The Asian quota (1984?- ) is where some of the top universities in the US seem to limit the number of Asians they admit as students each year. This first became noticeable in the middle 1980s. It has become even more noticeable since 1996 when Proposition 209 ended race-based admissions in California.
For example, Berkeley, one of California’s top universities, was nearly half Asian by the early 2010s – about twice what it was in the early 1990s. Harvard, meanwhile, has stayed pretty much the same, despite the growing number of Asian American students. In 1993 it was 20.7% Asian. In 2014 its incoming class was 19.7% Asian. Most other Ivy League universities are less than 20% Asian.
What makes it even more suspicious is that from the 1920s to the 1940s some of these very same universities practised a quota limiting Jews.
Asian Americans are only 5% of the country, so 19.7% might seem more than fair. Yet many young Asians are the sons and daughters of the Asian brain drain that began in the 1960s. That means compared to most Americans they are more likely to go to university and more likely to do well on the SAT, the main test used for university admissions.
A 2004 study by sociologists Thomas Espenshade, Chang Y. Chung, and Joan L. Walling found that at top US universities:
“The bonus for African-American applicants is roughly equivalent to an extra 230 SAT points (on a 1600-point scale), to 185 points for Hispanics, 200 points for athletes, and 160 points for children of alumni. The Asian disadvantage is comparable to a loss of 50 SAT points.”
In 2012, the average Asian American SAT score was, you guessed it, 50 points higher than for Whites (on a 1600-point scale).
Keep in mind that not all Asian Americans are the same. That “average” hides the fact that it is an average between brain-drain Asians, refugee Asians and old-school Asians. After Berkeley ended affirmative action in 1996, its law school went for several years without any Filipino American students. Most Asian Americans who voted on Proposition 209 voted against it.
Edward Blum (pictured) is a White Republican who wants to end affirmative action. He is the one who gave us Fisher v University of Texas (2013). In 2014 he found an Asian American to bring a lawsuit against Harvard for racial discrimination. He says Harvard has a “hard, fast quota limiting the number of Asians it will admit.”
In 2015 more than 60 Asian American groups have asked the US Department of Education to investigate Harvard’s admissions policies to see if it discriminates against Asians.
The lawsuit and the investigation will likely come to nothing. Harvard sticks closely to Supreme Court thinking on admissions. When the Department of Education looked at Harvard in the past, it found that it was not so much discriminating against Asians as favouring athletes and children of alumni (legacies), groups that “happen to have” few Asians. Unlike what many Whites suspect, it had little to do with affirmative action for Blacks and Latinos.
– Abagond, 2015.
Update (2023): Edward Blum finally won, eight years later with a heavily conservative Supreme Court. Affirmative action is now dead at universities nationwide. It had already been banned in the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nebraska and Washington.
Sources: Huffington Post (2015), Ivy Coach (2015), NPR (2014), InsideHigherEd (2012), New York Times (2012), “Yellow” (2002) by Frank Wu, “Strangers From a Different Shore” (1998) by Ronald Takaki.
See also:
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It would behoove us to remember that testing primarily reflect cultural frame of reference with factors weighed based on what some people deem most important for learning and being human. Experience is influenced by various socioeconomic issues. Socialization and expectations often, in certain contexts, determine what people tend to focus on beyond their environmental references.
It is worth noting that among some segments of the white population, cheating on SAT, ACT and other tests was found to be common. We need to rethink standardized testing in general since these scores have been wrongly used to portray certain groups in all-inclusive ways that are biased. Tests are off-base in reflecting the diverse characteristics of different people.
Intelligence involves a broader range of competencies, capabilities and talents.
Everything about America needs to be questioned as the uncovering of systemic racism reveals deep levels of social engineering to produce outcomes that continue to support a racist framework for human life.
Racial superiority ideology disproportionately weighs in on thinking about not just black and brown people but also Asians in comparison to whites. The fact is there is no legitimate reason to make wholesale comparisons regarding the intelligence of any demographic group unless it serves a political purpose, given the fact that race is a social construct.
