Harvard Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<p>Bloomberg reports today 2/2/2012 that</p>

<p>"The U.S. Education Department is probing complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions.
The department’s 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 school’s handling of Asian-American candidates, said the spokesman, who declined to be identified, citing department policy.
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 applicant’s father, who declined to be identified.
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 nation’s fastest- growing and most affluent racial category."</p>

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<p>I personally agree with this lad. Is it really fair, when an asian-american, who works so so hard in getting his stellar academics, is bested by someone who works hard yes, but gets an inherent advantage based on his ethnicity (something the Asian American cannot even control). Applicants should be judged on merit and not on factors as arbitrary as this. Harvard and Princeton are places of higher education where knowledge and ideas rule the roost. And it is most probable that the most qualified, regardless of ethnicity, provide this knowledge. </p>

<p>Moreover, while some minorities indeed deserve their place, some minority applicants to the top colleges are just as financially able as their white counterparts and have faced no additional difficulty yet they get accepted despite their academics being lower. </p>

<p>The solution would be to judge an application based on their own unique story. Stories that are automatically made more interesting on the colour of the applicants’ skins deter applicants whose stories are compelling in the first place.</p>

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<p>this was bound to happen at some point. glad that it has; i bet a lot of people are curious about the results.</p>

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<p>The lawsuits have started in 2006 and that’s the reason probably that schools have started the “holistic” approach in Admissions. The University of TX (Fisher case) is going thru a similar lawsuit that is heading to the Supreme Court.</p>

<p>"But a brief filed in Ms. Fisher’s case by the Asian American Legal Foundation said that Texas had gone far beyond that threshold and sought “the odious and unlawful objective” of trying “to make the racial composition of its student body mirror the racial composition of the state of Texas.” The upshot, the brief said, was discrimination against Asian students.</p>

<p>A second brief, from the Asian Pacific American Legal Center and other Asian groups, took the opposite view, saying Asian students benefited from exposure to a diverse student body.</p>

<p>The admissions systems endorsed by Grutter are, perhaps incidentally and perhaps by design, opaque, meaning it is hard to identify specific students who would have been admitted but for their race. Texas officials, for instance, say Ms. Fisher cannot know that she would have gotten in had she not been white."</p>

<p>"Peter H. Schuck, a Yale law professor, said that should not matter. “The idea of racial and ethnic diversity altering the kind of conversation that goes on in the classroom is so overrated,” he said.</p>

<p>Then he offered a footnote, literally, one from his book “Diversity in America.” Reading it aloud, he said: “Any experienced, conscientious teacher, regardless of race, could and would get on the table any of the arguments that ought to be there, including ideas normally associated with racism or other analogous experiences not personally experienced by the teacher.</p>

<p>“One of my best students responded, ‘Yes, but you wouldn’t say it with the same conviction or affect as one who had experienced it personally,’ ” Professor Schuck continued, still reading. “This is a point I had to concede.”</p>

<p>Now that they have statistical evidence of what will happen as the number of Hispanics and Blacks in schools in CA were reduced, due to the Grutter case, the result may differ from how the SC decides the case this time.</p>

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<p>TBH, this a pure affirmative action problem. But lets be honest here, we all know that a lot of Asian students that apply to top schools and other schools are more than qualified to attend. But if there was no affirmative action, everyone would then suffer because they would not have an equal chance.</p>

<p>For example, ever since UC Berkeley has banned affirmative action, year after year, about 40% of the freshman class or more is Asian-American.</p>

<p>Affirmative action has been banned in Texas and the University of Houston freshman class of 2011 is 27% Asian. </p>

<p>Does this look like a coincidence to you? I hope not because it shouldnt.
Lets be real, in America, Asian-Americans have proven their race capable with their high amount of college-ready students. But the other minority races are still struggling to prove themselves in education among other areas. </p>

<p>At the end of the day, someone has to give in for a greater benefit. In this case, it includes having much more competitions and slightly higher expectations for Asians for the greater benefit of diversity.</p>

<p>Is it fair to the Asians? No
Does the college get greater diversity and opinions and help encourage other minorities to aim higher as a result? Yes</p>

<p>Although it is not fair to judge someone based solely on their race on any circumstance, I dont think that this is the case here. </p>

<p>But think about this: whether affirmative action is banned or not, would it better to discourage the Asians who have already proven themselves worthy or the blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, etc who still have to prove themselves? </p>

<p>Think about that.</p>

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<p>Please define merit.</p>

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…and therein lies the issue. Is it standardized test scores? Then we could do away with an admissions committee and just enter the score/gpa data into a program and it would spit out an admit list.
The fact that each applicant is evaluated ‘holistically’ (not fond of that word, but oh well) means that it’s impossible to do a direct comparison between students and come up with some sort of objective measure of who is ‘better qualified’.</p>

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<p>^Exactly. College admissions aren’t (and shouldn’t be) defined based on GPA and test scores alone. So, then, to say Asian Americans are discriminated against requires you to compare and rank subjectives. </p>

