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Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

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Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#271

Post by shadowgovt »

lelanthran wrote: post #255
TulliusCicero wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. "The law of unintended consequences" ... what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case…

> "The law of unintended consequences" ... what are they going to do if the target demographic (in this case Asians) start their own merit-based and academic-based colleges and universities?

You're asking what people would do if those who couldn't get into university address the issue by building a new university, thereby increasing supply?

"Celebrate," I'd assume.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#272

Post by anonymoushn »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #256
anonymoushn wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please let us know how the racial quotas for Asians are good.

Asians not getting into Harvard are the rare birds getting killed by wind turbines. The people who care about the rare birds are not anti-renewable, and people who complain about the birds dying actually don't care, they want to kill a lot more birds with their fossil fuels. So do I need to explain to you why killing birds is good? Or can I just point out that it's a stupid gotcha attempt.

You're commenting on a post about quotas for Asians saying that everyone who opposes quotas for Asians is racist. It seems plausible that they could just be Asian parents or something.

Is the removal of gifted math classes from SF public schools due to the overrepresentation of Asians an example of wind turbines, in your view?

Were quotas for Jews at Ivies bad? Would quotas for Asians at the same time have been bad? Would quotas for Jews now be bad? Does the badness of racism against Asians and Jews depend mainly on whether AA for other racial groups exists at the same time?

Is it generally good in your view to divide people into precisely eight groups (White, White-Hispanic, African, African-Hispanic, AAPI, AAPI-Hispanic, Native American, and Native American-Hispanic), and then pick some of these groups to admit fewer poor people and disadvantaged people from and others to admit more wealthy and privileged people from? Would you like to explain in person to Arabs fleeing U.S. wars and applying to U.S. universities that it's important that we discriminate against them because they are white and enjoy lots of unfair advantages in their lives compared to other applicants?

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#273

Post by MontyCarloHall »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #151
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.

> but I can’t imagine that would ever be put into practice because it would hurt the wealthy too much. It definitely would hurt their bottom lines, since most of the private elites also provide non-loan financial aid out of their endowments to people who can’t otherwise afford to go. That only works if only a few poorer people make it over the bar. Public schools should step up more here, as it is their mission.

> That only works if only a few poorer people make it over the bar.

That is not true. The per-capita endowment of Harvard (and other schools of its caliber) is so large that it could afford to entirely eliminate tuition[0]. Currently, approximately 60% of students receive some sort of financial aid, and 20% pay no tuition at all[1]. These figures are similar at other similar schools.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-should-stop-charging...

[1] https://college.harvard.edu/guides/financial-aid-fact-sheet

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#274

Post by rg111 »

3qJD3eCM wrote: post #240
jpgvm wrote: post #209

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/colleg…

So, I was involved with admissions in a selective graduate program. Not undergraduate but I saw some of the same issues arise. I have a lot of thoughts about this all. The end result of a lot of this, my guess, is that schools will drop standardized tests as admission requirements. That's what happened at my institution. Standardized tests are also biased. They are definitely biased toward individuals who are represe…

I get your points. I really do.

I know that standardized tests aren't devoid of faults.

But, if you want to replace them, you have to replace them with something better.

Just because something has faults, it doesn't mean we abandon it. We find something better, and then replace it.

That is not being true for admissions.

Double-blind standardized tests are not only safe against bias, but also against corruption.

If we were to simply abandon things with fault, we would have to get rid of democracy, marriage, and food, among other things.

This is a sad case of Goodhart's Law playing into reality.

People in power have chosen one metric as a measure of progress of historically oppressed races- enrolment in college degrees.

And that is costing us dearly.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#276

Post by ejb999 »

lazide wrote: post #63
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…

Grade inflation has made GPA pointless at most schools.

that, and then the highschools where they have 30 or 40 'valedictorians' in one graduating class. Now the term 'valedictorian' has also become meaningless as well.

When everyone is a valedictorian, nobody is.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#278

Post by MontyCarloHall »

hknapp wrote: post #264
TulliusCicero wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage of race is that it's not easily gamed. Using household income would incentivize families to try and minimize income in the years prior to college admission. Additionally, you'd have to deal with how income relates to cost of living (e.g. 100k in Alabama and coastal California aren't the same).

A lot of financial aid is income based. Is there evidence of families doing this currently?

Anecdotal, but absolutely. I knew several people in undergrad whose parents did things like put assets into trust funds that would have been invisible to the limited means that colleges have at their disposal to audit. One friend specifically told me how his parents transferred ownership of their house to a blind trust they had established under a family member’s name and “rented” it back. This put their total assets well under the total amount to qualify for (a surprising amount of) financial aid. I’ve also heard of parents deferring a portion of their income for the four years their kid was in school, and receiving the deferred income in the years after their kid graduated.

Top schools these days give substantial financial aid to families whose incomes are well into the six figures (and assets into the seven figures), so it makes total sense that families just above the cutoff would use some dirty tricks to qualify.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#279

Post by mbg721 »

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…

A much cheaper state school in a cornfield can get you a quality education. Harvard and Yale are more about getting invited to the right dinner-parties.

Re: Asian-Americans fight back against school discrimination

#280

Post by SyzygistSix »

lenkite wrote: post #156
Mavvie wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't formed a strong opinion on affirmative action yet. > You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." The person you're replying to didn't say anything like that. > It disgusts me that you can say "this is good for America" when Asian-American children have to go through a nightmare to have a chance at opportunities comparable to their peers, simply because of the c…

Out of curiosity, when will your affirmative action actually stop ? At what magical point will diversity be considered as "complete" ?

According to tandymodel100, the user with all the dead comments, when the upper echelons of society match the racial demographics.

I'm not sure why their comments are dead. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a valid point of view.

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