Asians are as human — with flaws and strengths — as everyone else. The Model Minority Myth has been debunked by many, including Asian scholars and journalists. The idea itself reflects paternalistic racism, as if white America should get to define who is appropriate or acceptable based on willingness to assimilate or be deemed “white-like” by not openly opposing the status quo or being involved in protests against systemic racism.
Worth noting from a recent article in the Daily Beast — “An education company catering to Chinese students estimates that as many as 8,000 of them are expelled from American colleges and universities annually—mostly because of cheating and poor academic performance. The estimate, based on survey responses from 1,657 students who were kicked out, represents a small fraction of the tens of thousands of Chinese students who come to the U.S. each year. “Chinese students used to be considered top-notch, but over the past five years their image has changed completely—wealthy kids who cheat,” said Chen Hang, chief development officer at WholeRen, the company that administered the survey. The majority of those expelled were from top-ranked U.S. universities, and indicated they were not prepared for the coursework.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2015/05/29/u-s-colleges-kick-out-8-000-chinese-kids.html?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition.
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SAT scores aren’t the only criteria for admissions into college. Recommendation letters and essays are also a big part.
I’m not for raced based admissions but I also don’t believe admission should be solely based on SAT scores and GPA.
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@Kiwi — Regarding your “people of all races cheat” comment: Do you say there are lazy, dumb or inferior white people when someone tries to imply blacks are inferior? Do you point out that Asians are affected by poverty, domestic violence and drugs just like people point out how those urban black and Hispanic people are involved in gangs and irresponsible?
Let’s make sure we are not selective when it comes to stereotypes that get enforced, Ok.
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The problem with these quotas, and competition is that it is largely artificial. Or perhaps a better way to put that is that the environment which foster’s such attitudes and actions is “contrived.”
You can treat higher education as a resource: Like water, you make sure that it is inexpensive and freely available to all. A civilization would be stopped in its tracks if it was without water for very long. Water is universally used for so many things that keeping the water flowing is to everyone’d benefit.
You can treat higher education as a commodity Like oil, you control how much is produced, and create a market of scarcity based on arbitrary supply controls. You don’t want a glut of education knocking down the price, so you limit access to it. The better the education the more expensive it must be, and the least accessible to the common person. This allows for the greatest amount of profit.
They want Harvard and Princeton, and MIT to be oil. There will never be enough seats (Supply) to equal the qualified students who are applying for admission (Demand). Even though they could build a larger system based solely on excellence and achievement rather than on scarcity. But that would mean that the business of education would suffer. And let’s face it, it’s more about the business than it is about the education, and has been for quite some time now.
The reason why minorities are fighting for the crumbs off the table of higher education is so that Harvard can charge about $70,000 a year of undergraduate study or $280,000 for four years. – If you finance it, more like $300,000.
It’s about nothing less crass than simple money. And they will never drill and deeper into the well of education as long as they can keep the high prices fixed. And foolish minorities will fight each other, like rats in a shipwreck, for the great privilege of going into debt to pay for the illusion.
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@ King
One way out of this circle would be a public university system that isn’t second rate. Of course one has to mobilize the political will to spend serious tax payer money on that.
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Kiwi,
I agree, I don’t think basing admissions solely on test scores and grades is the correct fix however.
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Indeed it is real… but contrived. The trick is in realizing that it is a contrivance created to benefit the few and not the many. What it comes down to is this. We can each turn against other minorities, arguing that what they are demanding or getting is not fair! Or we can recognize that the entire system is constructed in a way that is unfair.
Which makes more sense? Trying to correct specific flaws within a purposely flawed system? Or trying to correct the system itself? About a century ago there were eight Ivy League institutions: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania. Since then, the U.S. population has more than doubled, yet these are still seen by most as the most elite and highest ranked universities in the country (MIT and Cal Tech and Stanford not withstanding)
The reality is that we could have developed twice as many top-rated elite universities, or doubled the student capacity of the existing Ivy League schools through annex campuses, remote learning, extended hours, increased staff etc. But they won’t do that because it hurts the price of “oil.”
