I disagree. I think the primary beneficiaries are the universities themselves and their alumni networks. Employers, particularly elite employers, know about affirmative action - and not just racial affirmative action. Job candidates are sometimes judged by employers in the context of advantages they might have received - employers are known to "unconsciously" penalize candidates who list diversity clubs, fraternities (legacies), and sports teams - three signals that a candidate may have received a non-academic boost in college admissions. In the United States, the right sometimes calls this effect w.r.t. race the "Clarence Thomas effect," as he famously struggled to find any law firms that would employ him, despite having a law degree from Yale. Many universities with affirmative action, including elite universities also have a racial gap in the graduation rate and average GPA exiting university - suggesting that some of those black C-GPA Harvard students (well, black C-GPA Princeton students, Harvard doesn't really give Cs) could have B or A students at Carnegie Mellon or Emory and had an easier time finding employment after graduation. So while some members of the minority group may benefit from affirmative action, I'd argue that many more members of the minority are actually hurt by affirmative action, either because they're forced to compete slightly above their abilities or because they're evaluated as if they received unfair advantages by employers after college.