13 ms·

Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

192 points by yasp 8y ago

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Is there an easy way to get updates about this case in my inbox? I'm really hoping Harvard gates raked over the coals for its behavior. Not only for the racism. But the self-righteousness with which it pursued its agenda.
- wuunderbar 8y ago
  > its agenda Which is what?
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > [its agenda] is what? Harvard's admissions policy promotes a particular vision for its students' racial composition.
  - kojon99 8y ago
    To unfairly advantage people who are simply incapable of earning admission by their own merits so they use their race as a magic card.
  - Teeer 8y ago
    That it prefers certain races over others?
- free652 8y ago
  Sadly I dont even follow the article, its jumble mumble. >Harvard admissions evaluators -- staffers who are likely under pressure to deliver a target mix of ethnicities each year -- rate Asian-American applicants far lower on subjective personality traits than do alumni interviewers who actually meet the applicants. How da fuck do you get to this conclusion with: >The following point does not require any sophisticated modeling (with inherent assumptions) or statistical expertise to understand. If you can figure out the "intent" with just modeling then you're a genius or in the real world you're just making shit up. At the best you could see some trends, but what I can see that is the statistics is not an exact science and if you fudge the numbers well enough you can prove any point.
- allenz 8y ago
  Try Google Alerts: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en
gourial 8y ago
By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look back on them with scorn.
- davidwihl 8y ago
  I really don't see it as Harvard enforcing racial quotas but rather looking at the whole student not just academics and standardized test scores. I applaud them for attempting to create a diverse and varied student body. Do you have a better alternative or would you select a student body just by GPA and standardized tests?
  - ronyeh 8y ago
    Very easy. Admissions should be race blind and name blind. Everything else, including socioeconomic background, can be included in the admissions packet.
    - eganist 8y ago
      Socioeconomic background is blocked out for need-blind schools, of which there are a ton, Harvard included. The application process becomes a strict meritocracy when all of these points (race/name/need) are blocked, which works in a perfect world but does not work when you consider that socioeconomic disparities tend to impact minority races the most. Strict meritocracies are favored in the bay but are substantially out of favor everywhere else precisely because so many minorities are born directly into a disadvantage. To encourage the leveling of socioeconomic success, race-aware admissions will probably be necessary until we as a country start seeing success in moving the odds of economic success closer to the center rather than in favor of white males. Anyway this isn't really a commentary on this specific lawsuit so much as it's a response to the suggestion of blinding multiple other categories out.
Rotdhizon 8y ago
On the contrary, I wonder how people would view the school if it had no racial based entrances and people were entered solely based on their academic merit. Would people look negatively on the school if it were 90%+ asian-american students?
- brighteyes 8y ago
  It wouldn't be 90%. It would be 40%, most likely, because that's what happens in California universities that don't have racial quotas. Even if it would somehow go up to 90%, and people viewed that negatively, why does that matter? Those people are wrong.
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  - 10097338 8y ago
    > Those people are wrong. So your opinion is fact?
  - ng12 8y ago
    This is happening in NYC right now. The high-achieving highschools are dominated by Asian-Americans. Admission is granted solely on the basis of a standardized test -- and enough of a stink has been made that the mayor is considering removing it in favor of a more holistic "diverse" approach. http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-to-eliminate-specialized-admissions-test-/3606937/ http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-to...
    - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
      Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in VA, one of the best high schools in the country has a class of 2019 that is 21.8% white, 74% Asian, 1.7% black, and 2.6% Hispanic. My guess is most highly selective universities would look similar if admissions were race blind there as well.
allthenews 8y ago
They may as well be instituting explicit quotas at this point, if these allegations are true. At least then it would be clear, and possibly even less controversial. We have x slots for race A, y slots for B, etc. Racism is alive and well. Only our notions of which types are acceptable have changed. Do the ends justify the means?
seibelj 8y ago
An anecdote about the evolving value of higher education: I received a resume recently for a junior software engineer role. Under the 'Education' section was a paragraph that listed a prestigious university and entrance year, but under it stated something like, "I was accepted to this university, but rather than attend and go over $100,000 in debt, I taught myself computer science and coding for 3 years with online tutorials. Here are the projects I did over that time," with links to a github repo showing the projects from his self study. I gave him a phone screen, and while he wasn't a fit, I did not exclude him because of the nature of his education. I think more hiring managers in companies that are struggling to find talent will begin to accept this narrative about education. The signal to me (if it checked out) was his acceptance to a prestigious school, and his lack of attendance was not very important to me, provided he could do the work.
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  I’m not optimistic. Nobody is actually struggling to find talent, rather they are just not willing to pay competitive wages. If your goal is to underpay someone at all costs, then I agree getting creative with the types of candidate backgrounds you’ll consider might work. Otherwise, college experience is just another way of getting some signal or info about a candidate’s talent. It’s not a guarantee of anything, just an often useful signal.
  - smt88 8y ago
    I don't under-pay anyone, but like most people hiring for desirable jobs, I have too many resumes to sort through and could never interview everyone. You find yourself reaching for quick filters, even if they're not perfect. Could I miss out on great candidates by interviewing only people with college degrees? Yes, and I'm sure I have. But the ones I have interviewed have also ended up being the worst interviews of my career, and it had nothing to do with technical skill. YMMV
- alienallys 8y ago
  This might be possible for probably computer science education, if you want to be a lawyer, banker, architect college education is MUST
