Your link gives no support for the claim that “most Asian immigrants were poor and uneducated”.
Asian immigration was limited to very low levels before 1965, when the national origin quotas and exclusion laws were replaced by the current system that includes both “merit” based categories (e.g. PhD students, skilled workers, etc.) and “family” categories (or “chain migration”, originally intended to keep the US white by preferring relatives of the then-almost-90%-white US population). Post-1965 immigration from Asia has mostly been in the “merit” categories, and the American kids of that generation of immigrants started appearing in colleges in the 1980s.
Of course, there are Asian American people who are not highly educated. But that does not mean that the kids of the not highly educated Asian American people achieve like those of the PhD student and skilled worker immigrants in aggregate. If they did, Hawaii (where immigration from Asia was not historically biased toward high education and skill people) would be considered an educational elite state.
UC’s own research found that the SAT-I scores were a weaker predictor than HS GPA or SAT-II / Achievement / SAT-subject scores for college GPA. So it is not surprising that UC reduced the weighting of the SAT-I scores and lobbied heavily to get the SAT-II writing test moved into the SAT reasoning redesign of 2005. Harvard’s admissions dean made a similar statement in 2009. However, test-prep companies appear to have found ways to game the writing section, reducing its usefulness.
Educational attainment in the context of immigrant parents is just noise. The issue is and always has been how smart the parents are, and to a more limited extent, what cultural advantages they were able to provide for their kids. Educational attainment in this context is just a proxy for intelligence.
Most of the early Jewish immigrants in the period 1880-1914, particularly those from eastern Europe, were very poor, typically with no formal education credentials and very limited English skills. I should add that they also faced enormous discrimination. It didn’t make a bit of difference. Their kids soon had to be restricted from entrance at the Ivy Leagues, and as a result, schools like the City University of New York went on to graduate more Nobel Prize winners than Harvard.
A similar story could be told of Italian immigrants in the 1890s through 1914, typically illiterate peasants who arrived with literally nothing and also faced enormous discrimination, although their kids and grandkids did not quite achieve to the level of the Jewish immigrants (with notable exceptions, of course).
Anyone who has lived in New York City knows that there were, and still are, large pockets of Asian immigrants who came over with little or no education, working whichever jobs they could. These weren’t graduate level engineers and computer scientists as in the recent waves in California. Despite their humble beginnings, their kids have been the standouts at the NYC specialized schools for some time (obviously now the overall level of educational attainment has been rising for decades).
Although it is before my time, I am told that the kids and grandkids of the typically low-skill Chinese (and even Japanese) who came over to San Francisco prior to WWII were also standouts at Lowell High School in the post war period.
@UndeservingURM I have looked at those graduation rates and UMTC definitely needs to look at their admissions practices as every race has at least a 10% drop when compared to white students. I still believe you are missing the correlation of how lack of resources affects African American students. We can only see the 4 and 6 year graduation rates but we are not told why students have not graduated. I have seen African American student with a 3.5 GPA have to withdraw from school because they did not have the funds to continue and this happens more than you think. I do believe that the numbers would show that African Americans who did not finish due to just being a mismatch for a school would be higher than other races, but the amount of African Americans who do not finish school due to lack of resources to pay for school would most likely show at the highest rates with African Americans (lowest household incomes by race) as well. I hope that a school will one day break down the numbers further to show how many students were in good standing but did not complete their degrees in the 4 and 6 year intervals by race. My educated guess would be that the gap would close some. One of the posters commented that we would have to take the student’s families finances into account to make a true determination and I believe this as well. This may also be impossible, but I would also like to see the numbers for students by race who have left one school only to transfer to another due to cost/bad fit and finish their degree in the 6 year time frame. I definitely see your point of view @UndeservingURM, but I am hoping you see a part of my own. We do agree on the biggest point (racial preferences in admissions is wrong), but I see other factors (finances and fit) at play than just the raw Graduation rate numbers.
Since black students have a lower family income/wealth distribution than other students, it would not be surprising that this is related to higher dropout rates – while those who attend the richest private schools with the best financial aid are less affected by financial problems.
Of course this is true, no one can refute that. You are in a large majority of Asian Americans who see affirmative action and racism against Asians as two separate issues, which of course they are. Most support the first but not the second.
The point of diversity is not to punish anyone, but to create a campus environment that many people believe is beneficial. That doesn’t mean that some students won’t suffer while others benefit. Obviously, a preference for one group has to come at the expense of another. But that does not mean the justification is that the non-preferential group has done anything wrong or is in any way responsible for wrongs of the past.
In fact, the benefits of diversity are not exclusively related to wrongs of the past at all. The idea is that a culturally, racially, economically, geographically and experientially (is that a word?) diverse group is a benefit to the entire campus. That is why kids from under-represented states have an easier time than kids from over-represented states. No one is stating that the NY kids need to be punished for wrongs that the east committed against the west generations ago.
If you believe that all kinds of diversity enhance the campus experience, then some form of what is taking place today will have to continue.
Is there evidence of this diversity being beneficial to the students and not to make the college feel good about themselves (look at our first-gens, we have all 50 states etc.)? Evidence, not anecdotes?
