<p>Blommberg reports today 2/2//2012 that "The U.S. Education Department is probing complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions.
The departments Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint it received in August that Harvard rejected an Asian- American candidate for the current freshman class based on race or national origin, a department spokesman said. The agency is looking into a similar August 2011 allegation against Princeton as part of a review begun in 2008 of that schools handling of Asian-American candidates, said the spokesman, who declined to be identified, citing department policy.</p>
<p>Both complaints involve the same applicant, who was among the top students in his California high school class and whose family originally came from India, according to the applicants father, who declined to be identified.</p>
<p>The new complaints, along with a case appealed last September to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging preferences for blacks and Hispanics in college admissions, may stir up the longstanding debate about whether elite universities discriminate against Asian-Americans, the nations fastest- growing and most affluent racial category."</p>
<p>If a formal complaint is made, they have to investigate. Talk is cheap. So is filing a complaint. Lots of top kids don’t get in Harvard and Princeton; not just Asian kids, obviously.</p>
<p>Does anyone else find the idea that this claim requires investigation ridiculous? Fifteen minutes running statistics on the results threads of CC would prove this complainant’s case, at least in a statistical sense.</p>
<p>I can tell you from a student services perspective that we only have a news article on which to gauge the veracity of the complaint. On its face, it sounds ridiculous, but first, we don’t know the entire story and second, we don’t know what sort of complaint triggers the need to investigate.</p>
<p>“Fifteen minutes running statistics on the results threads of CC would prove this complainant’s case, at least in a statistical sense”</p>
<p>^^Are you saying posts on college confidential are likely to have significance that can be generalized to the real world?. I am not good at statistics, but for starters, I would wonder about the sample size of the various racial groups here.</p>
<p>I made no comment on the generalizability of College Confidential comments. I was speaking from a university administrator perspective and that is that we don’t know enough to be able to judge the situation.</p>
<p>Why don’t these universities use ID numbers for applicants and be done with it.</p>
<p>I hate it when such racial complaints are filed and racists start coming in and claiming that Asians are robotic, have no creativity, etc etc. There’s none in this thread yet but there’s plenty out there. I don’t think the people who filed the complaints want to be solely considered based on their SAT scores. They want to be considered equally as others. This mean that between two candidates of different races with equal test scores, leadership skills and other soft skills, there is a 50% chance of getting in. Right now, it seems that for all else equal – including extra curricular activities – Asian Americans are still getting shafted. And there’s no way of finding out if I’m right or wrong here because soft skills are sooo subjective. Admission offices can always bs their way out. </p>
<p>That’s why they should just have ID numbers with no way of identifying the race of the applicant and no way of discrimination.</p>
<p>I have said this in other forums but here we go again so…</p>
<p>I think that Universities could still ask students to identify by race/ethinicity for the purpose of finding URMs but Asians and Whites should not be asked to identify by race. Lump them all together and let the chips fall where they may.</p>
<p>I believe that Grutter v. Bollinger ruled that affirmative action is okay. That is, by nature, discrimination toward URMs and, by logic, against non-URMs. Are they intending to re-try this concept?</p>
<p>^I feel that this is mostly an issue of whether Asians are discriminated against v Caucasians. Not whether Universities can practice affirmative action.</p>
<p>That is the goal. Since Bollinger the court has swung to the right somewhat, and some legal scholars think the decision could be overturned by the current court.</p>
<p>The UCs are often examples of how schools end up with 40-50% Asian population if race is removed from the admissions process … and how top tier schools discriminate since they only are about 20% Asian.</p>
<p>So lets look deeper. California is 13% Asian and the UCs are 40-50% Asian … the Asians are represented at the UCs at a 3-4x ratio compared to their representation in the general California population. The US is 5% Asian and the top schools tend to be 20% Asian … the Asians are represented at the top schools at a 4x ratio compared to their representation in the general US population. I’m having trouble seeing how the UCs help the discrimination case.</p>
<p>At the end of the day this is an interesting debate. A balance is important to ensure the School COMMUNITY thrives with kids having exposure to others from different races and economic background.</p>
<p>**Just a food for thought… **</p>
<p>Looking at it from another angle, why is there such a disproportionate number of African American basketball players (82%) in the NBA as compared to their numbers in the general population (12.6%)? 61% of NCAA Division I college basketball players are African Americans. Should we be some how limiting that to some arbitrary number like 30% or 40%? </p>
<p>Why is it that we care so much about excellence, but don’t care about diversity in Sports but when it comes to education there is a different standard?</p>