djyaz1200 8y ago
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a much very thoughtful analysis of the admissions process and it's bias here... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in
klenwell 8y ago
To get past the affirmative-action-is-reverse-racism argument that often frame these discussions, I'd recommend checking out this thoughtful breakdown of the case from Metafilter: Yeah, debates over affirmative action are just one of many situations where the Asian American "model-minority" mythos gets used in service of anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism, and I encourage other Asian Americans to resist being used as tools for this agenda. Our proximity to whiteness will not protect us. Our ancestors never enjoyed it, and it will not save our children. In solidarity with other minorities, we can use the privilege we have to dismantle the systems that oppress the most vulnerable among us. On multiple occasions in my life, white people irl have complained to me about how affirmative action disadvantages Asian Americans, clearly expecting me to agree. I think this demonstrates a profound and/or willful ignorance of history? Racism against Asian Americans definitely exists -- but anti-Asian racism looks very different from anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism, it has different historical roots, and it has had different historical impacts. In some contexts, Asian Americans get the privileges associated with proximity to whiteness, and in other contexts, they don't. I think the educational system leading up to elite universities and white-collar professional fields is one context where Asian American and white people generally get profound advantages. https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Sue-Harvard-Over-Alleged-Admissions-Bias#7430438 https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Su... As this comment notes, the guy behind this case clearly has a clear ideological axe to grind: I love to see Harvard squirm, and they surely deserve whatever fallout comes their way from this case. But there's some context here worth keeping in mind: this lawsuit is part of a sustained campaign by neocon perpetual litigant Edward Blum to kill affirmative action. He is the same guy behind Fisher v. University of Texas (previously), which claimed that a white applicant was the victim of "reverse racism." Whatever the merits and facts of Harvard's specific treatment of Asian-American applicants, Blum will be seeking the broadest possible ruling against race-based admissions policies across the board. https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Sue-Harvard-Over-Alleged-Admissions-Bias#7430201 https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Su...
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- elboru 8y ago
codedokode 8y ago
> Yet Harvard’s admissions officials assign Asian Americans the lowest score of any racial group on the personal rating—a “subjective” assessment of such traits as ... “attractive person to be with,” is “widely respected,”... Why is such an evaluation is even necessary? What is its purpose? To give higher scores to one's relatives and friends? And how do you measure the wideness of respect? Well, if it is completely private institution then it might be fine but if they use government money such subjective ratings are a good opportunity for corruption.
- fraudsyndrome 8y ago
  I reckon it's to purposely give them a "reason" not to accept Asian Americans. People like to believe we live in a meritocracy and Asian Americans as a group did better than other races - so they put in "well-roundedness" which ends up being super subjective but a reason for them to deny others based on other factors not relating to scores. The respect part is a cop-out as it plays on peoples bias. This is where social stereotypes of groups as a whole tend to work it's magic. Asian Americans are seen as "not able to lead", "worker bees" etc. Even though there is no objective measure for that, just peoples bias and this leads them to apply certain characteristics to groups (based on names/photos) no matter what their application looks like.
- albntomat0 8y ago
  > Why is such an evaluation is even necessary? What is its purpose? In general, selecting for good personality traits make sense. In the extreme, only selecting for test scores and grades ignores all of the characteristics that make a person good in real world endeavours (ex: all of the recurring HN stories about genius coders sucking at team work). That said, evaluating for these in a consistent, non-biased way, at a scale of 40k/year seems incredibly difficult.
temp-dude-87844 8y ago
Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be discriminatory? If not, would it at least be problematic? What if it differed significantly from the demographic composition of the pool of all valid applications received? This case is very unfortunate, because it literally pits racial categories against one another, and claims that Asian-Americans are being unfairly disadvantaged by affirmative action applied to Hispanic and Black applicants, whose likelihood of successful admittance is proportionally much higher, in part due to their race. What's unusual is Asian-Americans apply to Harvard at much higher rates that they occur in the population, which complicates the math, and encourages some reflection about the roles of affirmative action, e.g. whether it intends to counterbalance a pipeline shortfall, or improve absolute outcomes among groups whose society-wide outcomes have lagged behind, or to right past wrongs. These are questions worth asking among ourselves when we see that in some cases, and when faced with the allocation of a limited number of a resource (a chance for a Harvard education) to a large group of people. It's hard to avoid thinking that this may be an edge case of affirmative action that was purpose-selected by this group to force the courts to consider a larger issue.
- fraudsyndrome 8y ago
  Not American but wasn't the goal of affirmative action to give access to opportunities from the majority (white-Americans) to the minorities? I'll try and dig it up when I can but I do remember reading that as a result, Asian Americans got shafted the most (they are still a minority) while white women benefited the most from affirmative action. People genuinely believe the model minority myth of Asians/Asian Americans and think that this is okay for them.
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    >Not American but wasn't the goal of affirmative action to give access to opportunities from the majority (white-Americans) to the minorities? Officially speaking, no, as that would be blatantly unconstitutional if done by the government (including public universities), or illegal if done by private organizations. The official justification was that having a diverse student body provided a benefit to the entire student body; so an underrepresented student actually provided more value than an otherwise equal over represented student.
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axaxs 8y ago
