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Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

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Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#201

Post by TulliusCicero »

root_axis wrote: post #160
ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

Despite the increased chances of admission, black students make up a modest 5% of the (e.g.) Harvard student body compared to Asian students and white students at 13% and 40% respectively. Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about. From a more cynical angle the problem almost seems like "the total percen…

> Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about.

If you look at those particular stats, sure, it doesn't sound particularly objectionable. But if you look at others: https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/15/politics/harvard-affirmative-...

> Under questioning from SFFA lawyer John Hughes, Fitzsimmons detailed some of the recruitment efforts that begin the selection process. Harvard mails recruitment letters to black and Hispanic high schoolers with middle-range SAT scores, Fitzsimmons acknowledged, yet only sends such letters to Asian Americans if they have scored more than 200 points higher.

> According to charts Hughes displayed, Harvard sends such recruiting letters to black, Hispanic, and Native American students with top grades who hit at least 1100 on the combined math and verbal SAT score (the top score is 1600). To receive such letters under similar circumstances, Asian American men must have a combined score of 1380, and Asian American women, a combined score of 1350.

So, an individual Asian student needs to score much higher to have a chance at Harvard, compared to students of other ethnicities. That's very blatantly racial discrimination.

This amounts to, "sorry, we have enough people of your color, so we're gonna make it harder for you to get in." That's wrong. Period.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#202

Post by actuator »

ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

This is what affirmative action will look like. If you want to see the context of such an action happening somewhere for long time, take the example of India.

There it is much more explicit and written in the law. For some subjects, the criteria it takes for one cohort to get admission in the top college is the same one in which the other cohort will not even get admission in any college in the top 20. You can see this in undergraduate level admissions the most. I read interesting stats on this long time back, will need to see if I can find them.

However, in case of South Asia/India, the argument is positive discrimination now to correct for negative discrimination in the past. The same argument can't be made in US though against Asians.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#203

Post by TulliusCicero »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #184
ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

But then you have to also not discriminate against white students. I'm aware that at super elite schools this discrimination usually helps white people, but in a lot of other situations it doesn't.

IIRC, Ivy League schools actually have a lower proportion of white students compared to the percentage of the total populace that's white.

Of course, if you look at grade schools, it looks like racial minorities are 'overrepresented' compared to the general population, so it's possible there's just fewer young white people.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#204

Post by TulliusCicero »

giveyouareply wrote: post #163
BadCookie wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be more fair to create admission quotas based on family economic status, but I can’t imagine that would ever be put into practice because it would hurt the wealthy too much. The universities wouldn’t like the financial impact either. But if true equality of opportunity were the goal, then that’s how you’d need to do it I think.

It can be gamed. A long while back at University, I noticed very wealthy students on student income schemes that were only meant to be accessed by students whose parents qualified as low income status. The bar to qualify was quite difficult, if you had one parent employed in a job then it was unlikely you would qualify. I asked how they could qualify, while almost everyone had to work part time jobs to cover costs. I…

I was easily able to get federal money for college even though my parents were doing fine and supporting me. I didn't cheat or lie or even bend the rules, I just had a secret power: I was married. Because of that, my parents' financial status wasn't even entered into the picture. It didn't even come up on any form.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#205

Post by jpgvm »

pyuser583 wrote: post #161
endisneigh wrote: post #23

the problem is and always has been that the particular school you attend has too much weight, irrespective of ability or aptitude. if college admissions were high school blind then this wouldn't even matter to begin with. simply being great, regardless of which school you attend would be enough. re: TJH admissions: > In 2020, during the summer after George Floyd’s death, the Virginia state government announced that i…

It ignores extra-curricular activities, which are one of the best indicators of success in college.

Maybe but more importantly they are the best proxy indicator of money and privilege.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#206

Post by carrionpigeon »

ww520 wrote: post #170
carrionpigeon wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in high school, one student's parents (one doctor and one lawyer --- very financially well-off) took off work for one year just so they could claim having no income on the FAFSA documentation. She got accepted everywhere , winning across the places she applied over $300,000 in scholarships. The upper-middle class and wealthy can easily game this. Edit: I should also add that the student and both parents we…

Make it require 5 years tax returns.

Even then, 1 year off is a 20% income reduction on paper. 2 years would be 40%. Want to catch people voluntarily taking off work versus being 'legitimately' unemployed? (For example, is a realtor with no income during the housing crisis adequately poor?) Then, every university will have to hire people to do the analyses and make value judgements.

Long term, factoring in wealth creates all sorts of perverse incentives for parents that prioritize their children's education. It means in the present not taking promotions, even negotiating for lower salaries, and being priced out of better neighborhoods with better schools, all out of fear that doing otherwise will hurt their children's futures. And if their children succeed in getting a good education and a high-paying job, it comes at the cost of sacrificing their own children's futures.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#207

Post by fmajid »

root_axis wrote: post #160
ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

Despite the increased chances of admission, black students make up a modest 5% of the (e.g.) Harvard student body compared to Asian students and white students at 13% and 40% respectively. Ultimately, I can't justify the idea of rejecting students based on race, but when I look at those demographics I just don't see much to get worked up about. From a more cynical angle the problem almost seems like "the total percen…

This discrimination is not to protect Black or Hispanic students from being outcompeted by Asians, it is there to protect Whites, just like anti-Jewish discrimination before WW2 when Jews were not considered white.

Bringing Blacks and Hispanics into the conversation is a red herring used by elite universities to defend the indefensible. If you want to see what a truly meritocratic admissions policy would look like, at least in STEM, just see Caltech, where Asians make up 44% of the student body, not the paltry 15% quota the Ivies have consented to grant them.

https://www.registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment-statist...

The other thing to consider is that “diversity” somehow fails to consider class. Have you noticed how universities prattle on about racial statistics but getting stats on socio-economic background is like pulling teeth, if you can get data at all?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#208

Post by SamReidHughes »

notch656a wrote: post #183
SamReidHughes wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both those ways of determining race get the same answer 99.9999% of the time.

Taking at face they're 99.9999% the same, are you opting towards the self selection option, the DNA option, or some combination of the two? Can you walk me through which DNA algorithm you're referring to that matches self-reported 'race' 99.9999% of the time?

I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis )

College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Instead of scanning DNA, they could ask for some documentary evidence if they think an applicant is lying.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#209

Post by jpgvm »

So they should. Anything other than an objective standardized test is just asking for bias.

Australia gets by just fine with standardized testing only, don't see why America can't as well.

If you make the cut then you can qualify for scholarships if you are disadvantaged because of means, etc.

To be fair though Australia is overall more equal in terms of schooling outcomes but to pretend that it's a university/college problem that the rest of the schooling system is fucked is preposterous. By the time someone is at the age to go into university the damage has been done.

Give the spots to those that deserve them because of ability. It's not the job of the school to rebalance society that is the governments problem.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#210

Post by beebmam »

ipnon wrote: post #100

It's discrimination any way you slice it. You can't lower the bar for one person without raising it for another so long as the class sizes remain the same. If elite universities are about providing education (a valid point of critical contention), then systematically barring Asians from entry is the same class of injustice litigated in Brown v. Board of Education. It's not enough to say you can learn calculus just as…

You can, absolutely. A lottery system for admissions.
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