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King,
why do people need to go to an ivy league school? Wouldn’t increasing staff and doubling capacity at those schools dilute the quality?
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I think it’s the idea that everyone needs to go to a Harvard is why the price is so high.
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@ Kartoffel
Well, it depends on what you mean. There are some public universities that are educationally not educationally second-rate to the Ivy League.
College of William & Mary in Virginia
University of Michigan in Ann Arbor
University of Texas at Austin
University of California at Berkley
University of California at Irvine
and more…
But the problem is that the system is built not on academic parity, but on scarcity and access. The Ivies are the Ivies because of “reputation” and “public perception,” not because they are academically better (in all fields) than any other universities in the country. And there is no amount of tax money that is going to undo that fact, because the people who write the laws and levy the taxes are all within the very group that benefits the most from the current system. In fact, they ARE the system.
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@ solesearch
Ah, you hit upon it! Yes, it’s just an “idea.” It’s not really true, except that people make it true by believing it, as Kiwi points out. We make it real by scrambling to pay for it any way we can… by fighting over the seats, by being willing to do ANYTHING to get our child in!
The enemy is not other minorities. The enemy is the system itself, that so many are scrambling for the privilege of supporting!
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@ solesearch
No, because the current level of assumed quality is artificial. There are PLENTY of graduate assistants who could easily be full Ivy ;league professors themselves. How do we know? Because in many cases they are already the ones teaching and administering the classes on a day to day basis. There are also many more top level professors than there are Ivy league positions available for.
Bear in mind that what happens in the Ivy League level is played out in ALL elite universities on some level. The same rules would be applied to Berkely, Loma Linda, MIT, or University of Vermont. The schools become prohibitively expensive, they begin turning away more qualified students than they can accept, the schools reputation, image, and marketing become the main money makers.
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The only that is happening, is that Asian students are getting their version of the “N-word wake up call” — and don’t seem to like the taste.
I don’t know what makes them believe white people want to be surrounded by them, anymore than white people want to be surrounded by black or brown people.
Of course it’s wrong for them to be restricted by an “unwritten” policy that is imposed on them because of “race”
that being said, instead of focusing on the racial discrimination, this new movement against Asian quotas, is actually being tied to Affirmative Action.
The Asian groups that recently filed lawsuit, are complaining about Affirmative Action and wants the policy to be removed!
They have aligned themselves with the white supremacists (aka white conserve the “white race” Republicans), the same type of people that didn’t want Asians to get through the door 50 years ago– this is what happens when people don’t know history.
Asian-American Groups Split Over Affirmative Action Complaint
http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidnoriega/asian-american-groups-clash-over-harvard-affirmative-action#.ltLwWYYZK
More than 60 Asian-American groups — mostly led by recent Chinese immigrants — filed a federal complaint accusing Harvard University of discrimination on Friday afternoon.
The coalition argues that under a “race-neutral” admissions process, schools like Harvard would have a much higher proportion of Asian students. Currently Harvard’s student population is 19% Asian.
That same day, a separate coalition named Asian American Civil Rights posted an open letter rebuking the complaint and declaring its support for affirmative action in higher education.
Most of the groups who filed the federal complaint are newer organizations comprising foreign-born immigrants, largely from China.
“From a sociological standpoint, that makes sense,” C.N. Le, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told BuzzFeed News. More recent immigrants, he said, “are coming from an idealized image of American society as a meritocracy where everybody should have an equal chance … So, from that point of view, they see affirmative action as this mechanism that discriminates against Asian-Americans.”
The Asian groups who led the opposition to the complaint tend to be older civil rights groups with American-born leaders and long-standing relationships with black and Latino activist groups.
