Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans • Hacker News Board

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#111

Post by chimeracoder » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:00 PM UTC

streptomycin wrote: post #80

caseysoftware wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I'm not too concerned about this at the undergrad level. But if you accept it here, why not accept it everywhere? Either race-based discrimination is bad and should never be done or acceptable in some cases. If it's bad, Harvard (and others) should stop immediately. End of story. If it's acceptable in "some cases" the next question is: Who determines those cases? And then: Are there a set of fixed criter…

Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med school. The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school vs. no med school" scenario. So the root cause of that problem isn't racial discrimination, it's just that racial discrimintation in that context might have a much bigger impact due to…

> Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med school.

> The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school vs. no med school" scenario.

Since the bottleneck is residency programs, not the number of people who receive MDs, all this would do is increase the number of people who have taken on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without being able to legally practice medicine.

There are more people who graduate medical school than there there are residency slots available, and since residency slots are government-funded (through Medicare). Establishing new medical schools won't do anything.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#112

Post by notsony » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

geographomics wrote: post #91

yummyfajitas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data on MCATs agree with your anecdote - Asians seem to need to meet a higher bar to be accepted into med school. https://web.archive.org/web/20080801022539/http://www.aamc.o...

It's difficult to conclude that from those statistics alone, as we don't know the distribution of MCAT and GPA scores within the self-identified Asian applicants - a higher mean may be because it is positively skewed. In that regard, it would be interesting to see the median values too. Or the stats for the rejected cohort.

From a comment on Reddit so research required but it could be true that it comes down to money:

"As an applicant to medical school. On the day of my interview at my state school, a director basically told everybody that the school favored Hispanics/Latinos because the school is given state/federal? money if they churn out a lot of Hispanic/Latino doctors. My stomach dropped when I heard that. As other have pointed out, medical schools clearly hold Asians to a higher standard than any other race."

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#113

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:05 PM UTC

notsony wrote: post #109

Retric wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick your battles.

True... but what if you are going to have to spend your whole life fighting against silent discrimination? Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says she is hiring for diversity. Google and IBM are putting hundreds of millions into diversity programmes for hiring and training. Twitter is publishing employee diversity reports. So if you're a coding genius but you're white or Asian, straight, male, not disabled, guess what? You're not…

I don't think any tech firms that are concerned with diversity are not hiring "coding geniuses" that happen to be White or Asian.

Diversity programs mainly attempt to increasing the number of members of currently-underrepresented groups in the entrance of the hiring funnel and reducing biases in the hiring process that select for currently-overrepresented groups over merit.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#114

Post by azernik » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

calbear81 wrote: post #84

shiven wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the end result schools like Harvard are trying to avoid. Why? That is the worst kind of discrimination in my book. How is it my fault that I was born smart, worked hard to capitalize on my innate abities and then competed on a standardized test to perform better than folks who just happened to pop out of a different vagina or uterus? Nice way to fuck me for no fault of mine. For those saying not getting into H…

To the question of why, Harvard believes that standardized tests are simply one of many factors that should be taken into account when deciding on who to admit. In building a student class, they value diversity not of race but of backgrounds and experiences. Perhaps that correlates closely with race since much of our country's socio-economic divisions also fall along racial lines in many places. As an Asian myself, p…

Historically, concerns about "diversity of backgrounds", "well-rounded" candidates, and the even more nebulous "character" were code for the fear by the majority's elite of an overrepresented minority gaining entrance into that elite. In the time when these policies were first promulgated the target was Jews [1], but the strategies and motives seem not to have changed: the presence of enormous academic success among an immigrant minority group without high economic status is resented as somehow a "gaming" of the system that needs to be corrected by introducing subjective factors into the system.

Where this gets politically complicated is by the concurrent policies in favor of non-Asian minorities, but at least there the policies are quite explicit about their justifications (correcting historical disadvantage).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus...

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#115

Post by throwawayaway » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:22 PM UTC

octottoman wrote: post #89

mrowland wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's evidence[1] that there's no difference in intelligence between races at a very young age, and that tested differences only emerge later. This suggests that the IQ differences seen later are a result of societal factors and not something innate. 1: http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/fryer/files/testing_for_rac...

That's interesting; I didn't know that. I should like to read that document in its entirety.

Science's Last Taboo

c4 docmentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao8W2tPujeE

(someone with the opposing viewpoint has cunningly put a video up with the exact same name on youtube.)

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#116

Post by notsony » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:30 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #113

notsony wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True... but what if you are going to have to spend your whole life fighting against silent discrimination? Reddit CEO Ellen Pao says she is hiring for diversity. Google and IBM are putting hundreds of millions into diversity programmes for hiring and training. Twitter is publishing employee diversity reports. So if you're a coding genius but you're white or Asian, straight, male, not disabled, guess what? You're not…

I don't think any tech firms that are concerned with diversity are not hiring "coding geniuses" that happen to be White or Asian. Diversity programs mainly attempt to increasing the number of members of currently-underrepresented groups in the entrance of the hiring funnel and reducing biases in the hiring process that select for currently-overrepresented groups over merit.

