Evidence Of Racial, Gender Biases Found In Faculty Mentoring

<p>@apprenticeprof, one of the subjects said that the return email address did raise a red flag citing that prospective grad students will usually have a .edu address. This guy also felt the content of email wasn’t right.</p>

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<p>There could be differences between how the faculty think of international versus domestic students of the same racial/ethnic background.</p>

<p>It is an inappropriate e-mail seemingly from someone who is too lazy to present their own background or reference any of the professors interests. A Chinese student, for example, is ALWAYS better prepared than that in writing to a professor. A white male student is a little more likely just to be clueless about academic protocol.</p>

<p>If a name reflected deliberate redneck-ism would there be lower reply rate? Do professional/educated African American parents use names for their kids that signal ethnicity?</p>

<p>Also, there is the gender issue. An unprepared and incompetent white male student may simply be a waste of 10 (or more) minutes then gone forever. A white female student who is so academically inept may have some other agenda - who needs an accusation of sexual misconduct?</p>

<p>BTW, my best graduate students over the past 20+ years have been Chinese (male and female), so why shouldn’t I prefer in future to pick Chinese students? </p>

<p>Ucbalumnus wrote:</p>

<p>“There could be differences between how the faculty think of international versus domestic students of the same racial/ethnic background” </p>

<p>I agree. It would be interesting to see a study done on this aspect alone. </p>

<p>My above comment was tongue-in-cheek, but it is also true according to the results.</p>

<p>^ should have said that it would likely be true according to the other results.</p>

<p>Mathyone: I found the .edu vs .com explanation completely unconvincing. I just checked the list of prospective students that my department sent out, which included contact information. Twelve of the seventeen admits had gmail accounts listed, including some who, as current undergrads, clearly have edu accounts. Maybe it varies by department, but that justification doesn’t pass the smell test, to me. </p>

<p>Sorghum: The reason your previous positive experiences with Asian students doesn’t justify showing preference to Asian students is that presumably, an application is more than just a check mark for race. You have plenty of other data to indicate ability, work ethic, etc - why on Earth would you focus on cosmetics? I have to imagine the wonderful Asian students had many impressive things on their resume that set them apart without having to consider whether or not a Chang was likely to do better than a Smith. Combining that blatant racism with the patently absurd sexual assault comment, I found your post very disturbing.</p>

<p>Again, what strikes me as not particularly useful about this study is the fact that the conflation of multiple groups with widely different social positions makes it difficult to draw any meaningful conclusion beyond the immediate one that people show an instinctive preference for names they perceive to be white and male. Since some of the affected groups have been very successful, it is hard to argue that this preference has a major effect, or represents more than a fraction of the reason for varying outcomes that can be far better explained by socioeconomics, parental education level, family structure, poor schools, etc. So, while it is certainly a negative thing, I don’t want the take-away to be “See? Society really is stacked against anyone who isn’t a white male.” </p>

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<p>You are deliberately misunderstanding what I wrote. I don’t care about the cosmetics of the student, and what race of Chinese student turns up in my lab. What I care about is that the Chinese 4+3 year training for a master degree gives the knowledge and skills I need. What I care about is that many previous students have given me reason to believe the student will work hard. And frankly, that Humphrey Smith is somewhat less likely to want to put in 16 hour days. Also, I seldom take a student who applies out of nowhere. I prefer students who are recommended by colleagues and collaborators, and I find that Chinese senior professors take very seriously - for the sake of their reputation - the process of choosing a good student for me.</p>

<p>So are you saying that you have a greater preference for Chinese students over others??</p>

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<p>There are professional/educated Chinese/Korean/Russian/Polish/Indian/Pakistani parents who give their kids that signal ethnicity. Why single out African Americans? </p>

<p>Sorghum, I hope you’re writing in jest (although I fail to see any humor in your post). As a Chinese woman, I find them pretty offensive. First you write that Chinese students are “better”, then you backtrack and say you don’t care about their race (we may be many but it’s a nationality), but then you go on and say you get your students from Chinese professors. It reads as one cliche to another.</p>

<p>I am not joking at all. And I did not ‘backtrack’ on race - race is not in itself of any relevance.</p>

<p>Students who grow up in the Chinese system, have a strong technical education, a willingness to work hard, and a desire not to let down others, are to me a safe bet as graduate students. Their ethnicity, color, appearance is not important. It is not a cliche about getting students from a Chinese professor. It is factually correct that in my considerable experience, pre-screening of master level students by a professor who knows them and really cares about his own reputation is more important than anything on paper in the student’s application. </p>

<p>And yes, Chinese is not a race. </p>

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<p>In my holistic admission system, to craft a balanced lab, it is a tip factor.</p>