By contrast, Le said, civil rights groups with deeper roots have views of racial politics much more in line with those of other traditional civil rights advocacy groups, who have long advocated for affirmative action as a necessary corrective to structural inequalities.
The coalition of Asian groups that opposes the federal complaint say it pits Asian Americans against other minority groups and imperils hard-won inclusive university admissions policies.
This is largely what we’ve seen in the past, which is a ploy by many conservative groups to use Asian-Americans as a wedge community,” Vincent Pan, executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, told BuzzFeed News. This, he said, serves to create the false appearance that Asian-Americans don’t support or benefit from “efforts to promote racial justice.”
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You know there was a 1991 study that followed students who performed well enough to get into ivy league, but chose and/or ended up in 2nd tier schools instead. The 2nd tier group earned the same as their ivy league counterparts in the future. The study was repeated in 2007 with the same results.
Assuming that the prestige of the school doesn’t matter, maybe these Asian students can bypass this bias by choosing a good, less expensive and less prestigious institution.
http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0811/the-value-of-an-ivy-league-education.aspx
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I suspect that the 19.7% is not just Asian Americans, but also includes foreign students from Asia or of Asian origin.
So I am not sure it is appropriate for people to put the 5% (Asian Americans) number next to the 19.7% (all Asians) number in the first place.
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Re: Kiwi’s link
It is interesting that the article not only highlights the strategy that some part Asians use to circumvent Asian quotas at universities, but some of the issues facing multiracial Asians in general. Some opted not to check any box.
I really wonder what the kids with Asian fathers and black mothers do.
In any case, it might be the multiracial Asians who actually end up leading the fight against Asian quotas. They fought the “check the box” on the 2000 Census. Maybe they might fight the racial quotas in university admissions.
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I think the sooner you break the facade of the ivy leagues the less notoriety they receive and thus breaks the desire to want to attend them. I want America to change and not want legions of minorities to held unto institutions of white supremacy.
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@ Linda
Your comment was caught in the spam filter. It is not clear to me why.
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@ TeddyBearSniffer
A good test will be to see what China does. At the moment, the are still sending their elite students in droves to the West. They come to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon, Oxford, etc. But that cannot last, and does not make sense for them in the long term.
China already has it’s own university system that it is constantly improving. China’s elite universities will soon match those of the West and perhaps even surpass them. So when the “Bamboo League” does emerge in China, it will be interesting to see how many students it will accommodate. Will they build a system that maximizes the number of citizens with elite-level educations and skills? Or will they (like the U.S.) use the university system as a way to make money?
My sense of it is that China will treat higher education as a resource. They will eventually make college available to as many of their people as possible. But when they do build their own “Harvards” and “Yales” it will suddenly prove that elite universities can be created from scratch… they don’t require hundreds of years of formation and tradition. They don’t need a long list of ancient alumni and ivy-covered walls. It just takes the WILL to do it, and the resources. Maybe that will snap the U.S. out of its Ivy worship.
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@Linda,
I agree that the newer immigrant groups from China are probably ignorant of both white Anglo American history and Asian American history. Maybe they have drunk the white Koolaid making them believe that all that was ancient history, like the Civil war.
Agree that they have misplaced their fight – should be fighting discrimination rather than Affirmative Action.
Whites will still try to keep them out, only without Affirmative Action, it will be easier to keep out blacks and Latinos too. Concluding that Affirmative Action is causing the discrimination against them shows that they did not learn their history. It is not surprising that there is a break between the groups with ties dating back to the Civil rights era and the newer groups who know nothing about US civil rights history or the origin of the model minority stereotype.
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Kiwi @ Prop 209 is generally seen as a ban on affirmative action and its passage coincided with soaring enrollment of Asians in the UC system. So I would not be surprised if people concluded that affirmative action was the reason why Asians were discriminated against.
Linda says,
I agree with that assessment. Banning affirmative action HAS benefited Asian students somewhat because they are filling the void left open by black, Hispanic, and white student admission decline.
