It will be interesting to see Harvard class 2023 composition in light of the lawsuit at its door step. I wonder whether an unhooked high stat Asian male will have a better chance of getting into Harvard this year? Though my bet is NOT. More Asian kids will probably apply though.
That looks like what the courts said in Regents of University of California v. Bakke and Grutter v. Bollinger, though the result of these was that colleges could consider race in admissions for diversity purposes, but not have racial quotas or set-asides. Of course, that leaves open the question of how one measures diversity without being or looking too quota-like.
@epiphany
Anecdotally:
One of the Harvard rejected male students (who is part of the suit I believe) went to Williams and was extremely happy there and would have chosen Williams all over again.
The judge who is overseeing this Harvard trial, incidentally was a Harvard reject herself and went to Middleberry.
Not being accepted by Harvard, is definitely not the end of the world. That is for sure, but I think that fact is irrelevant to the issues discussed here.
“what about schools that are trying to balance classes by gender (especially those that admit more women in engineering)? By geographic location?”
From a broad view, discriminating based on gender might present some regulatory issues but it would be difficult to define how discriminating based on geographic location would be illegal. As long as it didn’t exclude applicants based on race, gender, etc, I suspect a college could legally decide to, for example, admit only residents of one state. Nothing illegal about geographic admission on the face of it unless the geography is being defined as a way to accomplish illegal racial discrimination. An example of that would be redlining in banking - determining loan rates based on geographic boundaries that are drawn so applicants of one race are in one geographic boundary.
“It will be interesting to see Harvard class 2023 composition in light of the lawsuit at its door step. I wonder whether an unhooked high stat Asian male will have a better chance of getting into Harvard this year? Though my bet is NOT.”
I’ve stated earlier that I expect to see a slight jump in the Asian-American % for the Class of 2023. If you look at the aftermath of the 1990 Department of Education inquiry into Harvard’s discrimination against Asian-American students in its admission practices, their % took off. It didn’t matter the legal outcome. The public opinion and sentiments are enough to pressure a change. Here’s the percentage changes from year to year since the inquiry:
Class of 1992: 13%
Class of 1993: 15%
Class of 1994: 18%
Class of 2000: 16%
Class of 2012: 19%
Class of 2014: 18%
Class of 2015: 18%
Class of 2017: 20%
Class of 2018: 20%
Class of 2019: 21%
Class of 2020: 22%
Class of 2022: 22.9%
Class of 2023: ??
Obviously, I chose this provocative example intentionally. And I did so precisely because it helps reveal our biases to different types of perceived harm.
The argument you have been making is that the kids who don’t end up at Harvard end up just fine. In a sense you are saying that there is no harm. The analogy there is that Rosa only needed to spend a few more seconds to get on and off the bus. Again, very minor harm in that sense.
No, the harm you immediately recognized in the Rosa Parks case is that it is an affront to her because she was treated as inferior because of characteristics she cannot control. Likewise, the affront many are seeing with the way Harvard is practicing affirmative action is that it is treating some people as inferior in the admissions process due to characteristics they cannot control. This specific case is about Asian-Americans, but there is ample evidence that both poor white and poor black students are also losing out to satisfy what the Harvard administrators believe is the best way to create the class.
In the case of holistic admissions, you cannot look at any one person and say they were specifically harmed in the admissions process, anymore than you can flip a coin once and say it was biased because it came up heads rather than tails. But people familiar with statistics can look at comprehensive data and determine bias, similar to the way that you can determine a coin is not fair if it came up heads 600 times out of 1000 flips.
The interesting thing about this case is what Harvard wants to do is completely legal if they don’t take federal funds. But depending upon how that is calculated, that could be up to $800M annually. No way they are going to give that up–they want to have their cake and eat it too.
Harvard will still have holistic policies after all of this is said and done (geographic diversity will go on for example), but they should have removed racial preference out of the equation a long time ago, because as the Chief Justice said “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” I believe that some think that what is going on is okay because it is helping groups that have been historically discriminated against, but the use of race is wrong (even if being done for a good reason). If people want to help URMs, they should be trying to help by equalizing the primary and secondary educations provided across the US, way before an URM student gets to college. I don’t want pity or charity, but a means to educate my family and future heirs without seemingly punishing a group who wasn’t even a part of the past historic discrimination of my people. That was probably never the intent of the current policy, but “momma didn’t raise no fool either” and the numbers say something else. I just believe there is a better way, but elite institutions have not even tried to find it.
And they will have their cake and eat it, too. That’s because (a) correlation is not causation and (b) the court would have to find that all subjective criteria (such as personality ratings) are illegal and potentially “discriminatory.”
Amen.
