18 ms·

Tokyo medical school admits changing results to exclude women

208 points by prawn 8y ago

mc32 8y ago
With a low reproduction / declining pop rate, this was the wrong thing to do from a socio-economic perspective, not to mention morality. But really Japan has to seriously put an effort to positively utilize the other half of their able worker pool. If they engaged and got similar participation rates as men, that could go a long way in expanding their economy.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  It is way more expensive for households with two working parents to raise children than it is for households with one working parent, and as a result it is possible that even fewer Japanese people would elect to have children.
  - bangau1 8y ago
    Ellaborate please or link that strength your argument about why it is more expensive if both parents are working
    - usaar333 8y ago
      Day care costs of course. Total paid on childcare is higher in a family without a stay at home patent, though the two earner family generally will have more net disposable income (After child-care)
      - stenl 8y ago
        Solution: free day care. It’s a win for taxpayers if those parents go to work and pay taxes instead of staying home with the kids. Also a win for women’s liberation.
        lambdaphagy 8y ago
        There is a strongly negative relationship between women's education and fertility. Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?
        muricula 8y ago
        Why should taxpayers get a say in an individual’s choice to pursue an education or fertility? That’s an incredibly personal decision.
        barry-cotter 8y ago
        Well if they're not paying for the daycare they don't. If they are they are then they do.If you want someone else's money then you're going to get it on their terms or not at all.
        doombolt 8y ago
        This is downpayment for the future taxes by their children. Seems fair to me. But, for some reason, not for you?
        PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        Does going to daycare over have a stay at home parent lead to an increase in the money made? And if we were considering just the number of children and how having more children will lead to more tax payers, then cutting funding for education in ways that result in more children being had is even better because you save money now and have more tax payers later. If you begin to optimize social and political decisions on the basis of having more tax payers, you'll get weird results. For a second example, cutting reproductive education funding in schools will lead to more tax payers (though arguably tax payers who pay less, so then the question becomes are you optimizing for tax payers or for future taxable income in total).
        8y ago
  - ijlkr 8y ago
    If females are denied good job opportunities in Japan, they'd be less inclined to work at all. So if your first sentence holds true, then this kind of discrimination actually should help Japan's reproduction rate.
    - doombolt 8y ago
      This is not what is observed to happen. The observation is that they will cling to worse opportunities, delay having children or avoid having them entirely. See e.g. France vs. Italy.
      - ijlkr 8y ago
        maybe my reasoning only applies to big cities? In manhattan daycare is like $3k/child. To break even, one has to get paid ~$5k, since there are federal tax/city tax etc.
      - ijlkr 8y ago
        What happened to France vs. Italy? I'm curious.
        doombolt 8y ago
        France has 1.5x birthrate of that of Italy, because it helps moms to get education and jobs, as opposed to Italy who put the bet on "family values".
  - sulam 8y ago
    That entirely depends on what the parents do. Certainly doctors generally make more than caregivers so in this specific case the family would net more with a physician mother. There is also evidence that female children of working mothers tend to go on to better education and career outcomes themselves, so this is effectively a heritable advantage for some offspring.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Not all potential graduates affected would have become mothers, so from that standpoint it’s not applicable to a significant portion of the graduating class. But the real issue is the women were artificially denied an opportunity to decide by themselves.
  - tecleandor 8y ago
    You're implying that: - only women will take care of kids - daycare is as expensive as in your place of origin. (in Tokyo there are public daycare schools, and you have preference for entering if both parents work)
    - w00kie 8y ago
      And yet hundreds of families are on waiting lists. If you don't get a spot, you have to go to a private facility which can easily cost more than one parent's monthly salary, or drop out of work until you get a spot, but then you're relegated even further down the waiting list. Also, once you're in, you'll have to pick the kid before 6pm in most daycares which means you must leave the office at 5pm and since a lot of companies do not have flex time, that single hour will push you to a part-time position. Then the daycare will refuse to take your child if they have a fever of 36.8℃ and do regular temperature checks during the day and force you to drop your work and come pick the child straight away if they go above 36.8℃. Unless you work close to home and have a very flexible and comprehending employer (or have grand parents close by and ready to help), even with a lucky spot in daycare it is extremely complicated to continue working. Let's not even talk about elementary school where mandatory partake in time-consuming useless PTA activities basically assumes one of the parent does not work.
      - topmonk 8y ago
        36.8 C is less than normal human body temperature.
        dingo_bat 8y ago
        Maybe it is different for babies? https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/how-to-take-your-babys-temperature/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/how-to-take... says: > A normal temperature in babies and children is about 36.4C (97.5F)
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - epx 8y ago
    Yeah, but it is not acceptable to try to boost natality by denying opportunity to 50% of adults. My response would be "ok, you don't want me to be a productive member of the society in the way I wanted, I won't be in any other way whatsoever". OTOH I'd guess that low natality in Japan has other factors, as other comments pointed, even for men: long, long hours of work, living in a cage called "apartment", probably no leeway in the work to handle domestic problems (yes, even living under the most conservative marriage arrangement possible, there will be domestic emergencies all the time, where a man needs to step in).