Florida also banned affirmative action and 2 of the bigger state schools, University of Florida (Gainesville) and Florida State University (Tallahassee)
saw a decline in black student admissions. The group that has filled that void are Hispanic students.
The decline in black students is not based on SAT scores or merit, the top black students opted NOT to attend these 2 schools
because they did not see enough black students and did not want to feel isolated and surrounded by mostly whites (especially in Gainesville and Tallahassee– 2 north Florida cities full of rednecks and good ole boys)
so the top black students in Florida are choosing to attend other Universities in-state and out-of-state with more diversity or more prestige (University of Miami)
There is a lot of competition amongst the Universities in Florida to attract and retain black students — based on their high GPAs and SAT scores, the black students are being offered more scholarships/money to attend state Universities that are competing with Florida State and UF
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Here’s an article on the impact of the AA ban in Florida and reasons for decline of black students at the top 2 Florida Universities
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-bush-order-florida-universities-cope-with-shrinking-black-enrollment/2015/04/06/82d1e574-bcfe-11e4-bdfa-b8e8f594e6ee_story.html
When Kenya Lipplett was debating between the top colleges and the University of Central Florida, she said, the choice quickly became clear. Her 3.8 high school grade-point average granted her a bigger scholarship at UCF than it did at the flagship schools, and she preferred the more cosmopolitan feel of Orlando.
“I didn’t see a lot of black people when I visited UF, and that made me very cautious about attending,” Lipplett said. “I didn’t want to feel that I had to put on a mask because I was around people who didn’t understand my culture, and I didn’t want to be a part of some statistic to help their numbers grow.”
On campus, this year’s Black History Month concert was canceled, a multicultural talent show might go away, and an annual step show is losing sponsors because of low attendance.
In 2013, when a campus survey asked whether students “feel respected on campus,” half of the black students said “No.”
As the number of black students dwindles, a sense of isolation has grown among them, particularly during episodes of perceived prejudice.
UF officials have tried to make the campus more comfortable for minorities. In response to racial incidents, the school created an emergency response team to conduct anti-racism training, said Mary Kay Carodine, UF’s assistant vice president for student affairs.
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Same thing is happening at UC Berkeley:
Why Black Students Are Avoiding UC Berkeley
In the post-Prop 209 era, nearly 60 percent of African-American students accepted at Cal are choosing to attend other colleges — often, because they feel unwelcome.
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/why-black-students-are-avoiding-uc-berkeley/Content?oid=3756649&storyPage=2
“While Cal still maintains a well-deserved national reputation for progressive activism, many African-American students complain of a lingering undercurrent of anti-black racism on campus.
Some of this lack of respect for black students — in some circles, at least — appears to come from an assumption that African Americans got into Cal for some reason other than academic qualifications, even though it’s been a full sixteen years since the passage of Proposition 209 ended affirmative-action admissions. And some black students — because of the false assumptions made about them — feel as if they have to provide extra proof that they have the skills to compete at the school.
Yet despite widely held (and stereotype-driven) beliefs about why there are so few black students at Cal, the low enrollment numbers have nothing to do to with a lack of qualified African-American student applicants.
Instead, many black students are deciding not to attend UC Berkeley. According to the latest figures available from the University of California, nearly 58 percent of black students who were admitted to Cal between 2006 and 2010 ultimately chose to go to college elsewhere.
In all, 885 of the 1,539 African-American students admitted to UC Berkeley during that time period decided to turn down the university’s acceptance letters.
“You have some top universities that are competing with Berkeley that these students have the option of attending. So why would you choose to come to Berkeley in a semi-hostile environment when you can go to a campus like Stanford who says, ‘Come on! We love you! We want you here!’ and that offers them added support as an African-American student?”
What is benefiting Asians, is having a negative impact on black students–the schools can “choose” who they want and initially, they chose to reject more black students than they admitted.
Both black and Asian students are being admitted based on Academic merit but black students are still experiencing anti-black racism, while Asian students are welcomed with open arms because they have stronger presence on campus.