People should only be hired on merit.

It should not be the job of human resources to resolve social issues.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#117

Post by throwawayaway » Sat, May 16, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

thrcp971 wrote: post #75

This focus on affirmative action is sort of like people who say they are against "government handouts", and focus on welfare, while ignoring corporate subsidies. It's misplaced attention on what "minorities" are (or should be) getting, while overlooking the benefits that the wealthy receive. Also, many people's understanding of the minority groups at Ivy League institutions seems flawed.* The reason affirmative actio…

> 1 - Many of black students admitted to Harvard aren't black Americans, they are Africans, with test scores and grades on par with Asian-American students.

i've heard of african immigrants doing better, economically. but never students, any sort of supporting link to this point?

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#118

Post by iaw » Sat, May 16, 2015, 7:02 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #70

iaw wrote: post #5

Yeesh. The basis of their complaint seems to be rooted in test score (and possibly grade analysis) but they neglect the increased homogeneity that it represents. Asians may have a tighter distribution of metric based qualities with a mean at the higher end of the spectrum when you cut by race but it's quite possible that there are other deficits that cannot easily be highlighted through a metric based comparison alon…

Suppose black students were accepted at far lower rates than their SAT scores suggested they would be. Would you accept the argument that blacks are secretly deficient in some hard to measure way? I'd sure be suspicious of that. In any case, it would be great if Harvard could provide some stats showing exactly how Asians are deficient. Will be interesting.

I think if black students would otherwise be over-represented at the school it would make sense.

So Asian's are 5% of the US population [1] but make up 20% of the admitted applicants [2]. While African American's, representing 13% of the country [1] and a shameful legacy of mistreatment make up 12% of admitted applicants [2].

The problem is that admissions isn't based solely on your capabilities as a student at the time of application, but also on your potential to grow. Asian's tend to be fairly successful in the US (especially 2nd and 3rd generations) [wish I could find stats for this right now], if you start in a good environment with two intelligent well-meaning parents a 780 in math is impressive, if you're the son of a single mother with a father in jail and 3 younger siblings you share responsibilities for that 520 in math looks spectacular.

If I ever see Asian's in this being denied social mobility I'll raise torches and pitchforks, but in this scenario Harvard is a limited resource that provides immense social mobility for students from the lower echelons of society, if admissions were rooted solely in test scores and grades then these students with potential, but not the resources from birth, will be denied a chance to benefit from a prestigious education.

[1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

[2] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

edit: I appreciate people's rights to disagree, but I find it frustrating that the preference has been to downvote this rather than engage in meaningful dialogue.

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#119

Post by iaw » Sat, May 16, 2015, 7:05 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #14

iaw wrote: post #5

Yeesh. The basis of their complaint seems to be rooted in test score (and possibly grade analysis) but they neglect the increased homogeneity that it represents. Asians may have a tighter distribution of metric based qualities with a mean at the higher end of the spectrum when you cut by race but it's quite possible that there are other deficits that cannot easily be highlighted through a metric based comparison alon…

Would you defend Harvard if they had a de-facto quota for Jewish applicants? This is a trick question. Harvard (and other Ivy League schools) did discriminate against Jews[1], and their justifications were quite similar to what we're hearing today. These universities switched from grades and test scores to a more "holistic" evaluation, allowing them to surreptitiously limit the number of Jewish students. The game is…

I responded to another comment below[1]. I understand that it is easy to view these policies as racism but if you think about the people that spots are being freed for there is a larger net social gain.

I knew this would be unpopular when I posted it, and I am personally biased, but I don't think one can make the argument that Asian's lack socioeconomic mobility in the same way as some of the other races.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9557216

Re: Harvard Accused of Bias Against Asian-Americans

#120

Post by streptomycin » Sat, May 16, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #111

streptomycin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med school. The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school vs. no med school" scenario. So the root cause of that problem isn't racial discrimination, it's just that racial discrimintation in that context might have a much bigger impact due to…

> Harvard vs. state school is far less important than med school vs. no med school. > The broader problem with med school is that we should have more med schools accepting more students, and then there wouldn't be such a stark "med school vs. no med school" scenario. Since the bottleneck is residency programs , not the number of people who receive MDs, all this would do is increase the number of people who have taken…

I figured we could use more doctors because doctors are so busy and expensive. Economics 101 type reasoning. Am I missing something? Would having more doctors not be a good thing?

Also, what do you mean residency programs are the bottleneck? Do we really have tons of MDs running around who aren't allowed to practice medicine? Then we should increase residency programs. Whatever. I'm no expert in the field, just seems to me like more doctors would be a good thing, same way it would be good to have more of any profession that's highly in demand.