  - KirinDave 8y ago
    This is ludicrous. Firstly, this is a small and modestly exclusive institution. So much so that it could hardly be a causal factor in motivating women to decline to have children in preference to their career. Simply declining to let qualified women be doctors to make room for privileged rich sons is a repugnant insult to human intelligence, and should be viewed as the sexist attitude it is. Secondly, if the "force women to stay at home by disadvantaging them in the workplace" were such a great strategy, Japan wouldn't have a declining birthrate because until very recently (and ongoing, to a marginally lesser degree) this is the case.
- kaitai 8y ago
  Japan would not have the low reproduction rate it has if it made it easier for women to have kids and also stay in the workforce. Amazingly, women don't like giving up their entire societal and intellectual life to have a baby and live, isolated, in a tiny apartment. Japan's low birthrate is in part a symptom of the fact that motherhood is a career death sentence there. To be crude and still discriminatory, even a half-assed, difficult, crippled career limping along after motherhood would be much more motivating than the zero currently allowed in Japan. (BTW, the previous HN discussion referenced above is definitely worth referencing if a reader wants a more wide-ranging discussion.)
  - fiblye 8y ago
    Germany's birth rate is 1.5. Japan's is 1.46. Saudi Arabia's is 2.71. Vietnam's is 1.96. Canada is 1.6. Making employment easier for women is clearly not related to birth rate. It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything.
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      > Germany's birth rate is 1.5 > It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything. Well, at least for Germany I can provide some anecdata: either you're on welfare and have the state fund your life including kids or you're rich. The middle class and especially the young (20-30y) population in the major cities simply often cannot afford kids, not with the exploded rents and the trend to unpaid (!) internships, year-limited contracts, "gig work" and other things making my generation's life a living hell. I'm 27 and lucky to have landed an unlimited employment contract. The whole situation reminds me more and more of the setting of Idiocracy, and that without the US president in that movie being obviously inspirational for the current real world one. In addition the young population that fled the rural areas (due to e.g. job availability, the lack of public transport, any form of Internet faster than ISDN, ...) but left their parents/grandparents behind cannot rely on them to help with bringing up a child, further lowering the birth rate. For Italy, the situation is even worse - depending on the source and demographic target, up to 70-80% of young people still live with their parents because they cannot afford their own home (https://www.thelocal.it/20161024/two-thirds-of-italian-millennials-live-with-their-parents https://www.thelocal.it/20161024/two-thirds-of-italian-mille...). Hard enough to... uh, get going with your partner when your parents are next room, much less actually wanting to raise a child.
- prawn 8y ago
  I was baffled that the university appeared to get away with just "oops, we'll stop doing it now". Years and years of something this serious should be enough to end an institution.
  - close04 8y ago
    Where's the benefit in that? End the people responsible for this, not the institution that still provides invaluable services for the country (if run properly).
    - prawn 8y ago
      Fair enough. I meant more the operational tier that oversaw this rather than scrap buildings and general staff. But realistically, you'd hope there are alternative educators that can step in and provide a better, fairer service.
- drak0n1c 8y ago
  The noble goal of increasing the supply of doctors is, unfortunately, also what motivated the discrimination. They made this policy because they did not want limited doctor spots going to women who may drop out of the workforce after 5-8 years. In Japan, most women who have a child do end up dropping out of the workforce regardless of profession. My Japanese mother once told me that women being expected to or made to work by their family is distasteful, and that women should be "treasured". Her opinion is not the overwhelming majority, but it is a sizable part of the spectrum. Regarding policy - of course the size of the class should instead be expanded to accommodate all who meet the bar, but unfortunately Japan also has issues with institutional rigidity and artificial licensure restrictions.
- Chris_Jay 8y ago
  Japan is probably more concerned about boosting their declining pop rate, which is inversely correlated with women's education, than expanding their economy in the short term and accelerating the population decline.
  - doombolt 8y ago
    It doesn't really work like that. You can't unmince meat back. Once there is demand for education you can't roll it back by not delivering. Moreover you can't fix anything by cheating on people and/or making their lives miserable. That's putting oneself in a very bad position indeed. It sounds more and more of a bad joke. In Russia, you cheat on exams for University, but in Japan, University cheats on exams for you. I would be interested in seeing the opposite examples where screwing people over fixed their birth rates (and introduced pink unicorns) but I'm pretty confident there will not be any.
tristanj 8y ago
Discussion from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675807
supernova87a 8y ago
Kind of reminds you of the score changing going on at universities here in the US (in the news lately) for the goal of favoring some applicants over others?
- muricula 8y ago
  Did scores actually get changed, or were they judging by different metrics?
  - dingo_bat 8y ago
    Is there a difference?
    - KirinDave 8y ago
      Yes. One practice is honest and one is dishonest. Do you really not see a difference? "We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards." Biasing entry standards is a thing that may or may not make sense. For public and public-funded institutions, transparency and honesty are absolutely essential.