Why is race even a factor? Our society is moving backwards in regard to unification. If we stop using race or nationality as a factor for anything, we can get more fair results - as long as the selection process is thought out enough to not explicitly favor races over one another based on irrelevant factors. It seems like more than ever people are identifying themselves by race, and diversity is celebrated so granularly anymore than it creates 'us vs them' situations. I just don't understand the thought process. I want to work with the most qualified candidates and not celebrate or even think about their race, sexual status, heritage, etc.
- dominotw 8y ago
  > Why is race even a factor? This has been endlessly discussed to death. It is a factor because it is a factor in society(common eg: black names not getting callback for an interview). It is a factor because social inertia exists. Ignoring it and putting your head in the sand is not moving forward, places like harvard to want to take corrective measures to offset the inertia. Yes we would like to live in a race blind society but it cannot happen overnight.
  - axaxs 8y ago
    Why is the name even a factor? Why can't it be an input of criteria, and handled by formulas? We're not in the 1920's with a guy with a fat cigar looking at each one individually, while burning and throwing away the ones that sound (irish/black/jewish/whatever).
    - smt88 8y ago
      Names absolutely matter. Many studies have been done where the same resume was submitted with different names. Why not Google it?
      - axaxs 8y ago
        I did not mean to imply that names do not matter wrt getting a callback at a job, of that I'm aware. I meant more as a 'why does it matter in qualifications.' i.e. in my formulaic paradise that is apparently too futuristic, name would be omitted as a factor. I don't think it's only race based, either. I'm sure an Alexander would get more callbacks than a Bubba. But people don't choose their name, such is life.
kapauldo 8y ago
I'm Asian. This is ridiculous.
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aabajian 8y ago
I think something that's overlooked is the importance of parents in admissions. Case in point: Jewish culture values education in the same way that Asian families value education. As a result, a large number of white students admitted to Ivy Leagues are Jewish. 25% of the white students in my med school (Yale) were Jewish, despite making up only 1.4% of the U.S. population. I don't agree with racial quotas, but there has to be some form of normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education.
- brighteyes 8y ago
  > there has to be some form of normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education. Why? Colleges are literally places of education. It doesn't seem odd that children who focused on their education would be highly-represented there. Intervening earlier may make sense - promote education in environments where it's less focused on.
  - gizmo686 8y ago
    Consider two children, Alice and Bob, who appear equal on objective measurements while applying to college. Alice comes from an environment that heavily values education; Bob comes from one that does not. Despite this, they both achieved equal academic results. Further, if admitted, they will both find themselves in the same education valuing environment (college). Since Bob came from an environment that did not value education, we might expect to see an improvement from the mere fact that he is now in an environment that does value education. In contrast, since Alice already came from such an environment, we would see no such improvement (from that cause).
    - glangdale 8y ago
      This assumes that the sum total of Alice and Bob's ability to perform in higher education is measurable by their admissions portfolio. I can picture many different things matching this overall impression. Perhaps Alice is the child of two university professors and has vaguely drifted to near-perfect scores without really having to work. Alternately, she has slaved over her books desperate to please her parents and is at the end of her rope. Similarly, Bob might be a self-educated polymath who has transcended his background, or a crammer who has carefully done everything exactly right to produce the highest score possible, but is almost entirely uneducated outside of the areas that produced good-looking admissions.
CharlesMerriam2 8y ago
Just to remember the 1990s, Harvard was also shown to colluded with other good schools to maximize the number of scholarships awarded. For example, one might receive a full scholarship from MIT or Harvard but not both. As in that case, the activity leads to great discussions about what is fair, what are the goals of a university, and what may a private university choose?
- somecontext 8y ago
  For some context in case anyone was curious, this New York Times article from 1991 discusses the collusion this post is presumably referring to: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/us/ivy-universities-deny-price-fixing-but-agree-to-avoid-it-in-the-future.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/us/ivy-universities-deny-... (Note that the purpose of the collusion was to price-fix to avoid competition, which is the exact opposite of the example given.)
dokein 8y ago
In my opinion, Harvard needs to just be straight about why they're doing what they're doing. If it's race-based quotas for the sake of class diversity or long-term societal benefit, then just say it outright and we can have a discussion as a society as to whether that's ok. I personally think this is bad (with medium confidence), but understand that there are arguments for why it may be necessary. What they shouldn't do is try to say: Asian people have worse personal characteristics, when evaluated by our admissions committee, even though no such deficit is found by the face-to-face interviewers. That's not propping up one race for well-intentioned reasons, but rather suggesting that a specific race is timid, not leadership qualities, worker bees, and many of the other negative stereotypes assigned to Asians. Can you imagine what the newspapers would say if Harvard just said that Jewish people, on average, had worse personalities? Say, less honest and forthcoming than other ethnic groups?
- allenz 8y ago
  Racial quotas are illegal, so Harvard cannot say it outright. Harvard says that race is considered as a factor in their holistic evaluation.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    Yep, and it is the US Supreme Court responsible for this semi-nonsense. At the end of the day, looking at a statistically large enough population, "one factor in a holistic evaluation" ends up looking exactly the same as quotas.
- famil 8y ago
  Actually that's exactly what happened in the 1920s onward. Harvard’s admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of “character and fitness” to limit Jewish enrollment. From: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair...
albntomat0 8y ago
Different, but related issue (at least philosophically, to me): US colleges currently are 57:43 women to men [0]. Does this warrant a response, and if so, how should it be implemented? Male quotas? Gender as a "plus" in admissions (like how Harvard does race)? [0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-stable-57-women/story?id=9676229 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-s...
