The New York Times has a very interesting feature—especially for Asian and Asian-American readers—on Berkley, Asian students and questions of race and affirmative action. Here’s a little sound bite:
ACROSS the United States, at elite private and public universities, Asian enrollment is near an all-time high. Asian-Americans make up less than 5 percent of the population but typically make up 10 to 30 percent of students at the nation’s best colleges:in 2005, the last year with across-the-board numbers, Asians made up 24 percent of the undergraduate population at Carnegie Mellon and at Stanford, 27 percent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14 percent at Yale and 13 percent at Princeton.
And according to advocates of race-neutral admissions policies, those numbers should be even higher.
Asians have become the “new Jews,” in the phrase of Daniel Golden, whose recent book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” is a polemic against university admissions policies. Mr. Golden, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is referring to evidence that, in the first half of the 20th century, Ivy League schools limited the number of Jewish students despite their outstanding academic records to maintain the primacy of upper-class Protestants. Today, he writes, “Asian-Americans are the odd group out, lacking racial preferences enjoyed by other minorities and the advantages of wealth and lineage mostly accrued by upper-class whites. Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science.”
As if to illustrate the point, a study released in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group opposing race-conscious admissions, showed that in 2005 Asian-Americans were admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at a much lower rate (54 percent) than black applicants (71 percent) and Hispanic applicants (79 percent)—despite median SAT scores that were 140 points higher than Hispanics and 240 points higher than blacks.
Read the rest on your own.
55 Comments
i was at berkeley during the prop 209 initiative and worked a bit in ward connerly’s office (head of the UC system). at that time the president of berkely was chinese.
the affirmative action policies were actively dismantled by the asian american faction who had achieved 33% of student population, outpacing the caucasions (31%). as i recall, the idea went something like, “now we are the majority so we need to stop preferential treatment to minorities.”
meritocracies are great in theory, but difficult to implement in reality. i look forward to the day when application weighting is based on economic background (and attendant opportunities afforded/missed) as opposed to race. although this has been proposed before, there has been little traction.
This is an interesting trend shift, one I think that might not have been predicted by the authors of Megatrends and The Third Wave. Even cultural anthropology text books used in universities need to be rewritten to reflect new ethnic realities. I also don’t think all Asian parents are coercing their kids to be studying robots - many of these kids are entirely self-motivated - to compete and work with the best!
I wonder if Henry Der and “Chinese for Affirmative Action” are still around.
Hear, hear. The problem is that the inequality starts in the womb, and university admission preferences are merely treating the symptom, not the cause. As for race versus socioeconomic class, the 2001 NCLB act requires schools to break down achievement test data by race, socioeconomic class, special needs, and English proficiency. At my previous school, children in the lowest socioeconomic class did slightly better as a group than African-American children as a group. Hispanics also performed better than African-Americans, yet they have the highest dropout rates.
The whole issue of educational equality is extremely complex, but as the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” goes, it would be better to concentrate efforts and resources into early education, before the gap widens. Literacy research consistently shows that children who do not develop fundamental reading skills by the end of second grade will probably remain behind and never catch up to their peers.
Must be the same article I saw at International Herald-Tribune(http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/07/news/asians.php)
Entry to public universities should be based upon merit alone, and should be race and “class” blind. If that results in more Asian Americans than other ethnic groups, so be it. If the U.S. in to compete in a global economy that is truly competitive, then we need to ensure that our universities are open to those who have most successfully competed to gain admission. Social engineering theories promoting race or class “qualifiers” for admission need to be seen for what they have always been. Reverse Social Darwinism!
And I second Sonagi’s point! Besides scrapping obsolete social theories of college admissions, we need to relook our basic education, both the curriculum and the monies allocated. Perhaps it is time to relook the role of school boards versus the state. If the state is to be responsible for educational standards, then it must ensure that all schools within its boundaries have equal access to funds. Only when an equal amount of public monies is being spent on all public school students within a state, will we be able to identify any socio-cultural factors contributing to below par school performance and higher than normal drop-out rates.
no idea about der, but i was sad to hear that then chancellor tien had died a few years ago. though not having studied with him, he was well-respected and put on a heck of christmas party.
affirmative action is racial profiling but good racial profiling
because its against white people
the ACLU or NAACP will never file a law suit in the name of betty lou from Iowa who got denied admmission with a 4.0 GPA over a minority with a 3.0 GPA and less credentials
racial profiling to keep people out of colleges is good
racial profiling to keep terrorists off of airplanes bad
Asians just don’t fit the left’s stereotype of ‘minorities as failures because of white oppression’.
