Harvard's odd quota on Asian-Americans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

If a bunch of super-motivated Americans started immigrating en masse to a tropical island, where people tend to be laid back and unambitious, the natives would probably be alarmed when the Americans started aggressively out-competing and out-working them. It's a bit of nativist fear and provincialism from upper-middle class white people.

Impressive post -- manages to unself-consciously deploy an incredibly racist trope to accuse others of racism.

Racist against who? Asians or white people?

I was referring to the tropics trope. Basically the subtext here is that Asians are to whites as whites are to blacks, with the relationship between whites and blacks understood in classically racist/colonialist terms.

[Anonymous]

These discussions are always funny to me because Blacks and Latinos ALWAYS get negatively dragged into them. As I have said many times, if suits like this by Asian-Americans are successful, it will not be at the expense of Blacks and Latinos. They are not going to "take seats away" from URM's and give them to Asian American kids. I cannot see a school taking opportunities from one or two minority groups to give that opportunity to another minority group. The people most at risk (and that might be playing out in some of the opposition) are the White students who would be at the longer end of the range for accepted White students. They would be the proverbial low hanging fruit.

[Anonymous]

How will the school's know who they're taking away from if they don't know the race of every applicant?

[Anonymous]

Are we taking blood tests to determine race? Many students today are biracial - a Asian/white or Asian/black or. Black/Hispanic or black/white etc can all be considered multiracial.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Jesus H Christ, Asians are overwhelmingly overrepresented in elite schools compared to their share of the population! There is certainly no conspiracy to keep them out and claiming such just makes you look ridiculous.

If you want to argue that affirmative action is unfair and admissions should be race blind, go ahead, but please take off your tinfoil hat.

Jesus H Christ, what a stupid comment. You could use the same logic to argue that blacks are over-represented in the NBA, or in rap music, or as Mayors in DC, and establish maximum quotas for them.

What matters is not share of population, what matters is share of population AT AN EQUIVALENT LEVEL OF PREPAREDNESS. If (notice I say "if") more Asian-Americans deserve admissions, given their own work and accomplishments, they should get it, and not be discriminated against because of some (tacit) maximum quotas.

We already went through this once, with Jewish students, remember?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How will the school's know who they're taking away from if they don't know the race of every applicant?

Who said they will not know? Sure, a box might not be checked, but there are other markers - the applicant's high school might be one. Extracurriculars might be another. Name is another.

[Anonymous]

It would be interesting to know what percentage of Asian American students apply as STEM and non-STEM. Numbers aside, it appears to me that a university would need to balance out admissions to be able to populate all of its schools and majors. So HYPOTHETICALLY using a fictional racial group as not to offend anyone, if 90 "qualified" Klingon Americans applied for 100 spots in a STEM major and 5 qualified Klingon Americans applied for 100 spots in a non-STEM major, wouldn't the numbers mean that not all Klingon American students will be accepted into the STEM major? I can't cite chapter in verse from my iPhone, but I have heard that most Asian-American applicants (especially from certain high schools)are applying to a handful of majors. IF that is true, wouldn't that impact the overall numbers of those accepted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These discussions are always funny to me because Blacks and Latinos ALWAYS get negatively dragged into them. As I have said many times, if suits like this by Asian-Americans are successful, it will not be at the expense of Blacks and Latinos. They are not going to "take seats away" from URM's and give them to Asian American kids. I cannot see a school taking opportunities from one or two minority groups to give that opportunity to another minority group. The people most at risk (and that might be playing out in some of the opposition) are the White students who would be at the longer end of the range for accepted White students. They would be the proverbial low hanging fruit.

I think you're right *to the extent that universities get to set their own policies.* But if/when a lawsuit (or, in the case of public systems, a popular referendum) leads to a ruling that admissions must be race-blind, then it will most likely be African Americans and Latinos that lose access to elite schools. Look at UC Berkeley as an example wrt African American admissions. The "Asian American" lawsuit against Harvard (actually put together by a white guy at AEI) is asking for such a ruling to be made explicitly wrt private universities. If such a ruling were to be made, it'd most likely be slightly less categorical (e.g. can only use race-conscious approach if you can prove that no race-blind system could achieve your objective), at which point it becomes a question of how much more time and resources are individual private schools willing to put into attempts to preserve holistic admissions. And/or how much control they're willing to give up over admissions. Imagine Harvard using an actual lottery system for admissions (after outreach efforts to increase the percentage of applicants from underrepresented minority groups). And/or more weight attached to low SES than to grades or scores. At which point, we'll see how places like Harvard respond -- because then the choice might really be whether a school is willing to sacrifice its alumni donor base to retain its racial diversity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How will the school's know who they're taking away from if they don't know the race of every applicant?

Who said they will not know? Sure, a box might not be checked, but there are other markers - the applicant's high school might be one. Extracurriculars might be another. Name is another.

It's easily knowable in the aggregate -- just compare racial demographics of the class before and after race-blind admissions. No restriction on collecting that info post-matriculation. Isn't that info already part of the uniform data set?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Jesus H Christ, Asians are overwhelmingly overrepresented in elite schools compared to their share of the population! There is certainly no conspiracy to keep them out and claiming such just makes you look ridiculous.

If you want to argue that affirmative action is unfair and admissions should be race blind, go ahead, but please take off your tinfoil hat.