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I think in California, the white students are already complaining about the increase in Asian students but in Florida and Texas, they (whites) are still the dominant group at the Universities, so there has not been any backlash from them because the Asian student admissions have stayed the same or only increased slightly.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/13/white-definitions-merit-and-admissions-change-when-they-think-about-asian-americans
in a survey of white California adults, they generally favor admissions policies that place a high priority on high school grade-point averages and standardized test scores.
But when these white people are focused on the success of Asian-American students, their views change. The white adults then favored a reduced role for grade and test scores in admissions — apparently based on high achievement levels by Asian-American applicants.
I think the Ivy League schools see what happened in California, and the thought of having a 40% or higher Asian student body scares the sh’t out of them….not happening on their watch!
As long as the top Asian students keep banging on their doors, the Ivy Leagues will do whatever they can, within the letter of law, to discriminate against Asians to control the numbers and who they want.
They already do this with black students—the Ivy’s choose to admit more foreign-born or immigrant African and Caribbean students, instead of admitting more black American students (intended recipients of AA) — so I don’t see why they will play fair with Asian students.
I also read an article that at University of California, they introduced a new policy that did not use SAT II, and this was expected to increase white student admissions and decrease Asian student admission
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The trouble with the SATs is that the test makers include multiple correct answers in the reading comprehension section. Then, they pick one of them to be the “right” one just to throw off students.
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@Linda,
Thank you for alerting us to the different issues involving race quotas and university admissions and reminding us that the issue of Asian quotas at universities is not so much about Affirmative Action but about discrimination in general and about feeling comfortable with the campus environment (both blacks and whites).
Do you see the situation, without intervention, resulting in universities self-segregating by race, ie, majority Asian, white, black and Hispanic universities? On the one hand the universities want a “diverse” student body, then again whites want to go to majority white universities, and blacks feel uncomfortable with low numbers of blacks on campus.
I just think about how it was just a few short decades ago when Asians made 1% of the US population with few Asian foreign students. Asian students historically always felt like the token Asians at their universities then. So when I read about either blacks or whites feeling uncomfortable about the racial percentages at their schools and about feeling marginalized, I just roll my eyes.
(By the way, it really disturbs me that the statistics always lump Asian foreign students together with Asian Americans, but when they look at the the population statistics, they only look at Asian Americans).
The Ivy leagues are in a pickle as they are the few universities which students scramble to attend despite their racial atmosphere. I wonder if the schools will feel that the value of the brand would diminish if their schools were not majority upper crust white (and overrun by non-Anglo hordes).
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Jefe,
Do you see the situation, without intervention, resulting in universities self-segregating by race, ie, majority Asian, white, black and Hispanic universities? On the one hand the universities want a “diverse” student body, then again whites want to go to majority white universities, and blacks feel uncomfortable with low numbers of blacks on campus.
Linda says,
without intervention, most definitely, the schools will reflect the populations of their respective states.
I think in California, last year there was a marked increase of Hispanic students at California state Universities, and Hispanics I believe are now the majority population.
So without intervention, it would be interesting to see what will happen.
I just read an article that California senator Ed Hernandez wants to “repeal” the ban on Affirmative Action, and Asian groups are upset and worried it might pass because of California’s Hispanic majority:
“Hernandez argued: “A blanket prohibition on consideration of race was a mistake in 1996, and we are still suffering the consequences from the initiative today. You cannot address inequality by refusing to acknowledge it.” Another supporter of repeal, state Sen. Ben Hueso, suggested, “Prop. 209 creates a barrier for people of color to access higher education.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2014/03/california_affirmative_action_ban_why_liberals_should_let_it_stand.html
States that are majority white also reflect that in their state University student populations – even with Affirmative Action.
Most of these white majority states schools, actively recruit black students who are Athletes versus trying to recruit black students based on Academic merit — they are focused on their athletic programs.