America should nurture the best and the brightest. The country can’t afford to promote mediocrity at the expense of excellence. Why handicap the future of the country by putting barriers in the way of the highest achievers?
I’ve never heard of an African-American or Hispanic cheating scandal.
Maybe some folks are just too lazy to cheat.
Boy, that’s not the direction I hope this thread takes…
just listen to what bill cosby has to say about the whole issue of the black community
people dont like it but its true
Here’s some friendly advice from one of your northern neighbours who’s got your best intentions in mind…Spend less on your armed forces and the CIA (make their budget public if you haven’t already) and more on education. And whatever you do, please scrap the voting machines before the next elections.
Robert Koehler from Korea (South)
Posted January 8, 2007 at 3:08 pm | Permalink
Boy, that’s not the direction I hope this thread takes…
I was just thinking about a joke I once heard….nah.. I will respect the Marmot!
I don’t think equal opportunity in education is possible anymore…there will always be some sort of quota to make it ‘equal’.
Numbered applications and more stringent controls on foreign applications would be the way I would take it.
Sadly the US outspends just about everyone else per student. The ROI is what’s buggered. Throwing more into the money pit will probably just accelerate the diminishing returns. Privatize and school choice. But since a Republican administration and Congress couldn’t get it done when they held the cards I doubt it’ll ever happen. And “No Child Left Behind” means less money given to those who excel.
For a while I thought this was a someone pretending to be a North Korean giving advice to South Koreans (as a joke) since this is a Korean-related blog.
SomeguyinKorea, you me going until the voting machine part. Korea still uses hand-counted ballots.
Vouchers sound great until you realize we already have school choice of sorts. A prime consideration for families buying a new home is the quality of the school district. I have taught for two city schools. The demographics are much more diverse than the surrounding suburban/rural districts, which are about 95% white middle class/upper middle class. Unlike public schools, private schools are free to reject any student on the basis of behavioral, emotional, or mental needs, so privatization/vouchers would create an even greater concentration of special needs hard-to-teach children in the public schools.
Gotta leave some work for those teachers to do too
Let ‘em specialize in the hard-to-teach with nice bonuses for those who achieve.
The Europeans, such a Belgium, have had success w/ school choice in public schools.
Even the urban public school districts have established separate and unequal magnet schools. They’re not selecting the hard-to-teach either.
I think Sonagi brings up as valid a criticism of vouchers as can be made. I used to tutor math to Title 1 kids in South Carolina and through many disappointing experiences began to wonder, “how will a system that includes vouchers help these kids have more opportunities to learn in the future?” What I noticed along the way was that vouchers don’t solve problems for these kids, they only allow families who already have some financial means to duck the system and make the problem worse for those left behind. None of the kids I worked with would have ever had a chance at changing schools, vouchers or not.
I’m not crazy about a society where the state is solely responsible for young peoples’ education as it picks up the slack for irresponsible parents, BUT the foundation is not the kids’ fault and the society (here I mean through the state) ought to affect that foundation to protect its own future relationship with those kids. Like it or not, society has to deal with these “problem” kids and I would rather see these kinds of “racial profiling” go on in the grammar school period as opposed to post-secondary. At least at that stage we’re giving kids real opportunities to improve their development and achieve “merit” as opposed to merely balancing out the racial scales.
Chinese for Affirmative Action is still around. I think the media often discount the degree to which the Asian American community is divided over the affirmative action issue. Their are significant numbers of Asian Americans that support affirmative action. For one, many recognize that Asian Americans still benefit directly in the employment context, and it would be hypocritical to support it there and not in education.
Another angle to this discussion is comparing admit rates to applicant pools. Are Asian Americans overrepresented in the UC system? In comparison to their proportion of the state’s population as whole, certainly. As a proportion of the applicant pool for the freshman class? I’m not so sure. If so, the amount of overrepresentation is likely not as dramatic.
Anecdotally, I’ve seen the phenomenon that Asian American high school students tend to apply to a lot more “reach” schools than students of other ethnicities. It seems like a result of high expectations from Asian parents (who refuse to believe their kid deserves anything less than Ivy) and “postive” affirmation through the model-minority stereotype that Asian students are viewed.
As someone has pointed out, the U.S. already spends more than most on education, so that is not a valid argument. Throwing money at social problems rarely is.
For K-12 the primary issue is parental involvement. As it stands, the children of parents who take direct and intense involvement in their education excel, while those who have little or no parental involvement statistically fall behind.