badrabbit 8y ago
Ends don't justify means. Period. This isn't right. That alone is enough of a reason to be against it. Ethics is never a question of goals,if that was the case anything can be justified with an end goal which appears worthy enough. There is this subversive ideology about acheiving equality. People are created equal regardless of the "race" social construct. If you have to make someone equal then they were not born equal. If someone can't get into harvard due to historical disparities against their group then what needs correction is not harvard but instead their current sociological conditions. How can a person not feel completely insulted when they get accepted into a school or a job solely for the sake of their skin color? I would feel humiliated. This society needs to get back to the basics. If you accept something as wrong then also accept it as wrong for everyone, else scratch out any reference of equality under the law.
- deleted 8y ago
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- jack9 8y ago
  > Ethics is never a question of goals Not to be nitpicky, but to ensure you don't actually try to use the phrase again...that's exactly what ethics are about.
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    I actually meant what I said,maybe I was speaking my belief as opposed to the popular view I disagree with? For example, we can debate the ethics surrounding killing a person. Can I kill a useless member of society? How about a dangerous criminal? Someone trying to kill me? I can accept all of that as a question of ethics. What I cannot accept is framing ethics with an end goal in mind such as "killing people will reduce the population" vs "killing is not the best way to reduce the population","Killing dangerous criminals will prevent future violent crimes" or "you shouldn't kill useless members of society because that won't guarantee a productice society". These questions are framed with the end goal beinf the reason the act is considered ethical or not. My belief is that asking if an act is ethical relative to a desired end goal is in itself unethical. If the end goal is the deciding factor then we're discussing strategy not ethics.
Jamerson 8y ago
We need to stop basing education on submission and obedience. Asians are successful students, but they struggle to build startup cultures in their countries. Edit: Downvote me all you want. I'm an educator who has toured schools in Asia to build international educational relationships. Their students are perfect automatons who will never take the risks necessary to change the world.
- allenz 8y ago
  http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-stereotypes-are-bad/ http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-stereotypes-...
  - Jamerson 8y ago
    This article defines stereotypes as "unfair" categorization. That is far different than knowing the fact that groups have traits, and that categorization comes from these observed traits. Of course individuals stand out, that doesn't make the generalization a less useful tool for quick analysis.
- threatofrain 8y ago
  I think it's the Europeans who are failing to build successful startups (no need to talk about whether they are building a "startup culture"). People can quibble, but perhaps China has outpaced the US with regards to startups, and presumably China has a different cultural environment for business.
julianss 8y ago
I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger companies. During the college applications process, I noticed I was receiving vastly different responses than my girlfriend (wife now) who was African American. Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. She was African American and had 5/7 full tuition responses including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. While I only was accepted into Columbia, with partial financial assistance. We both wanted to attend Yale at the time and this put a dent in our future plans. I have also experienced a similar scenario in the "pre-interviewing" resume selection phase, right out of college with no experience. My friend group noticed comparatively that those who were not White or Asian tended to get faster and more initial responses to schedule an interview. (I will note that this occurred exclusively when submitting for large Fortune 500 companies, and not for smaller business such as startups. Perhaps some selection bias) However after a while with some work experience on the resume, this doesn't manifest as much. It is my belief that university admissions and diversity initiatives need to focus more on individuals than race. The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome.
- yorwba 8y ago
  > The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome. In general, that will still require taking race into account. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 "Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning" discusses various fairness measures in the context of deciding loan applications based on credit scores. The issue is that you only know whether someone was qualified once they pay the loan back, and credit scores are not a perfect predictor of that, which on top of that is differently imperfect for different races. If you want equal opportunity (defined as "the probability of a qualified application being accepted is equal independent of race"), you need different thresholds to compensate for the different prediction error rates.
- mwnivek 8y ago
  > Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. I don't have data, but I would assume that many Ivy League applicants are straight A students with a varsity sport, so recommendations and personal projects (and luck) are actually very important for admission to very selective colleges. You also noted a difference in financial aid, but note that Harvard, Yale and Columbia all state that their financial aid is based only on need, not on merit.
Jamerson 8y ago
Before you downvote, give me a number count: how many people of african descent work in your office? How many are really dark and not just mocha? How many really dark ones are really capable? See you in the downvote pile!
coldseattle 8y ago
What makes this especially bad isn't that they're trying to correct an underrepresentation of certain groups by giving them a boost when evaluating candidates; it's that they're making up false "personality traits" based on stereotypes to demote Asian applicants. They'd be on much firmer ground if they just said "we feel we should have more African American candidates and we'll alter our selection criteria to get them by increasing our ratings for them."
mdimec4 8y ago
This shows everything what is wrong witg race quotas. They are racist in it's core. It also mocks the idea that underpreformence of certian ethnic grups is because of "racism" and "white privilege".
- truthisunpc 8y ago
  jewish privilege is a much more serious problem than white privilege
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192 points by yasp 8y ago