The Universities with more diverse populations are seeing an increase in black student populations and so are historical black colleges HBCUs (Morehouse, Spellman, Florida A&M) — funny enough, Howard University is seeing an increase in white student admissions (they have good STEM programs)
Most of us know what it feels like to be the ONLY black or brown spot in a room of white faces, and it’s not a comfortable feeling — Why push our kids into that situation (feeling isolated) when they should be focused on learning.
most Universities that banned Affirmative Action, like in Florida, have now introduced new incentive programs to attract black students and are actively trying to intervene to make sure their schools don’t appear segregated.
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Kiwi@ I think this is mainly due to the schools making no distinction between the African/Caribbean brain drain and slave-ancestry blacks. Because recent immigrants and their children tend to perform better academically, they are the ones who benefit most from affirmative action when applying to top schools.
Linda,
that’s the same weak reasoning the Universities gave when they were questioned by activist groups, who were concerned about this
and it may very well be true for their selection of Caribbean students but I find it hard to believe that the University admissions team can’t figure out that the applicant may be African, when seeing names like: Kuo, Asamoah, Aubameyang, Kwasi Enin or Oluwatoyin
Here is an article discussing this issue:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2007/may/29/internationaleducationnews.highereducation
In a 2006 study exploring the proliferation of Caribbean and African immigrants in U.S. colleges, University of Pennsylvania professor Camille Z. Charles and her fellow authors considered that social biases could play a large part in the admission process.
The researchers made another startling discovery. They gathered what they regard as compelling anecdotal evidence, that admissions chiefs at the colleges surveyed, who are mainly white, take different attitudes towards black students of different backgrounds.
“To white observers, black immigrants seem more polite, less hostile, more solicitous, and ‘easier to get along with’,” the study says. “Native blacks are perceived in precisely the opposite fashion.”
Charles says this stereotyping sadly rang true. She believes the essays would-be students write as part of their applications also had a strong influence.
“Having a family pick up and leave Nigeria or Haiti, risking everything to come to the US to give their kids a good education, is a pretty compelling story. It can mistakenly be seen as ‘sexier’ than the African-American youngster growing up in south central Los Angeles, despite all the hurdles they have to get over,” she says.
“Immigrant and second-generation blacks are over-represented at these schools, while overall black students are still too few,” says Dr Camille Charles, sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the report’s co-authors, “which means the problem of access for African-Americans – that group which has the longest history of oppression in the US – is of even greater concern than we thought.”
and this survey did not even include the international African and Caribbean students that the Ivy’s actively recruit to bring to the USA– the same way they were actively recruiting international students from China.
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I just read an article that said that US Universities just received million dollar donations from Chinese donors, so they will now recruit poor students from China:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2930881/Top-US-colleges-push-diverse-students-China.html
Ivy League schools have started recruiting more economically diverse students from China after receiving multi-million dollar grants from public and private donors.
Chinese billionaire real estate couple, Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, gifted $100 million to top U.S. universities last year- including $10 million to Yale and $15 million to Harvard – in a bid to help poor students from their home country.
The State Department’s EducationUSA program also created million-dollar funds to provide aid for overseas students to cover costs such as application fees and transportation to interviews
which is a shift because before, they were getting the more affluent Chinese students.
Coinciding with China’s rapid economic growth, a distinctive second generation emerged in the mid-1990s comprising much more affluent students, Chen said. “There is a great increase in the phenomenon because (mainland Chinese) don’t rely on scholarships anymore.”
In the last decade, mainland Chinese have reshaped the international student body at U.S. colleges and universities, notably at Ivy League institutions.
In the 2009-2010 academic year, China surpassed traditional “study abroad” heavyweights like Canada, India and South Korea, to lead international enrollment across U.S. higher education, according to the Institute of International Education.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/25/world/asia/china-ivy-league-admission/
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How much does the USA push to send students to China?
They should be sending at least as many students to China as China sends to the USA. This is creating a more risky situation for the USA than the problem of Asian quotas.