As far as university admissions, they should be merit only. Those who don’t make the cut can always go to other schools.
As it stands, race-based admissions amount to nothing but reverse discrimination.
Richardson wrote:
There’s something you and I can agree on. According to a research report published by the Michigan Dept. of Education:
Children spend 70% of their waking hours outside of school (including weekends and holidays).
The most consistent factors in student achievement are parental expectations of their child’s attainment and satisfaction with their education at school.
Just like AMA ****s up the medical care, universities ****s up education in America.
Hey, in the age of internet, why do we need a campus, classrooms, dormitories, libraries and basketball stadiums? **** that!
The government should order the library of congress to carry enormous media files of all knowledge in the world. Then, each state will administer exams to certify these materials have been imbedded into a brain, whether the brain belong to a 90 year old grandma or a 10 year old slum gang soldier.
This alone will blow other countries out of water! The true 21th century education system.
MIT got the grant and working on it a bit, but bureaucrats want the education system as is. They would not give up their rice bowls. The government has to yank them away.
Internet is THE EDUCATION SYSTEM.
I agree with you Baduk, what MIT is doing is such a cool concept it makes me full of bliss. You’d think the federal government would have pushed for something like this. But then again, government is so slow compared to dreamers/idealists/technologists at MIT.
MIT… still showing why they are considered the world’s best engineering school.
Asians have become the “new Jews,”
Yes, well, I have learned to sing “if I were a rich man…” and “tradition!” as per Tevyev in Fiddler on the Roof. Great kareoke songs. Except noraebangs don’t stock em, bastards.
So I’m on my way to being “a new jew”, except I didnt go to no “elite private and public universities.”
I think there’s a surgical procedure involved in becoming a “new jew”, but I (as a reader) welcome back Bluejives after an uncharacteristically long silence.
“Korea still uses hand-counted ballots.”
Actually, last elections they started counting the ballots with the help of a machine. In any case, I was speaking as a Canadian–not to say that Canada spends nearly enough on education.
slim,
Actually, that’s not true. As I read a rabbi say it, “Circumcision cannot make you a jew”.
slim,
Actually, that’s not true. As I read a rabbi explain it, “Circumcision cannot make you a jew”.
“As I read a rabbi explain it”
I was trying to make an unkind cut joke, but thanks for the rabbinical guidance.
Someguy,
Slim was making a joke, and in any case, mere circumcision does not make one Jewish, of course. Some branches of Christianity have traditionally circumcised infant boys, and Muslim males undergo the procedure at around the age of 12. Certainly Orthodox and possibly Conservative Judaism require circumcision as part of the conversion process for men. I grew up around five circumcised Catholic brothers. I was a little taken aback the first time I saw the uncut version.
Quote Judge Judie:
meritocracies are great in theory, but difficult to implement in reality. i look forward to the day when application weighting is based on economic background (and attendant opportunities afforded/missed) as opposed to race. although this has been proposed before, there has been little traction.
————————————————–
You’re simply ignorant of this issue,
The main difference here is “Cultural”. Asians value education, it has nothing to do with economic background. Throwing money at this problem or economic preference is not going to change people’s attitude.
One of the main reasons why Western society is going backwards is the de-evolutionary mindset.
Liberals Socialists have destroyed Europe, and America is not far behind.
Well, you’re half right, Brendon. Cultural attitudes towards education can partly explain achievement differences between ethnic groups, but it does not fully explain differences within a group. Annual achievement test scores are broken down into racial, socioeconomic, and linguistic subgroups, as required by law. There is a significant gap between the scores of low SES children and overall average scores. Before anyone assumes that it’s all in the genes and the poor people are born stupid, you might be interested to know that education research has shown a wide vocabulary gap between middle class kindergarteners and low SES kindergarteners, and that gap widens as the children move through school.
Admissions preferences for low SES students is merely treating the symptom, not the causes of achievement gaps. Throwing money at the problem can help if it’s thrown into successful programs like HEAD START, which provides low SES preschool children with a language and experience rich environment. Every school I know runs after school remediation programs for its low-achieving students. These students will never be at the top of the class, but the programs provide them with academic support that is lacking in their homes.
Oops, I meant to address my post to Origami, not Brendon.