@TiggerDad
I am expecting more Asian kids will apply (which will make the competition among Asians even harder): the acceptance rate of Asians are already 20+%, way higher than their respective percentage in the general population, it is really hard for me to see Harvard to increase Asian students much (if any) higher than the current percentage. To me, Harvard is like the flagship U of USA, its incoming class needs to have some semblance to current day America, diverse yet representative of various groups living in the country.
An ideal goal*, but unfortunately difficult to achieve, and often resisted at the local level.
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2017/08/28/when-school-districts-resegregate-more-black-and-hispanic-students-drop-out/
https://www.educationdive.com/news/as-school-resegregation-persists-experts-say-true-fix-is-elusive/524816/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/05/segregation-now/359813/
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/04/boston-schools-are-becoming-resegregated/brwPhLuupRzkOtSa9Gi6nL/story.html
*And one that would have far greater effect than anything done in college admissions. College admissions mostly has effects at the margins when considering the overall view of students moving through K-12 and college, though the effect to an individual at the margin may be or seem quite large.
Getting rejected from H and accepted to Dart, but attending Georgetown is not the same as a perfect stat 1st Gen Asian American Val/Sal/36 with a National STEM championship going to SUNY because they didn’t get into any top 15 schools. I was pretty pissed the local news didn’t pick up the story.
He should have had better safety schools but I’m not 100% sure where else he applied and who knows what his essay looked like. Maybe it was a disaster.
I do know the top schools he applied to because my kid applied to a very similar set of colleges and was a year behind him. That red dot on his 36 stands out.
My daughter had perfect stats friend (non asian) who had a host of rejections last year. I don’t think that’s tied to race. I think your second paragraph @nokill hits the nail on the head in terms of everyone having better match and safety schools on the list.
From a practical view, yes. However, with regard to legal principles, there are both positive and negative principles to consider – negative, with regard to systematic discrimination rooted in race/nationality rather than an accident of it. To prove that negative dynamic, parties suing have to demonstrate that there were no other factors that disqualified the candidate from consideration. Thus, parties would have to prove that different race/different nationality candidates were not excluded proportionally to their application efforts and numbers. Outside the committee room, posters and other members of the public are judging subjectively, without full data, that particular members of particular races “must have been equally or better qualified,” but based on a limited understanding of qualification. That is not data.
With regard to positive legal principles, the principle is equality of opportunity, not equality of result. That same principle is relevant to applications of any other “open” kind in our country. Thus, an institution, a club, an employer, etc. gets to disclose what the fundamental requirements of admission are. If a candidate meets those fundamentals (the opportunity to apply), and there are no other factors to be considered, then admission should be automatic. However, in the case of private U.S. colleges, there are indeed additional factors, and that is mostly because of the oversupply of applicants and under-supply of available places, combined with the inherent right of a private educational institution, from kindergarten through graduate school, to seek maximum diversity – intellectual, geographical, academic, cultural, personal – relative to its stated educational mission and its published eligibility factors.
It is not an American value to select on narrow measurements of “merit,” or to rank according to “hard work” – one of the most absurdly subjective factors that could be introduced.
Returning to the legal principles, the same principles apply to the workplace. A private company lists its “minimum qualifications for the job” in its classified ad or other job posting vehicle. I have applied to jobs for which I met and exceeded the qualifications but was turned down for someone “less qualified” who was determined to “fit the company culture better” or “the needs of the company at this time.” I had and have zero grounds to challenge such decisions legally. Similarly, I have been hired at companies when I myself thought that someone else (on paper) was technically better qualified than I, yet the person hiring me determined that I would harmonize better with the entire company team. Therefore, I was better qualified.
U.S. colleges are not mere academies, let alone technical operations. it’s not about mechanical or technical proficiency but much more than that. They reflect American values although within an academic context.
I would like to add a second “Amen” to @ChangeTheGame’s comment about the need to improve PK-12 education as a way to truly help URM’s. Not many things would help them more. But an enormous task and, yes, a ton of resistance. But we shouldn’t stop trying.
“To prove that negative dynamic, parties suing have to demonstrate that there were no other factors that disqualified the candidate from consideration. Thus, parties would have to prove that different race/different nationality candidates were not excluded proportionally to their application efforts and numbers.”
…A private company lists its “minimum qualifications for the job” in its classified ad or other job posting vehicle. I have applied to jobs for which I met and exceeded the qualifications but was turned down for someone “less qualified” who was determined to “fit the company culture better” or “the needs of the company at this time.”
You are ignoring the regulations regarding disparate impact. I’m not an attorney, but I don’t believe Asian students need to prove any of the things you’re listing if they can show that H’s admissions policies had disparate impact on Asians as a race.