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@ Gem-girl, I do think that expelling students is seriously dumb unless it was a life threatening situation. In most cases when I see foreign students being expelled it is because of a clear case of something that might be seen ok in their home country but not here. In that case I do not think that it is fair nor honest to expel them.
@ Jefe, I far see it as more of an American push to push young professionals to foreign places. I often had seen early twenty some things being put into a company for a couple of years aboard. I don’t know if it is the case like with being able to adapt of the amount of trouble they can get in versus someone like the woman executive of Toyota getting in trouble in Japan.
In the last decade I find California has been very bad with the whole Asian ratio thing. I remember working in a college their and hearing that they could get more money from those foreign born Asians then homegrown and so they cut the ratio for American Asians.
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@KOT
Thanks for pointing this out.
I think there is a big mismatch by comparing the Asian % living in a particular geographical area in the USA (which are almost entirely Asian American, either US citizens or Permanent residents) and the Asian % at universities (which draw a large portion from the pool of foreign students). By doing this apples to oranges comparison, this will disproportionately favour the foreign students from wealthy backgrounds and harm Asian American students of modest backgrounds.
Whites and blacks, seeing the large numbers of Asians on campuses might not see how this policy can still be directly discriminating against Asian Americans.
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The USA is a target destination for wealthy Chinese, and nation of 1.4 billion. We will see an overrepresentation of foreign wealthy Chinese at US universities (who should not be in competition with local homegrown Asian Americans). But, I think the USA should revise its policy about sending its students abroad, and try to get at least 20% of them to go to China, if not at least for national security reasons.
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This week’s print edition of the Economist has a main article on Asian Americans and the bamboo ceiling in both university admissions and employment.
The article suggests that this will push Asian-Americans to become more political.
Likely, they will less and less say things like the USA is “their” (ie, white people’s) country.
Added to that, since Asian immigration now exceeds immigration from Latin America, Foreign born Asian American will soon exceed foreign born Latinos in just a couple decades. I wonder how politicians will start to react to these more politically vociferous Asian-Americans.
(http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21669595-asian-americans-are-united-states-most-successful-minority-they-are-complaining-ever)
The model minority is losing patience
Asian-Americans are the United States’ most successful minority, but they are complaining ever more vigorously about discrimination, especially in academia
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The issue regarding the Asian quota at Harvard is now in the news headlines. Basically, the finding is …. Harvard does discriminate against Asians.
Harvard Is Wrong That Asians Have Terrible Personalities
Basically, evaluators rated all Asian applicants as very low in personality, even if they had never met the applicant.
Another argument from most white parents and administrators is … a student body that is 43% Asian is not diverse (even though a student body over 50% white is somehow diverse).
The article goes on to claim that the real reason why Harvard discriminates is to maintain its endowment from alumni and external institutions. They fear they will not donate to the university if the percentage of Asians exceeds whites.
I think that this is just another side of the coin to the same phenomenon sweeping the US. The people who are “not like us” cannot take control over “our” (ie, their) sacred institutions, ie, media, law enforcement, Ivy league schools, the language we speak, the Presidency …. They are losing their country, and they have to do whatever they can.
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@ jefe
Yup.
The “personal interview” was put in place to weed out Jews, who, like Asians now, were seen as soulless grade grinds.
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@Jefe
On one end the finding surprise me, but overall they do not. It’s Harvard and wouldn’t be surprised if the discrimination goes beyond that.
“I wonder how politicians will start to react to these more politically vociferous Asian-Americans.”–Initially I don’t think they will take them seriously or play on stereotypes that they feel will appeal to them. What are your thoughts?
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Update (2023): Edward Blum finally won, eight years later with a heavily conservative Supreme Court. Affirmative action is now dead at universities nationwide. It had already been banned in the states of Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nebraska and Washington.
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It was dead since the Bakke decision in 1978, this ruling just gave it a decent(?) burial.
How come our avatar is still the same while mine has changed?
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