We should not be discussing how it is ok for Asian Americans to be discriminated against in admissions since they are "over-represented" because this whole notion of under-represented/over-represented is what is causing the discrimination on the basis of race in the first place. Once we begin discussing the issue of "under-represented/over-represented", Asian Americans can point to many areas where they are severely under-represented (e.g. less than 6% of politics, media, entertainment, law enforcement, academia, private company upper management, sport, IB, biglaw etc.) Basically all significant areas of the society. Asian Americans are known as the "Invisible Minority".

The conclusion may be then Asian Americans are severely "under-represented" in many areas and that is fine but they may never be "over-represented" in any areas. That is inconsistent to say the least.

I think that is mainly the problem. Asians bring it during the school years but they have difficulty actually doing anything after schooling is over. AA are killing Asians in the creation of businesses. All those great test scores are meaningless. Harvard wants students who will become somebody that is a "connection" so their student have and edge in the work place. Asians are not able to do that.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/business-owner-paying-employees-kids-130000181.html?soc_src=copy

This guy didn't go to Harvard, but he's done something I think most Harvard grads wouldn't do.

[Anonymous]

A little off topic, but Harvard seems like the holy grail for some families and the subject of eye-rolling for others. Crazy U has a good story about how when the author took his kids on the college tour, the tour had a majority of Asian families. Meanwhile, I know multiple kids of other ethnicities who roll their eyes at the mention of Harvard. My white kid absolutely refused to tour Harvard while we were in Boston to check out Tufts and BC, we didn't force it, but she got into Columbia (7% admit rate) and goes there now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These discussions are always funny to me because Blacks and Latinos ALWAYS get negatively dragged into them. As I have said many times, if suits like this by Asian-Americans are successful, it will not be at the expense of Blacks and Latinos. They are not going to "take seats away" from URM's and give them to Asian American kids. I cannot see a school taking opportunities from one or two minority groups to give that opportunity to another minority group. The people most at risk (and that might be playing out in some of the opposition) are the White students who would be at the longer end of the range for accepted White students. They would be the proverbial low hanging fruit.

However studies by espenshade at princeton, which I linked up earlier, show that race blind admissions leads to exactly the opposite of what you state. Also the case study of what happened in the UC system bear that out. Traditional URM protected seats would get swallowed up mostly by asians with only a minor affect on the white population at a given school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These discussions are always funny to me because Blacks and Latinos ALWAYS get negatively dragged into them. As I have said many times, if suits like this by Asian-Americans are successful, it will not be at the expense of Blacks and Latinos. They are not going to "take seats away" from URM's and give them to Asian American kids. I cannot see a school taking opportunities from one or two minority groups to give that opportunity to another minority group. The people most at risk (and that might be playing out in some of the opposition) are the White students who would be at the longer end of the range for accepted White students. They would be the proverbial low hanging fruit.

I think you're right *to the extent that universities get to set their own policies.* But if/when a lawsuit (or, in the case of public systems, a popular referendum) leads to a ruling that admissions must be race-blind, then it will most likely be African Americans and Latinos that lose access to elite schools. Look at UC Berkeley as an example wrt African American admissions. The "Asian American" lawsuit against Harvard (actually put together by a white guy at AEI) is asking for such a ruling to be made explicitly wrt private universities. If such a ruling were to be made, it'd most likely be slightly less categorical (e.g. can only use race-conscious approach if you can prove that no race-blind system could achieve your objective), at which point it becomes a question of how much more time and resources are individual private schools willing to put into attempts to preserve holistic admissions. And/or how much control they're willing to give up over admissions. Imagine Harvard using an actual lottery system for admissions (after outreach efforts to increase the percentage of applicants from underrepresented minority groups). And/or more weight attached to low SES than to grades or scores. At which point, we'll see how places like Harvard respond -- because then the choice might really be whether a school is willing to sacrifice its alumni donor base to retain its racial diversity.

Well, here's the UC Berkeley data you wanted to use as an example of something...and Latinos are doing pretty well with the new policies (it is only AA enrollment apparently going down):
http://opa.berkeley.edu/uc-berkeley-fall-enrollment-data

It'd be quite interesting if Latino groups came to align themselves with Asian Americans rather than with AAs.

[Anonymous]

Data that (a) is all taken from after affirmative action was eliminated and (b) pays no attention to the state's demographics doesn't really shed any light on this issue.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23516740/affirmative-action-ban-at-uc-15-years-later shows how much Latino admission rates to Berkeley have declined post-Prop 209. See the red lines on the graphs. Similar trajectory for African American and Native American admissions.

Note also that the Latino population of CA exceeds the non-Hispanic white population at this point. 13.6% of the freshman class at UCB is Latino while 39% of CA's population is Latino. I wouldn't characterize that as "doing pretty well."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Data that (a) is all taken from after affirmative action was eliminated and (b) pays no attention to the state's demographics doesn't really shed any light on this issue.

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23516740/affirmative-action-ban-at-uc-15-years-later shows how much Latino admission rates to Berkeley have declined post-Prop 209. See the red lines on the graphs. Similar trajectory for African American and Native American admissions.

Note also that the Latino population of CA exceeds the non-Hispanic white population at this point. 13.6% of the freshman class at UCB is Latino while 39% of CA's population is Latino. I wouldn't characterize that as "doing pretty well."

I agree with many of your general points, but look in detail at the chart embedded in the article. UC system admission rates (yellow line) of Latinos are extremely close to whites':
http://www.mercurynews.com/portlet/article/html/imageDisplay.jsp?contentItemRelationshipId=5222490

So, Prop 209 is far from the cataclysm for all minorities that some people seem to believe it was.