Is there an easy way to get updates about this case in my inbox? I'm really hoping Harvard gates raked over the coals for its behavior. Not only for the racism. But the self-righteousness with which it pursued its agenda.

wuunderbar 8y ago
> its agenda Which is what?
- deleted 8y ago
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- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > [its agenda] is what? Harvard's admissions policy promotes a particular vision for its students' racial composition.
- kojon99 8y ago
  To unfairly advantage people who are simply incapable of earning admission by their own merits so they use their race as a magic card.
- Teeer 8y ago
  That it prefers certain races over others?
free652 8y ago
Sadly I dont even follow the article, its jumble mumble. >Harvard admissions evaluators -- staffers who are likely under pressure to deliver a target mix of ethnicities each year -- rate Asian-American applicants far lower on subjective personality traits than do alumni interviewers who actually meet the applicants. How da fuck do you get to this conclusion with: >The following point does not require any sophisticated modeling (with inherent assumptions) or statistical expertise to understand. If you can figure out the "intent" with just modeling then you're a genius or in the real world you're just making shit up. At the best you could see some trends, but what I can see that is the statistics is not an exact science and if you fudge the numbers well enough you can prove any point.
allenz 8y ago
Try Google Alerts: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/4815696?hl=en

gourial 8y ago

By enforcing racial quotas, Harvard and other institutions are actively cementing race as an important factor in our society, as if it's something we should care about. As such, they are not helping society to become post-racial - as must be our goal - but instead are forcing a racialized view of the world down our collective throats. While well intentioned, racial quotas are a regressive policy and history will look back on them with scorn.

davidwihl 8y ago
I really don't see it as Harvard enforcing racial quotas but rather looking at the whole student not just academics and standardized test scores. I applaud them for attempting to create a diverse and varied student body. Do you have a better alternative or would you select a student body just by GPA and standardized tests?
- ronyeh 8y ago
  Very easy. Admissions should be race blind and name blind. Everything else, including socioeconomic background, can be included in the admissions packet.
  - eganist 8y ago
    Socioeconomic background is blocked out for need-blind schools, of which there are a ton, Harvard included. The application process becomes a strict meritocracy when all of these points (race/name/need) are blocked, which works in a perfect world but does not work when you consider that socioeconomic disparities tend to impact minority races the most. Strict meritocracies are favored in the bay but are substantially out of favor everywhere else precisely because so many minorities are born directly into a disadvantage. To encourage the leveling of socioeconomic success, race-aware admissions will probably be necessary until we as a country start seeing success in moving the odds of economic success closer to the center rather than in favor of white males. Anyway this isn't really a commentary on this specific lawsuit so much as it's a response to the suggestion of blinding multiple other categories out.

Rotdhizon 8y ago

On the contrary, I wonder how people would view the school if it had no racial based entrances and people were entered solely based on their academic merit. Would people look negatively on the school if it were 90%+ asian-american students?

brighteyes 8y ago
It wouldn't be 90%. It would be 40%, most likely, because that's what happens in California universities that don't have racial quotas. Even if it would somehow go up to 90%, and people viewed that negatively, why does that matter? Those people are wrong.
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- 10097338 8y ago
  > Those people are wrong. So your opinion is fact?
- ng12 8y ago
  This is happening in NYC right now. The high-achieving highschools are dominated by Asian-Americans. Admission is granted solely on the basis of a standardized test -- and enough of a stink has been made that the mayor is considering removing it in favor of a more holistic "diverse" approach. http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-to-eliminate-specialized-admissions-test-/3606937/ http://abc7ny.com/education/parents-students-protest-plan-to...
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in VA, one of the best high schools in the country has a class of 2019 that is 21.8% white, 74% Asian, 1.7% black, and 2.6% Hispanic. My guess is most highly selective universities would look similar if admissions were race blind there as well.

allthenews 8y ago

They may as well be instituting explicit quotas at this point, if these allegations are true. At least then it would be clear, and possibly even less controversial. We have x slots for race A, y slots for B, etc. Racism is alive and well. Only our notions of which types are acceptable have changed. Do the ends justify the means?

seibelj 8y ago

An anecdote about the evolving value of higher education: I received a resume recently for a junior software engineer role. Under the 'Education' section was a paragraph that listed a prestigious university and entrance year, but under it stated something like, "I was accepted to this university, but rather than attend and go over $100,000 in debt, I taught myself computer science and coding for 3 years with online tutorials. Here are the projects I did over that time," with links to a github repo showing the projects from his self study. I gave him a phone screen, and while he wasn't a fit, I did not exclude him because of the nature of his education. I think more hiring managers in companies that are struggling to find talent will begin to accept this narrative about education. The signal to me (if it checked out) was his acceptance to a prestigious school, and his lack of attendance was not very important to me, provided he could do the work.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
I’m not optimistic. Nobody is actually struggling to find talent, rather they are just not willing to pay competitive wages. If your goal is to underpay someone at all costs, then I agree getting creative with the types of candidate backgrounds you’ll consider might work. Otherwise, college experience is just another way of getting some signal or info about a candidate’s talent. It’s not a guarantee of anything, just an often useful signal.
- smt88 8y ago
  I don't under-pay anyone, but like most people hiring for desirable jobs, I have too many resumes to sort through and could never interview everyone. You find yourself reaching for quick filters, even if they're not perfect. Could I miss out on great candidates by interviewing only people with college degrees? Yes, and I'm sure I have. But the ones I have interviewed have also ended up being the worst interviews of my career, and it had nothing to do with technical skill. YMMV
alienallys 8y ago
This might be possible for probably computer science education, if you want to be a lawyer, banker, architect college education is MUST

djyaz1200 8y ago

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a much very thoughtful analysis of the admissions process and it's bias here... https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in