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I strongly suspect that there would be. I think that despite its flaws, this study does strongly suggest that a person’s name can have a statistically significant impact on an academic’s first impression. This is consistent with other studies done with resumes as well. It’s obviously a finding that people don’t like, because we all like to think that we are fair-minded people who wouldn’t be influenced by something like that–there must be some other reason (like, calling on more boys for discipline).</p>

<p>But even if you thought the e-mail was suspicious, why would you reply to the one from “Steve” but not the one from “Lamar” or “Keisha?” There is no satisfactory answer. But I do think Bobby Wayne Dukes might have a similar problem.</p>

<p>Just curious, were they able to use tracking software to see whether the emails were opened?</p>

<p>Have to do a statistical run through to see how valid the experiment was, but I feel that it is no surprise. The problems with the email were the same for all student names. But the other issue might just be that more professors who were so sensitive were selected than others. You have to have a large enough sampling overall to make that determination. How many profs were targeted, how many names, emails. </p>

<p>But I still agree with the results of the this. It fits with my experience entirely. And though I would hope I don’t have a deep seed name bias in me, if it comes to picking someone to teach, I can tell you that fluent English, easily understood, and a good grounding in being familiar with US college students and the material at that leel would be of issue, and foreign students would get a bit more scrutiny from me, given I have seen way too many very Baaaad foreign TAs. Brilliant in their fields and great catches for the research universities, departments and profs, but a big time loser for the students stuck with some of these TAs that are barely understandable who have little connection to the course they are giving recitation sessions in, and no connection at all to the students. But name alone would not do it. I know many who grew up and were educated in the US system with totally foreign names. Not an indicator at all to me. </p>

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<p>Note that many surnames of Chinese/Korean/Russian/Polish/Indian/Pakistani origin signal ethnicity, regardless of given name. However, given names in some ethnic groups may signal immigrant versus US-born (although the degree that they do varies between different ethnic groups due to varying tendencies to give US-born kids “traditional” given names).</p>

<p>Sorghum, talk about prejudice–you are pre-judging the applicant by his or her name.</p>

<p>And I too find the sexual-harrassment prediction extremely troubling.</p>

<p>Also, the implication that an African-American-sounding name indicates an inferior candidate because a kid whose parents are educated wouldn’t name him or her that way is terribly prejudicial. Is there no upward mobility possible? Are the only successes those whose parents were successful? What’s going on here?</p>

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Well, wait a minute. I think there is a real question here–did the “obviously” black e-mailers get fewer responses because they were obviously black, or because there was something about those names that suggested low-SES black families? It could be that both black and white people named “Steve Smith” would get the same response rate, even if there was some other way of letting the recipient know if he was black or white. As I said above, I think Bobby Wayne Dukes will probably get a worse reaction than William Johnston. The difficulty is that “Keisha Jones” may signal both race and SES.</p>

<p>Just to emphasize: this study was all about the names–no other information was transmitted. So it is important to think about what, exactly, is being transmitted by those names.</p>

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<p>I do not think they care about this. They only measured the direct response to the emails. Also, it seems that the nature of the replies, be it positive, negative, evasive, or delaying a meeting, was not part of the study. They simply state that the discrimination was made by NOT answering the email.</p>

<p>There are parts of this research that point that this exercise served mostly to confirm a previous research about discrimination, and that the data HAD to fit the preconceived conclusion. This is rather surprising, and very surprising considering the extensive experience of the main researcher. </p>

<p>I happen to think that, before “confirming” discrimination one might have one to see a more extensive control element of being “prone to respond to your own kind” known as “ingroups and homophily”.as the faculty polled was hardly as diverse as the email sending group. </p>

<p>A different study that matches the races of the recipient and the senders might debunk the conclusions presented here. All pointing that people tend to favor their own race or people who associate with their own willingly. </p>

<p>And I would be curious to see a study of the response of a 100 percent Asian faculty to the inquiries of a similarly defined group of multi-racial students. In so many words, how would the Dr. Li Chengs of this world respond to Laquisha and Juanita or William Gates IV! </p>

<p>What a novel thought! </p>

<p>If you look at education blogs where this report is discussed, the fear of sexual accusations is given by others as a reason for avoiding meetings with female senders of flaky sounding e-mails.</p>

<p>Prejudice is not racism. We all prejudge, and not all stereotypes are unhelpful or untrue (e.g. the hardworking mainland Chinese student).</p>

<p>Adcoms for undergraduate admissions prejudge their favored high schools, for example, as consistently being able to deliver good students who accept their offers of admission. Many people on CC prejudge that a 2400 SAT recipient is a soulless drone (well, I don’t agree with that one). </p>