<p>Even if you do that and come up with some agreed upon sense of what subjectives are better than others, you then have to consider context. If you say that Joe’s stem cell research under an accomplished professor is more impressive than Dave winning a local science fair, is Joe still more impressive if his parents provided him with the connection while Dave’s parents are pedaling drugs? Which student would the college benefit most from having? </p>

<p>What does the above caricature have to do with race? Well, that’s actually a question to answer. Was this Asian-American rejected because he was Asian or because there were too many applicants like him? What was his level of prior advantage (Joe) and how much role did that play in Harvard choosing someone else over him? What if his test scores and GPA were good and he had objectively impressive ECs but he was too much like 1000 other applicants? What if he was boring?</p>

<p>I’m not convinced that Harvard engages in discrimination of any sort. It is very difficult to convincingly show that a rejected applicant was demonstrably more qualified than any admitted applicant by any definition other than a rigid numbers game.</p>

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<p>Then here’s a possible solution. Harvard could withhold all information about applicants’ racial classification from admissions officers during the admissions process. All applicants’ names should become immediately anonymized within the admissions process to remove all indications of one’s racial classification. (and yes, discussions of one’s ethnicity within essay answers and rec letters would also be likewise cleansed). However all other information within the application packet would remain for admissions officers to examine. {For example, admissions officers could know the socioeconomic status of the applicant, but not his specific race.} Only after admissions decisions were made would Harvard then know exactly how many members of each racial group were admitted. </p>

<p>If you are correct and Harvard truly does not engage in race-based discrimination of any sort, then such a new admissions process would result in no change. Harvard would continue to admit the same percentage of students from each racial category both before and after the change is made. {Or, in statistical terms, the racial indicator coefficients would not load.} By doing so, Harvard would gain public trust of the equity of its admissions decisions. And since admissions decisions wouldn’t change anyway, Harvard has nothing to lose. So there is no reason not to enact such a process, right? </p>

<p>Lest anybody find this to be an outrageous proposal, allow me to point out that this is exactly the procedure used within the scientific peer review publication process. Peer review referees are ‘blinded’ by receiving anonymized versions of the papers to judged, to eliminate personal biases from the process. {Granted, the ‘blinding’ process is imperfect, and referees will sometimes know the identity of the author simply by the writing style of the manuscript and the type of research that was conducted, but the blinding process is still better than nothing.}</p>

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<p>I never got a paper to review that hid the authors’ names, and I can’t see that it would make sense. However, orchestras have been using “blind auditions” with those trying out for positions hidden behind a screen for years. Number of women in orchestras way up. Schools do not claim that ethnicity isn’t a consideration though. Maybe in 50 years it won’t be an issue.</p>

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<p>Nice study. Seems like the diversity imperative of elite colleges equates to racial groups competing not with the entire application pool, but with each other.</p>

<p>In the end, though, is this unfair? It ensures that the cream of the crop from a variety of different groups has a chance at a great education. The alternative is a university system where the elite colleges are full of ‘the affluent races’, ultimately widening the socionomic gap between the different races.</p>

<p>Sure, on a microsocial level, this might lead to something that seems like unfairness, but on a macrosocial scale, the ugly system still seems to work for the best.</p>

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<p>Well, well, well… Harvard is a great school - no question about it, and that’s why so many (too many?) people want to get in. But that does NOT mean everything it does is right or fair. And, it doesn’t mean there is no discrimination involved - particularly for Asians who are the “new Jews” after all, if not worse. Just like a private country club handling its membership, it is hard for any outsiders to understand or judge who it should or shouldn’t accept without clear, transparent, and uniform criteria. However, any double standard or obvious conflict with its own publicized definition of “merit” is unfair. Period. Don’t take it wrong, though, Harvard or any other “selective” colleges has the right to select whoever it wants in any way it feels necessary – just like you and me, we have the right to choose whoever we’ll invite to our Christmas party and we don’t have to choose “the nicest” or “the best” or “the smartest” people. So, like it or not, Harvard does have the right to be unfair. Just be honest, don’t try to confuse people with those so-called “holistic (i.e., arbitrary) approaches, and don’t try to justify the actual unfairness with any “politically correct” or “legitimate” excuses. Please, please just be honest – as all the college applicants are asked to do when completing their applications. It’s not too much to ask for, right?</p>

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<p>I think the problem lies deeper, in that even when an Asian student has comparable extracurricular and other achievements as a counterpart of another ethnicity in addition to better scores, s/he would still be at a disadvantage because there is an unstated, institutionally imposed “soft ceiling” for the number of Asian students that a school like Harvard would admit. </p>

<p>Part of that is for political reasons as that Philovitist hinted at. It would be unseemly for too much of the coveted spots in an “elite institution” in the country to be taken by a minority group that many would not consider to be fully “American”. Not only would it damage Harvard’s image and prestige, it would incur disaster with alumni groups and stir political complications. </p>