Man, I sure hope that California Koreans don’t start to dictate Korean American culture in years to come because every Korean guy from Cali I have met was a total weirdo. The article is making me rethink my own sterotypes because until recently I really held West Coast Koreans with utter contempt. But if new opportunities arise from increased educational pedigrees it may knock down the Koreans from the DC metropolitan area as the richest, most educated and cultured Korean Americans in America. Damn, who would of thought that Cali FOB scum might actually amount to something!
Affirmative action would be to assess applicants based on essay responses and interviews rather than standardized tests.
The current statistics would be absurdly different in a few years’ time if that were to happen.
Certain races have a demonstrated propensity to lie, cheat, and steal.
Chinese for Affirmative Action is still around. I think the media often discount the degree to which the Asian American community is divided over the affirmative action issue. Their are significant numbers of Asian Americans that support affirmative action. For one, many recognize that Asian Americans still benefit directly in the employment context, and it would be hypocritical to support it there and not in education.
Affirmative action benefits Asian-Americans in a very skewed way. It mostly benefits Asian-American women (minority and a woman; shoots two birds with one stone for the diversity agenda). For example, if you have two Asian-American candidates, one male and one female, applying to engineering programs in the US, with everything else being equal, they’d pick the female candidate because typically females are an underrepresented group in engineering programs.
Other than that, affirmative action does not benefit Asian-Americans at all. I have yet to come across an AA male peer who’ve gotten accepted at a school, gotten a scholarship, a job, a promotion, whatever, because simply being an Asian-American male helped. For AA women, it’s slightly different for reasons I mentioned above. I see all kinds of incentives, programs, and scholarships created to help the so-called underrepresented groups, both minorities and women, get into fields like engineering. I don’t see equivalent programs for fields for which Asian-Americans are underrepresented. I don’t see Affirmative Action programs for Asian-Americans to get into the NFL or the NBA or anything having to do with US entertainment-media complex, ie Hollywood.
However, I am not actively opposed to Affirmative Action. There are probably many folks out there who genuinely need it. All I want to point out is that Asian-Americans benefit little, if at all, from Affirmative Action policies, and if you are a Asian-American male, it’s none at all.
Hmm… Just been reading Freakonomics. I wonder if there is a correlation betweeen rate of abortion and level of achievement.
Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science.
That is because college admissions offices are staffed by liberal artsy-fartsy types who sneer at the sciences and technical fields.
But if America is going to compete in the global economy, it is these math and science acers who will hold the fort, not folks who are experts in glorified basket weaving. Last time I checked, India and China are producing 1.5 million scientists and engineers per year. What was America good at producing? Lawyers. No country in the world can hold a candle to America’s ability to crank out lawyers. But lawyers do not produce anything except lots of paperwork, nor do they contribute anything in real terms to the economy. If anything, they muck it up even further because out-of-control litigation is one of the reasons why health care and the cost of doing business is so expensive in America.
If I have any concern about affirmative action, it is the tendency of affirmative action policies to sacrifice standards for socio-political gains. In that regard, I am exceptionally qualified to speak on this matter since I went to CCNY.
CCNY used to be an excellent public institution of higher education until that disastrous social experiment known as “open admissions” reduced it to becoming the laughingstock of the academic world. Open admissions was like affirmative action on steroids. When I was going to CCNY, I saw the effects of open admissions firsthand. I saw students learning remedial math, things like basic algebra and other crap they should have mastered in high school years ago. Many students were failing to graduate. But for a long time, conscientious folks were afraid to do anything about it because to even mention academic standards was veering too much into the realm of politically incorrect. To give an example of what kind of political atmosphere existed in CCNY back in the mid 90s, Leonard Jefferies was the chief of Black Studies. The academic equivalent of Louis Farrakan, he was the dude who created lots of controversy back then by saying memorable lines like “the Jews control the jewelry business; even the word “jewelry” has the word “jew” in it”" and other crap. An independent writer wrote a book about City College during my time there. He gave a honest, objective, and disturbing portrayal of what went on at City College. Many students, esp the minorities, decryed the book as being racist, and some of them didn’t even read the book nor properly comprehend what it was trying to say.
Aren’t AA’s, male & female, considered an “economically disadvantaged” group by the US gov’t, and thus beneficiaries of US gov’t contract set asides?
I was a little taken aback the first time I saw the uncut version.
That reminds me of one of my ex’s. Apparently, she never saw a non-kosher thing also. She went around to all of her friends in a fit of inquiry asking “what do I do with it?”
Bluejives wrote:
Quality matters. Every expat businessperson I knew in China complained about how hard it was to find and retain capable engineers. They claimed that local universities were not graduating engineers with the skills needed to do the job, and that older engineers’ skills were out of date. When these companies did manage to hire a suitably qualified candidate, the highly sought after employee would leave within two years for a more lucrative position.