klenwell 8y ago

To get past the affirmative-action-is-reverse-racism argument that often frame these discussions, I'd recommend checking out this thoughtful breakdown of the case from Metafilter: Yeah, debates over affirmative action are just one of many situations where the Asian American "model-minority" mythos gets used in service of anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism, and I encourage other Asian Americans to resist being used as tools for this agenda. Our proximity to whiteness will not protect us. Our ancestors never enjoyed it, and it will not save our children. In solidarity with other minorities, we can use the privilege we have to dismantle the systems that oppress the most vulnerable among us. On multiple occasions in my life, white people irl have complained to me about how affirmative action disadvantages Asian Americans, clearly expecting me to agree. I think this demonstrates a profound and/or willful ignorance of history? Racism against Asian Americans definitely exists -- but anti-Asian racism looks very different from anti-Black and anti-Latinx racism, it has different historical roots, and it has had different historical impacts. In some contexts, Asian Americans get the privileges associated with proximity to whiteness, and in other contexts, they don't. I think the educational system leading up to elite universities and white-collar professional fields is one context where Asian American and white people generally get profound advantages. https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Sue-Harvard-Over-Alleged-Admissions-Bias#7430438 https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Su... As this comment notes, the guy behind this case clearly has a clear ideological axe to grind: I love to see Harvard squirm, and they surely deserve whatever fallout comes their way from this case. But there's some context here worth keeping in mind: this lawsuit is part of a sustained campaign by neocon perpetual litigant Edward Blum to kill affirmative action. He is the same guy behind Fisher v. University of Texas (previously), which claimed that a white applicant was the victim of "reverse racism." Whatever the merits and facts of Harvard's specific treatment of Asian-American applicants, Blum will be seeking the broadest possible ruling against race-based admissions policies across the board. https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Sue-Harvard-Over-Alleged-Admissions-Bias#7430201 https://www.metafilter.com/174730/Asian-American-Students-Su...

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elboru 8y ago

codedokode 8y ago

> Yet Harvard’s admissions officials assign Asian Americans the lowest score of any racial group on the personal rating—a “subjective” assessment of such traits as ... “attractive person to be with,” is “widely respected,”... Why is such an evaluation is even necessary? What is its purpose? To give higher scores to one's relatives and friends? And how do you measure the wideness of respect? Well, if it is completely private institution then it might be fine but if they use government money such subjective ratings are a good opportunity for corruption.

fraudsyndrome 8y ago
I reckon it's to purposely give them a "reason" not to accept Asian Americans. People like to believe we live in a meritocracy and Asian Americans as a group did better than other races - so they put in "well-roundedness" which ends up being super subjective but a reason for them to deny others based on other factors not relating to scores. The respect part is a cop-out as it plays on peoples bias. This is where social stereotypes of groups as a whole tend to work it's magic. Asian Americans are seen as "not able to lead", "worker bees" etc. Even though there is no objective measure for that, just peoples bias and this leads them to apply certain characteristics to groups (based on names/photos) no matter what their application looks like.
albntomat0 8y ago
> Why is such an evaluation is even necessary? What is its purpose? In general, selecting for good personality traits make sense. In the extreme, only selecting for test scores and grades ignores all of the characteristics that make a person good in real world endeavours (ex: all of the recurring HN stories about genius coders sucking at team work). That said, evaluating for these in a consistent, non-biased way, at a scale of 40k/year seems incredibly difficult.

temp-dude-87844 8y ago

Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be discriminatory? If not, would it at least be problematic? What if it differed significantly from the demographic composition of the pool of all valid applications received? This case is very unfortunate, because it literally pits racial categories against one another, and claims that Asian-Americans are being unfairly disadvantaged by affirmative action applied to Hispanic and Black applicants, whose likelihood of successful admittance is proportionally much higher, in part due to their race. What's unusual is Asian-Americans apply to Harvard at much higher rates that they occur in the population, which complicates the math, and encourages some reflection about the roles of affirmative action, e.g. whether it intends to counterbalance a pipeline shortfall, or improve absolute outcomes among groups whose society-wide outcomes have lagged behind, or to right past wrongs. These are questions worth asking among ourselves when we see that in some cases, and when faced with the allocation of a limited number of a resource (a chance for a Harvard education) to a large group of people. It's hard to avoid thinking that this may be an edge case of affirmative action that was purpose-selected by this group to force the courts to consider a larger issue.

fraudsyndrome 8y ago
Not American but wasn't the goal of affirmative action to give access to opportunities from the majority (white-Americans) to the minorities? I'll try and dig it up when I can but I do remember reading that as a result, Asian Americans got shafted the most (they are still a minority) while white women benefited the most from affirmative action. People genuinely believe the model minority myth of Asians/Asian Americans and think that this is okay for them.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  >Not American but wasn't the goal of affirmative action to give access to opportunities from the majority (white-Americans) to the minorities? Officially speaking, no, as that would be blatantly unconstitutional if done by the government (including public universities), or illegal if done by private organizations. The official justification was that having a diverse student body provided a benefit to the entire student body; so an underrepresented student actually provided more value than an otherwise equal over represented student.

