential. Diversity of the student body would pertain only to socialization, the lowest of the educational priorities. Diversity of ideas and interests, however, contributes to higher-priority goals and thus deserves far more consideration than it gets. An applicant who designs robots or rockets, did an internship in an R&D lab, or wrote a published critical essay in high school should win extra points.

If racial preferences in admissions aren’t furthering the mission of a university, what are they doing? They become, effectively, a form of reparations, providing the potential “ticket” of a diploma to individuals who would otherwise have been deprived of that benefit based purely on academic merit. After all, a degree, particularly from a prestigious university, confers a lifetime benefit in terms of economic and other factors.

Though the idea of reparations to persons who have been wronged, as in restitution for theft, may have some justification, current university practices are different. They are a form of compensation (to the less-qualified students admitted) for past injury, given at the expense of those who bear no responsibility for the injury (the more qualified but rejected candidates). This is not “social justice,” or any kind of justice, which is correctly defined as the fair treatment of individuals.