Bluejives,
Reference “lawyers only produce paper”. From what I gleaned of Brendon Carr’s posts, international lawyers do a lot more than that. No lawyers probably equates to “no foreign direct investment” and very little outside investment of any kind, which is great if you are into “Juche”. Bankers too deal in “paper”, but they’re the papers that keep economies turning. From the few photos I’ve seen of recent law school classes, Asian-Americans are well represented there as well. I suspect that they are likewise well represented in MBA and banking courses. Sometimes it pays to recheck our paradigms. Without lawyers, investment bankers, and certain other paper pushers, the engineers and other hard-skills types would have a very hard time getting their visions off the drawing board.
#42 Bluejives…
I heard that one, too. It was from a CCNY PhD graduate, female Jewish. Open admissions killed the school.
I also saw a tutoring program for every conceivable subject at a major public university, but to get into it, your skin color had to be something or you had to be poor as hell by tax return standards. Tutoring free or charge. Actually, a misallocation of funds for people who got into the school, but weren’t good enough to stay in school, so the school sets aside money to push them along. As long as you were a qualified minority and you were taking any class, the school found you a tutor and paid for it. Not for a Korean boy.
“Open admissions killed the school.”
What can you do when the people who pay for the school (black taxpayers) don’t get any service?
The way I see it, it’s better late than never. Better to teach these kids basic math & reading then denying all of them a chance. As a NYC resident, I fear denying them a chance at life. Having lived in the ‘hood, my personal safety depends on their success.
I’m sure it must break a lot of hearts to see their alma mater go down the tube. But the school’s spirit is really impressive and beautiful.
Just turning these schools into elite engineering schools won’t turn these kids into engineers. All it will do is siphon off the engineers who would have gone somewhere else or encourage more immigrants to come to study in America.
In the United States, if you are smart and ambitious, you can still find financial means to go to a good school, so CCNY or CUNY or whatever isn’t the only option for you. I think it’s better to have a diversity of educational options.
Back to #42, BlueJives said:
“If I have any concern about affirmative action, it is the tendency of affirmative action policies to sacrifice standards for socio-political gains. In that regard, I am exceptionally qualified to speak on this matter since I went to CCNY.”
To play devil’s advocate, if I were any ethnicity other than the golden White/Asian hegemon twin crushers, wouldn’t I support sacrificing standards for socio-political gains? What stakes would I have in these standards which kept me out?
I’m saying, if I had a set of parents immigrated from Brazil, how do you think they would view YOU and white guys (like me) ? Think you would somehow be exempt from the jealousy? I think they would hate your Asian guts.
Asians in America are about a generation from finding out…as jewish people did…when you reach a certain size, you can assimilate and grow, or not assimilate and shrink.
virtual wonderer is right. As a product of Brooklyn College, the same CUNY system, the quality courses went on while these remedial classes were built.
Many still have this “elite” education in mind. Do you really know what you are saying? You want to limit access to these knowleges so that only your kind can learn and use.
That is evil. When it is practiced along skin color, that is racism.
Considering the makeup of the prison population, I guess you are pointing fingers at our white brethren?
Random Guy,
Sorry, Charlie…nice try.
This thread is the riddle, and this thread (courtesy of Metropolitician) holds the answer I was getting at.
#41 Bluejives:
“…Last time I checked, India and China are producing 1.5 million scientists and engineers per year…”
Somewhere fairly recently, I read a “deconstruction” of a similar statistic pertaining to China (don’t remember if it covered India as well). I can’t remember where I saw it now, might have been on-line, might have been print edition of WSJ; doubt if I can find it again, so you’ll have to take my word for what I remember.
Turns out this assertion was based on official Chinese government statistics. After analyzing the numbers in detail, the analyst or analysts deduced that the Chinese had to be reporting local guys turning wrenches in garages, plumbers, etc as “engineers”, for the purpose of compiling this “official” government statistic.
After analyzing the numbers in detail, the analyst or analysts deduced that the Chinese had to be reporting local guys turning wrenches in garages, plumbers, etc as “engineers”, for the purpose of compiling this “official” government statistic.
Prolly true. Here in NYC, we have people with engineering degrees driving cabs, working in restaurants, running newspaper stands, etc.
http://www.law4u.net/tech/boar.....&no=35
See Yale lawschool graduation photos. I was amazed by the ratio of Asians in the photos.
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