<p>The researchers sent emails to faculty at top colleges asking to meet for academic guidance, with the emails only differing by the names--which were easily identifiable by race and gender. They discovered a clear bias against female and minority students with profs statistically less likely to return the emails and/or agree to meet with the students. Especially seen in STEM and in private colleges.</p>
<p>This does not surprise me. I have seen exactly the same thing from kindergarten on in all three of my kids’ educations, in a variety of school settings. As an example, my older D is blond and blue-eyed and from a two-parent family. A HS friend was black and from a poor background, single parent. Both in an AP class with one of the “best” teachers. Both struggled with an assignment. Teacher called our home offering D extra help as needed. Teacher called black student up to her desk and suggested she drop the class. </p>
<p>It’s assumed by many, sometimes on these forums as well, that minority students are less intelligent, less able and less prepared. It makes sense then that faculty would choose not to help them. And women have long been assumed to be less adept at STEM fields. Remember the “Math is hard” Barbie? All part of the culture.</p>
<p>Ive seen related grade inflation( in high school) which teachers may not conciously be aware of.
The kids arent dumb, but if they can get a good grade without doing much work, they will gravitate to those teachers. Parents need to watch for this because it isnt helping their kids in the long run.</p>
<p>From the last couple of pages of the published result.
</p>
<p>translation: This study doesn’t show what we’d like to prove if we look at it with a common sense approach, so it had to be done differently to attempt to show what we believe it ought to show. </p>
<p>sseamom brings up a good point. 2 students in the same class are treated differently. One student Caucasian, the other an American of African ancestry. Without knowing all that the teacher knows, sseamom believes the only reason was race. Ssmom may be right in her conclusion, but without knowing all the facts (that the teacher knows) sseamom had made a determination the reason was race. Since the determination was made without all the facts, was that racial bias?</p>
<p>Very interesting study and article. In looking at the chart on pg 25, I think it demonstrates the biases quite clearly. The reverse discrimination in fine arts is also interesting. It would be interesting if further study could have been done utilizing the same subjects and sending a similar, but obviously different, email to the same professors but from a different student than the first. I’m surprised that they gave such a restrictive time frame for meeting. It might have been better to offer a three day window to help eliminate the possibility of an unusually heavy schedule on one or two days. It’s easy to find the holes in any study, but unfortunately the overall findings are not surprising.</p>
<p>From long experience I know that you should not reply to certain groups of prospective students, unless you are actively looking for a student, because they will take any reply or politeness as an invitation to bug you for months.</p>
<p>younghoss-my DAUGHTER made that determination, and I agree. The classmate was actually a BETTER student than my daughter and I was mentoring this student, so I know exactly what her capabilities are (and were). There was absolutely a racial bias going on. For the record, the other girl did NOT drop the class, but changed teachers and did fine. </p>
<p>@xiggi, what wasn’t clear about the message? The exact same email was sent from all the students. I know it was likely more generic than they would usually get, as it didn’t specifically mention their area of research, but it was sent by all and to all the same.</p>
<p>Note that the claimed levels of race/ethnic/gender discrimination vary considerably by field and race/ethnic/gender characteristics. Chinese females seem to have done the worst overall, followed by Indian males. Black females appear to find little difference in liberal arts, but significant discrimination against them in business and education. Hispanic females appear to receive “reverse” discrimination in liberal arts, but appear to be discriminated against in pre-professional subjects, but Hispanic males appear to be discriminated against in liberal arts subjects but appear to receive “reverse” discrimination in human services and health sciences.</p>
<p>On page 27, the characteristics of the faculty are described. All disciplines were >=85% white, except for engineering and CS at 78%. Perhaps that is not surprising, given that faculty represent higher education demographics of a generation ago. But note the definition of the disciplines on page 40.</p>
<p>Oh, I was not talking about the precise message sent by the researchers. I was addressing the potential bias towards internationals based on … past experiences with similar cases. Since this study addresses potential discrimination based on the recognition of a name, the impact of previous experiences might have a bigger impact that the precise text of the email as it assumes the reader even opens it to read it entirely. </p>
<p>Fwiw, one could criticize the content of the email used as the inquiry included a short --and perhaps-- presumptuous notice. While I understand that the message had to be standardized, it hardly appeared to be the type of message that would elicit a positive answer in the first place. </p>
<p>I am not disputing the findings, although I believe that a similar experience might yield totally different resutls. But that is another story altogether. </p>
<p>@xiggi, but I highly doubt those with African American names were perceived as international. For the others, without the professor meeting them in person, it wouldn’t have been possible for them to distinguish the Americans from the international students. Shouldn’t matter either way though. 10 minutes is all they asked for.</p>