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axaxs 8y ago

Why is race even a factor? Our society is moving backwards in regard to unification. If we stop using race or nationality as a factor for anything, we can get more fair results - as long as the selection process is thought out enough to not explicitly favor races over one another based on irrelevant factors. It seems like more than ever people are identifying themselves by race, and diversity is celebrated so granularly anymore than it creates 'us vs them' situations. I just don't understand the thought process. I want to work with the most qualified candidates and not celebrate or even think about their race, sexual status, heritage, etc.

dominotw 8y ago
> Why is race even a factor? This has been endlessly discussed to death. It is a factor because it is a factor in society(common eg: black names not getting callback for an interview). It is a factor because social inertia exists. Ignoring it and putting your head in the sand is not moving forward, places like harvard to want to take corrective measures to offset the inertia. Yes we would like to live in a race blind society but it cannot happen overnight.
- axaxs 8y ago
  Why is the name even a factor? Why can't it be an input of criteria, and handled by formulas? We're not in the 1920's with a guy with a fat cigar looking at each one individually, while burning and throwing away the ones that sound (irish/black/jewish/whatever).
  - smt88 8y ago
    Names absolutely matter. Many studies have been done where the same resume was submitted with different names. Why not Google it?
    - axaxs 8y ago
      I did not mean to imply that names do not matter wrt getting a callback at a job, of that I'm aware. I meant more as a 'why does it matter in qualifications.' i.e. in my formulaic paradise that is apparently too futuristic, name would be omitted as a factor. I don't think it's only race based, either. I'm sure an Alexander would get more callbacks than a Bubba. But people don't choose their name, such is life.

kapauldo 8y ago

I'm Asian. This is ridiculous.

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aabajian 8y ago

I think something that's overlooked is the importance of parents in admissions. Case in point: Jewish culture values education in the same way that Asian families value education. As a result, a large number of white students admitted to Ivy Leagues are Jewish. 25% of the white students in my med school (Yale) were Jewish, despite making up only 1.4% of the U.S. population. I don't agree with racial quotas, but there has to be some form of normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education.

brighteyes 8y ago
> there has to be some form of normalization for students whose parents/culture/childhood environment didn't value education. Why? Colleges are literally places of education. It doesn't seem odd that children who focused on their education would be highly-represented there. Intervening earlier may make sense - promote education in environments where it's less focused on.
- gizmo686 8y ago
  Consider two children, Alice and Bob, who appear equal on objective measurements while applying to college. Alice comes from an environment that heavily values education; Bob comes from one that does not. Despite this, they both achieved equal academic results. Further, if admitted, they will both find themselves in the same education valuing environment (college). Since Bob came from an environment that did not value education, we might expect to see an improvement from the mere fact that he is now in an environment that does value education. In contrast, since Alice already came from such an environment, we would see no such improvement (from that cause).
  - glangdale 8y ago
    This assumes that the sum total of Alice and Bob's ability to perform in higher education is measurable by their admissions portfolio. I can picture many different things matching this overall impression. Perhaps Alice is the child of two university professors and has vaguely drifted to near-perfect scores without really having to work. Alternately, she has slaved over her books desperate to please her parents and is at the end of her rope. Similarly, Bob might be a self-educated polymath who has transcended his background, or a crammer who has carefully done everything exactly right to produce the highest score possible, but is almost entirely uneducated outside of the areas that produced good-looking admissions.

CharlesMerriam2 8y ago

Just to remember the 1990s, Harvard was also shown to colluded with other good schools to maximize the number of scholarships awarded. For example, one might receive a full scholarship from MIT or Harvard but not both. As in that case, the activity leads to great discussions about what is fair, what are the goals of a university, and what may a private university choose?

somecontext 8y ago
For some context in case anyone was curious, this New York Times article from 1991 discusses the collusion this post is presumably referring to: https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/us/ivy-universities-deny-price-fixing-but-agree-to-avoid-it-in-the-future.html https://www.nytimes.com/1991/05/23/us/ivy-universities-deny-... (Note that the purpose of the collusion was to price-fix to avoid competition, which is the exact opposite of the example given.)

dokein 8y ago

In my opinion, Harvard needs to just be straight about why they're doing what they're doing. If it's race-based quotas for the sake of class diversity or long-term societal benefit, then just say it outright and we can have a discussion as a society as to whether that's ok. I personally think this is bad (with medium confidence), but understand that there are arguments for why it may be necessary. What they shouldn't do is try to say: Asian people have worse personal characteristics, when evaluated by our admissions committee, even though no such deficit is found by the face-to-face interviewers. That's not propping up one race for well-intentioned reasons, but rather suggesting that a specific race is timid, not leadership qualities, worker bees, and many of the other negative stereotypes assigned to Asians. Can you imagine what the newspapers would say if Harvard just said that Jewish people, on average, had worse personalities? Say, less honest and forthcoming than other ethnic groups?

allenz 8y ago
Racial quotas are illegal, so Harvard cannot say it outright. Harvard says that race is considered as a factor in their holistic evaluation.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Yep, and it is the US Supreme Court responsible for this semi-nonsense. At the end of the day, looking at a statistically large enough population, "one factor in a holistic evaluation" ends up looking exactly the same as quotas.
famil 8y ago
Actually that's exactly what happened in the 1920s onward. Harvard’s admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of “character and fitness” to limit Jewish enrollment. From: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair-to-asian-americans.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/opinion/is-harvard-unfair...