Here’s a link to the exact wording in Title VII, SEC. 2000e-2. Section 703 Burden of proof in disparate impact cases. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm
And a link to the ABA summary article “Disparate Impact: Unintentional Discrimination” https://www.americanbar.org/groups/young_lawyers/publications/the_101_201_practice_series/disparate_impact_unintentional_discrimination/
Asians do not need to prove any single Asian was discriminated against or any of the other things you list. They only need to show that H’s practices rejected Asians in a disproportionate manner compared to other races. “Title VII liability extends beyond such overt acts to more subtle discrimination. Indeed, the EEOC and the courts view employment decisions as made “because of” protected traits even absent explicit intent to discriminate, if they disparately impact a protected group. Under “disparate impact” or “adverse impact” analysis, a plaintiff can prevail by establishing a policy or practice affects members of the protected group so disproportionately that courts can infer discrimination from that impact.”
The data in the lawsuit is already showing that Asians of with similar admission rating scores are rejected at a much higher rate than other races. Do the rejections meet the 4/5 rule of thumb threshhold? I don’t know, but it’s something that is likely to be examined in this case. Statistics play a large role in examining cases of disparate impact. Going back to @TiggerDad’s post #2884, the admissions % for Asians show clear evidence of an artificial ceiling for Asian admissions. In other words, no matter if one million Asians applied to H in a year and they were all significantly more qualified and rated in the admissions process, H is obviously using a cap or ceiling to limit the # of Asians that attend. I would love for the plaintiffs to have an expert statistician testify on the odds that the Asian admitted % would stay this consistent with no artificial ceiling in place… they have to be astronomical. There is no way in heck that the % Asians admitted would be this “smooth” without an artificial ceiling; the numbers would bounce around from year to year; might bounce only a percent or two or might bounce many percentage points, but no way would you ever see unmanaged numbers this tightly controlled and smooth. These numbers alone make the court case and are so painfully obviously managed, they should be Exhibit A. There is clearly a cap on Asian admissions, which represents disparate impact discrimination even if they can’t prove malicious or purposeful discrimination in the case of any single kid.
@makemesmart - “I am expecting more Asian kids will apply (which will make the competition among Asians even harder): the acceptance rate of Asians are already 20+%, way higher than their respective percentage in the general population, it is really hard for me to see Harvard to increase Asian students much (if any) higher than the current percentage. To me, Harvard is like the flagship U of USA, its incoming class needs to have some semblance to current day America, diverse yet representative of various groups living in the country.”
I don’t disagree. The question is how would Harvard respond to the legal, social and political, i.e., external pressures placed on them, as well as its own constituents from students, faculty, admins to the board of trustees and its vast alumni. Time will tell but my bet is that there will be some increase, token % or not. The adcoms are undergoing, I’m sure, an extreme pressure of their own now that they’re being widely accused of stereotyping Asian-Americans resulting in low scores based on “personality.” They’ll think twice before determining their personality scores. With any bit of upward scores in personality category, many more will get in the door.
SES diversity at Harvard mismatches that of the US to a far greater extent than racial/ethnic diversity does, but gets far less attention.
@TiggerDad
I hope you are right, but if Harvard did as you have said, then they would be declaring their own “guilt” of discriminating against a large group of Asian applicants, which their witnesses and lawyers are working hard to prove otherwise now.
@ucbalumnus
SES diversity at any elite schools mismatch that of US to a far greater degree. Actually, I would venture to say that college education by and large is not easy for low SES students and thus the vast majority of them don’t get into colleges at all.
Which is why, as @ChangeTheGame have said, (and I said before as well), If we want to let education to be the real mover in social mobility, it has to start at k-12, in fact, it has to start at prenatal care/planned parenthood, and it requires the vast majority of CCers to agree that education shouldn’t be funded by local tax dollars but funded at the federal level. But that is a huge digress.
“I know many people think it’s irrelevant, but I really would love to see a list of where the Harvard rejects ended up. I happen to think it’s completely relevant.”
My (Asian) son was one of those rejected by H. He was accepted to three other Ivys, three top LAC’s and one USNWR top 10 national university. He’s now attending Princeton, and the funny thing is that we both feel it was a blessing in disguise when H rejected him. If H were to suddenly declare that, because of a racial discrimination, they’d take my son back as a remedy, he wouldn’t take the offer. There are only two things that H has over P: a bit more prestige and, for a pre-med like my son, a better GPA prospect. P, on the other hand, has over H just about everything else that an undergrad would want in a college. Strange how a rejection can direct you to an ideal college. Did we feel that there was a racial discrimination on the part of H involved in my son’s case? Never entertained such a thought. I support H’s (and others) effort in taking race and ethnicity into account in building a diverse student body, even if it may have affected my son’s admission.