This has been mentioned on CC, I’ll post it again, diversity is not one of the top-10 reasons a student picks a college, here they are (US News, 200,000 respondents):
academics
jobs
3 FA
cost
campus visit
social activities
size of campus
grad/professional school placement
graduation rate
live near home
The fifty states diversity is a red herring, it’s not really for diversity, it’s to put in their marketing materials and communication.
Diversity (in particular race/ethnic and geographic) is absolutely one of the main reasons my D chose her college (conversely, not a factor for my S - every kid is different).
What kind of evidence would you be looking for, @theloniusmonk ?
Your list of reasons can include diversity (part of academic experience, part of “campus visit”, jobs, social activities, etc)
Diversity per se may not be a stated preference for students, but racial / ethnic composition is likely an important unstated preference among many students who have a choice.
Lots of students want there to be “enough” of their in race / ethnicity at the college – hence the colleges’ desire for an ethnic composition that is marketable to such students. “Enough” may vary; @Hanna has stated that most white students prefer white majority colleges (probably why some colleges lean on legacy admission so much).
Everyone seems intent on missing the key point. Using race this way is illegal and will be struck down. Some of the posters here seem not to realize that the Asian elephant is Chinese and it’s their view that will be backed up by political muscle as can be seen in the link above about Berkeley. Why do you think Crazy Rich Asians wasn’t about the Vietnamese, Cambodians, or even Japanese. The Chinese will not allow their children to be discriminated against any more and will use every ounce of political muscle to ensure this. Don’t you guys travel? All the high end stores have signs in Chinese. Most people don’t realize the signs say some variant of “welcome we speak Mandarin”. This is true in Jackson Hole and Paris and every high end place. This new muscle is already being flexed every day in coastal CA and is coming to all of you very soon. It’s inevitable and can’t be stopped. Hundreds of millions of smart Chinese looking for a better life for themselves and their children. AA will soon be over. The Chinese have no collective guilt since they were the recipients of horrific racism themselves.
My daughter looked for what I have heard called a “critical mass” of people who looked like her as a minority and also observed how racial groups interacted with one another (did they mingle together, or did they stay in there own tribes) at her top PWI choices. That 2nd point is something she has picked up from me over the years. That wasn’t 1st on her list, but it was definitely top 3. Now as a student at a HBCU, I don’t think she cares about diversity at all because she is the majority but she still cared a lot about how people interacted with one another. So I think it is more about the perspective of the student experience. I never once thought about diversity at my HBCU (although we were diverse from an income, geographical, and experiences perspective). But it may have mattered a lot more in a place that I was in the minority.
There are a lot of reasons to want diversity in college, likely ranging from “I want to be familiar with different perspectives before I begin my career” to “is there a critical mass of people from my ethnic group so I have people to date/be friends with” to “I was sheltered and just want to know people from all over because I think it’s interesting and different”. And likely lots of reasons in between.
All might be true of a lot of kids as K-12 schools are so segregated.
@SAY, Crazy rich Chinese elephants are not as mighty as you claim, or else we would be seeing a lot more Asian politicians. Anti racial consideration is backed up by political muscles only because the muscles are using it to aid their own agenda, and not because they care for justice or are afraid of mighty Chinese influence. In fact, some would say it is the muscles who have been doing it all from the beginning, and Asians are only used to cover their true face. As @OHMomof2 showed, not all of us want to be a part of it.
If we don’t speak out when they come for the other minorities, when they come for us - and there will be no one left to speak for us.
Only about 8% of age 25-34 people in the People’s Republic of China has completed a bachelor’s degree or higher; this is much lower than the US, or especially the (immigration-selected) immigrants from the PRC to the US. Do not assume that immigrants from the PRC to the US are representative of Chinese people generally in terms of educational attainment, since the immigrants have passed through a selection filter (e.g. many as PhD students or skilled workers).
Such historical experience evidently does not prevent some from being racist against others (e.g. against white and black people in the US, or against ethnic minorities in the PRC).
You guys are willfully closing your eyes to reality. Yes there are a couple of hundred million highly intelligent Chinese people and most want to come to the west. Seriously you guys must not travel in California or the world. Two of my kids went to one of the best large public HS in California. 25 years ago there were only a few Asians. Today 1/3rd of the school is Chinese and 90% of the top 50 students were Asian. This is occurring all over CA, NYC, and other locations are following. You guys are talking about the abstract value of diversity while the Chinese are focusing on making sure their kids get every possible advantage. 20 years ago the Asians had very little political power but now they are a major and growing power in CA politics. Are you guys unaware of the Chinese parachute kids?
^ Should we make U.S. educational policy based on hundreds of millions of Chinese people in China, instead of people in the U.S. including 3.8 million Chinese Americans?
Well, are we counting Indians (from India) as Asians?
Take a look at the National Merit Scholars from just about any region-or take a look at CA for example.
Look at the actual names.
The game has changed.
Not that it is likely that many will actually be able to come to the US, due to lacking both the credentials to pass US immigration gates and money to travel (or pay international student costs at US universities).