<p>Part of it also has to do with the underlying, subconscious prejudice many have against Asians- Top scores? must be a quiet, antisocial grind. Loves music? His parents must have made him practice since he was four. She loves math/science? Which Asian kid doesn’t like math and science. Probably also had family connections. It’s the same prejudice that other minority groups face in other arenas (i.e. some would immediately associate athletes or URM with being “academically unqualified” when the very opposite is true). As a result, the applicants’ true accomplishments are diminished while unfound biases are heaped into the evaluation. </p>

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<p>Certainly, it’s very hard to. The beauty of holistic admissions is that it blurs those distinctions and renders the application process subjective enough that ultimately a school is able to create the class that it seeks to create. Because of the inherent unpredictability and subjectivity artfully embedded in the process, it’s very harder for an outside group to accuse them of discrimination.</p>

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<p>The FAQ thread in the College Admissions Forum </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>links out to many official sources of information about current federal law and current college admission office practice in considering–or not considering–race or ethnicity in the college admission process. The investigation of the current complaint about practice at some colleges will take some time, and there is little basis for predicting the result of the investigation today. Participants here who would like to discuss the general issues (not the issues specific to any one college) are welcome to do so over on the FAQ thread, in the interest of keeping each forum here on topic.</p>

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<p>"… in the interest of keeping each forum here on topic."</p>

<p>Not quite sure which of the above posts was not on the topic… All seem pretty focused and interesting to me.</p>

<p>“I’m not convinced that Harvard engages in discrimination of any sort.” </p>

<p>Guess you may not know much about the evolution of Harvard’s admission policies and practices - Then, you’ll be very surprised that Harvard first introduced “merit criteria” in the US higher education and helped initiate the “National Scholarship Program” and “Standard Test System” to screen out “the stupid sons of the rich”, and just found new (and bigger) problem of “the Jewish invasion” which warranted the eventually “holistic” evaluations of an applicant’s “character”, “personality” and other subjective qualities. Even the interview was originally used for verifying who (what race) the applicant looked like… There is a well documented history of discrimination in the admission process - you may google “The Chosen” for a good starter.</p>

<p>"… the ugly system still seems to work for the best."</p>

<p>So, it is ugly (!) - Then there’s no “the best”, only “the better”.</p>

<p>“Maybe in 50 years it won’t be an issue.”</p>

<p>Things may change indeed after some of those 15-18% Asian students become rich and powerful alumni someday… Just like today’s Jews. Hopefully, it won’t be too long.</p>

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<p>I know what you’re saying here. I haven’t seen any evidence to support it except the internal consistency of the story. Maybe I’m uninformed, and I would love to be informed otherwise if that is the case.</p>

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<p>I never made any claim about Harvard’s history, mainly because a history of discrimination doesn’t imply current discrimination.</p>

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<p>IN 50 years, the concept of “race” will be made obsolete by inter-marriage and “ethnicity” will be significantly weakened by globalization.
The social mixing of races in college promotes the first, and the internationalization of college student bodies promotes the second.
The predominance of English, now a lingua franca as demonstrated by its prevalence in computer and digital communication, is another factor erasing these definitions.
Ease of travel is obviously a factor on all this.
And so is global media.
Last, the content of the education at many top universities endeavors to erase these definitions, and also to create better mutual understanding among students from different backgrounds.</p>

<p>That being said, class warfare is on the rise globally.
It will be interesting to see how colleges deal with this issue in the classroom and in admissions, as it permeates 99% of political and religious conflicts around the world.</p>

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<p>Because this forum is about Harvard, it might be helpful to mention that 12 percent of enrolled undergraduate students at Harvard are reported by the federal definitions as “race/ethnicity unknown,” </p>

<p>[U-CAN:&lt;/a&gt; Harvard University](<a href=“http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard]U-CAN:”>http://members.ucan-network.org/harvard) </p>

<p>which is rather amazing when you consider that everyone applies with a real name attached to the application and Harvard endeavors to interview all undergraduate applicants. (Another 10 percent are international students, for whom race or ethnicity is never reported, by the federal regulations.) Right now, the federal law is that colleges are required to ask applicants, but applicants are NOT required to tell, about applicant race and ethnicity. Later, enrolled students are again asked, and again permitted not to tell, and those reports about enrolled students are sent to the federal government and get into the Common Data Set information for each college. But Harvard specifically has quite a substantial percentage of students who (evidently) decline to self-identify, and yet are admitted and enroll, so I wonder whether Harvard’s practices are really comparable to Princeton’s, with reference to the article submitted to open this thread. </p>

<p>As before, much more general issues about what the law should be, and for that matter what the law is, are provided with research citations in the FAQ thread, </p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>where the forum topic is college admissions in general.</p>

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<p>It would be so funny if Harvard based admissions on GPA and SAT only.</p>

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<p>Then they’d be MIT… Zzzzzzzzz</p>