albntomat0 8y ago

Different, but related issue (at least philosophically, to me): US colleges currently are 57:43 women to men [0]. Does this warrant a response, and if so, how should it be implemented? Male quotas? Gender as a "plus" in admissions (like how Harvard does race)? [0]: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-stable-57-women/story?id=9676229 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/college-gender-gap-remains-s...

badrabbit 8y ago

Ends don't justify means. Period. This isn't right. That alone is enough of a reason to be against it. Ethics is never a question of goals,if that was the case anything can be justified with an end goal which appears worthy enough. There is this subversive ideology about acheiving equality. People are created equal regardless of the "race" social construct. If you have to make someone equal then they were not born equal. If someone can't get into harvard due to historical disparities against their group then what needs correction is not harvard but instead their current sociological conditions. How can a person not feel completely insulted when they get accepted into a school or a job solely for the sake of their skin color? I would feel humiliated. This society needs to get back to the basics. If you accept something as wrong then also accept it as wrong for everyone, else scratch out any reference of equality under the law.

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jack9 8y ago
> Ethics is never a question of goals Not to be nitpicky, but to ensure you don't actually try to use the phrase again...that's exactly what ethics are about.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  I actually meant what I said,maybe I was speaking my belief as opposed to the popular view I disagree with? For example, we can debate the ethics surrounding killing a person. Can I kill a useless member of society? How about a dangerous criminal? Someone trying to kill me? I can accept all of that as a question of ethics. What I cannot accept is framing ethics with an end goal in mind such as "killing people will reduce the population" vs "killing is not the best way to reduce the population","Killing dangerous criminals will prevent future violent crimes" or "you shouldn't kill useless members of society because that won't guarantee a productice society". These questions are framed with the end goal beinf the reason the act is considered ethical or not. My belief is that asking if an act is ethical relative to a desired end goal is in itself unethical. If the end goal is the deciding factor then we're discussing strategy not ethics.

Jamerson 8y ago

We need to stop basing education on submission and obedience. Asians are successful students, but they struggle to build startup cultures in their countries. Edit: Downvote me all you want. I'm an educator who has toured schools in Asia to build international educational relationships. Their students are perfect automatons who will never take the risks necessary to change the world.

allenz 8y ago
http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-stereotypes-are-bad/ http://sites.psu.edu/christiercl/2014/04/02/why-stereotypes-...
- Jamerson 8y ago
  This article defines stereotypes as "unfair" categorization. That is far different than knowing the fact that groups have traits, and that categorization comes from these observed traits. Of course individuals stand out, that doesn't make the generalization a less useful tool for quick analysis.
threatofrain 8y ago
I think it's the Europeans who are failing to build successful startups (no need to talk about whether they are building a "startup culture"). People can quibble, but perhaps China has outpaced the US with regards to startups, and presumably China has a different cultural environment for business.

julianss 8y ago

I'm a Chinese American and I have experienced this type of behavior during the college admissions process, and during the hiring process with larger companies. During the college applications process, I noticed I was receiving vastly different responses than my girlfriend (wife now) who was African American. Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. She was African American and had 5/7 full tuition responses including Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. While I only was accepted into Columbia, with partial financial assistance. We both wanted to attend Yale at the time and this put a dent in our future plans. I have also experienced a similar scenario in the "pre-interviewing" resume selection phase, right out of college with no experience. My friend group noticed comparatively that those who were not White or Asian tended to get faster and more initial responses to schedule an interview. (I will note that this occurred exclusively when submitting for large Fortune 500 companies, and not for smaller business such as startups. Perhaps some selection bias) However after a while with some work experience on the resume, this doesn't manifest as much. It is my belief that university admissions and diversity initiatives need to focus more on individuals than race. The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome.

yorwba 8y ago
> The goal should be equality of opportunity and evaluation rather than equality of outcome. In general, that will still require taking race into account. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02413 "Equality of Opportunity in Supervised Learning" discusses various fairness measures in the context of deciding loan applications based on credit scores. The issue is that you only know whether someone was qualified once they pay the loan back, and credit scores are not a perfect predictor of that, which on top of that is differently imperfect for different races. If you want equal opportunity (defined as "the probability of a qualified application being accepted is equal independent of race"), you need different thresholds to compensate for the different prediction error rates.
mwnivek 8y ago
> Perhaps you could chalk it up recommendations or personal projects. But my girlfriend and I were both A students that made the varsity swimming team. I don't have data, but I would assume that many Ivy League applicants are straight A students with a varsity sport, so recommendations and personal projects (and luck) are actually very important for admission to very selective colleges. You also noted a difference in financial aid, but note that Harvard, Yale and Columbia all state that their financial aid is based only on need, not on merit.

Jamerson 8y ago

Before you downvote, give me a number count: how many people of african descent work in your office? How many are really dark and not just mocha? How many really dark ones are really capable? See you in the downvote pile!

coldseattle 8y ago

What makes this especially bad isn't that they're trying to correct an underrepresentation of certain groups by giving them a boost when evaluating candidates; it's that they're making up false "personality traits" based on stereotypes to demote Asian applicants. They'd be on much firmer ground if they just said "we feel we should have more African American candidates and we'll alter our selection criteria to get them by increasing our ratings for them."

mdimec4 8y ago

This shows everything what is wrong witg race quotas. They are racist in it's core. It also mocks the idea that underpreformence of certian ethnic grups is because of "racism" and "white privilege".

truthisunpc 8y ago
jewish privilege is a much more serious problem than white privilege

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