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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 ap

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.
brighteyes 8y ago
It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges. I realize you probably didn't mean "edge case" as in "a small effect", but the effect here is so large it really is front and center - it would radically change the makeup of top college student bodies, with a large corresponding impact on affirmative action for underrepresented minorities. It's also historically not a small issue either. The same was true for Jewish students a few generations ago, and Harvard acted then as it did now - to limit the representation of those groups and prevent them from being a big chunk of the student body. This also isn't new about Asian-American students, for that matter - for many years now the evidence has been piling up that colleges are discriminating against them. So bringing this up isn't like someone found an interesting theoretical problem with college admissions policies - it's a huge long-standing issue.
- magduf 8y ago
  >It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges. I'm not sure I see the problem here. Top colleges are educational institutions. So what's the problem if people who come from a cultural background that highly emphasizes the importance of education greatly outnumber people who come from cultural backgrounds that eschew education? No one ever complains that Asian-Americans are underrepresented in country music and NASCAR. If these institutions were to ignore race altogether as a factor, then of course people who come from pro-education backgrounds are going to outnumber those who don't. Why is this a problem? This is just an effect of a culture (or subculture) getting the outcome it's working for. This doesn't mean outlier individuals in anti-education cultures are barred from it, as they're free to compete too, and a truly race-blind system will choose some of them as well.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
On face value this system seems fair, the most capable students get accepted, regardless of ethnicity or race. The problem with this is that a lot of students from disadvantaged minorities don't get the same opportunities growing up. They might be just as capable as non-disadvantaged students, but get worse grades because they had to work after school to help pay the bills, or didn't have internet access at home, or a variety of other reasons. This is why in some systems, there is a different entry stream for minorities. It's been a while since I applied to university, but I believe that in New Zealand for subjects that have a grade cutoff for entry, Maori (indigenous) students have a lower cutoff for entry to account for this. Of course, this is a blunt instrument in affirmative action. There are plenty of Maori kids who grew up in a middle class environment who are no worse off than white kids, but still get the same affirmative action as poor Maori kids, and there's white people who get left out because they grew up in a disadvantaged environment. If you could come up with a model that works better than just bluntly delineating by race, that would be great. But it's hard to factor for every variable. Maybe you could base it on the median income for the zipcode of the school that the student went to, but then you'll be fooled by creative accounting and wealthy families sending their kids to poor schools.
- pkaye 8y ago
  Factor parents income into the equation instead of race.
  - bruthafez 8y ago
    Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1, can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated incomes. For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management, state my income as $0 or even negative, and watch my kids' college acceptance letters roll in. It's impossible to use finances as an admissions variable because finances are already so heavily gamed by modern accounting practices. Meanwhile Harvard keeps being racist AF. Don't they know about Goodwins law!?!? Lol

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.

brighteyes 8y ago

It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges. I realize you probably didn't mean "edge case" as in "a small effect", but the effect here is so large it really is front and center - it would radically change the makeup of top college student bodies, with a large corresponding impact on affirmative action for underrepresented minorities. It's also historically not a small issue either. The same was true for Jewish students a few generations ago, and Harvard acted then as it did now - to limit the representation of those groups and prevent them from being a big chunk of the student body. This also isn't new about Asian-American students, for that matter - for many years now the evidence has been piling up that colleges are discriminating against them. So bringing this up isn't like someone found an interesting theoretical problem with college admissions policies - it's a huge long-standing issue.

magduf 8y ago
>It's not really an edge case, though. Asian-American students should (based on merit alone) make up almost half of top colleges. I'm not sure I see the problem here. Top colleges are educational institutions. So what's the problem if people who come from a cultural background that highly emphasizes the importance of education greatly outnumber people who come from cultural backgrounds that eschew education? No one ever complains that Asian-Americans are underrepresented in country music and NASCAR. If these institutions were to ignore race altogether as a factor, then of course people who come from pro-education backgrounds are going to outnumber those who don't. Why is this a problem? This is just an effect of a culture (or subculture) getting the outcome it's working for. This doesn't mean outlier individuals in anti-education cultures are barred from it, as they're free to compete too, and a truly race-blind system will choose some of them as well.

toomanybeersies 8y ago

On face value this system seems fair, the most capable students get accepted, regardless of ethnicity or race. The problem with this is that a lot of students from disadvantaged minorities don't get the same opportunities growing up. They might be just as capable as non-disadvantaged students, but get worse grades because they had to work after school to help pay the bills, or didn't have internet access at home, or a variety of other reasons. This is why in some systems, there is a different entry stream for minorities. It's been a while since I applied to university, but I believe that in New Zealand for subjects that have a grade cutoff for entry, Maori (indigenous) students have a lower cutoff for entry to account for this. Of course, this is a blunt instrument in affirmative action. There are plenty of Maori kids who grew up in a middle class environment who are no worse off than white kids, but still get the same affirmative action as poor Maori kids, and there's white people who get left out because they grew up in a disadvantaged environment. If you could come up with a model that works better than just bluntly delineating by race, that would be great. But it's hard to factor for every variable. Maybe you could base it on the median income for the zipcode of the school that the student went to, but then you'll be fooled by creative accounting and wealthy families sending their kids to poor schools.

pkaye 8y ago
Factor parents income into the equation instead of race.
- bruthafez 8y ago
  Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1, can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated incomes. For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management, state my income as $0 or even negative, and watch my kids' college acceptance letters roll in. It's impossible to use finances as an admissions variable because finances are already so heavily gamed by modern accounting practices. Meanwhile Harvard keeps being racist AF. Don't they know about Goodwins law!?!? Lol