      - hnaccy 8y ago
        >We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed This seems like a generous description of affirmative action given it punishes asian students and examples of demographics that benefit underperforming once accepted.
        intended 8y ago
        How? One of the key criteria for performance today is "grit", which is an evolution over the previous performance indicators such as education/SAT scores (which had poor long term correlation). The assumption that they will underperform is unsubstantiated. Especially considering - all/most Asian American/SE Asian kids go through the ringer to prepare them from the word go, to get into a prestigious school. (Do note - that if they dont get into their first choice college, they will get into their equally good backup schools.) As the dean of Harvard said - he could fill his class with Valedictorians (and probably have many more to spare). Academic achievement is not the main criteria for admissions - and at least in an american system it shouldn't be. ---- Living in a world where Academics decide everything, you can easily see the kind of damage it does to daily life. Societal worth, marriage prospects depend on what is said on that Degree - even if you are terrible at solving real world problems or have 0 motivation to actually work in your field.
aravindet 8y ago
"We won't do it again" is incredibly inadequate. I'm not familiar with the Japanese legal system, but punitive fines for the university plus the criminal charges on the individuals involved seem warranted here.
- deepsun 8y ago
  Japanese legal system is not. Their society is based on shame and status.
  - throw2016 8y ago
    Every society is based on shame and status. Legal systems are based on codified rule of law, social systems are based on culture, and all cultures use shame to varying degrees to control behavior ie slut shaming, jobs loss, deviant behavior, low status jobs. This forum itself never fails to remind MacDonald and Wallmart workers of their status. Status has always been a central facet of every society. Even a cursory scratch beneath the surface will reveal the rigid class consciousness and status hierarchies in every society.
neya 8y ago
Not saying this is right, but the opposite is also more common than you'd think. For example, this is no different than: 1. Oxford University - extends exam times for women's benefit - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/02/01/oxford-university-extends-exam-times-womens-benefit/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/02/01/oxford-univ... 2. Prof Bumps Female Students’ STEM Grades (Because They’re Women) - https://reason.com/archives/2018/05/23/prof-bumps-female-students-stem-grades-b https://reason.com/archives/2018/05/23/prof-bumps-female-stu...
- scrasmussen 8y ago
  It's not the same at all. Oxford extended time for both men and women equally and the professor wasn't allowed to bump the grades. Neither was a systematic manipulation of scores to keep men out of a field.
- dandare 8y ago
  I have long argued that any act of positive discrimination results in an equal amount of negative discrimination. Be it sex, race, social background, income or any other attribute. Some argue that positive discrimination is the most efficient way to right past wrongs or that it has a net positive effect on a society but that does not negate the effect of the negative discrimination on the affected individuals. What does HN think?
  - hhjinks 8y ago
    University enrollment is a zero sum game, but not everything is. Positive discrimination in a zero sum game will indeed result in negative discrimination, but not by virtue of discrimination being subject to Newton's Third Law.
    - dandare 8y ago
      I didn't get the Newton's Third Law part.
      - 8y ago
tompccs 8y ago
I'm still waiting for a "smoking gun" such as this to come out of hiring or admission practices for tech firms and STEM courses. In much of the Western world the majority of people starting their careers in medicine and law are women (this is the case in my own country), but these fields are not, as far as I can tell, any less prejudiced or discriminatory against women than fields which men have a large male majority. Even with actual systematic discrimination in place in Japan, the rate of female doctors (30% according to the article) is still higher than the percentage of women studying CS in the UK (19%, according to [0]). [0] https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/11-01-2018/sfr247-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/11-01-2018/sfr247-higher-educati...
ironjunkie 8y ago
I said this here before, but this is exactly what is going all over the world whenever "affirmative actions" are used. The only difference is that in this specific case, they decided to use a clear different required test score in order to apply the unfair advantage at selection. In most other places, specifically in the US they use soft, improvable information (such as an "essay") to cover their base and make it non-obvious that the selection process is unfair. The most famous case would be the Asian discrimination case at Harvard, weirdly everyone is mostly ok with that one
- cbolton 8y ago
  A more important difference is that affirmative action is generally used to favor under-represented demographics (or equivalently, to disfavor over-represented demographics). In this case it looks like they disfavored women while they were already under-represented! I'm not quite sure of this but that's what another article [1] suggests: In 2010, before the measure was allegedly introduced, female student participation was about 40%. The newspaper reported that after the two-round application process earlier this year, only 30 female applicants were accepted to study, versus 141 men. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45108272 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45108272
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    >A more important difference is that affirmative action is generally used to favor under-represented demographics That may be the intent, but in practice it also hurts certain underrepresented groups. For example, among all Asians, if you break down the demographic further by nationality, you'll find some groups strongly over represented and other groups strongly underrepresented. Affirmative actions applied to Asians as a whole hurts the groups which are already underrepresented, and while it hurts Asians in general compared to all other demographics, it helps over represented Asians compared to underrepresented Asians.
AIX2ESXI 8y ago
Who are we to question Japanese society? They have their reasons.
- genericid 8y ago
  Do you also never question other individuals because they have their reasons?
known 8y ago
Doctors who are female, 2015. Spain: 51.6% Sweden: 47% UK: 45.8% Germany: 45.2% France: 44.3% Ireland: 43.2% Italy: 40.3% Turkey: 40% Switzerland: 39.7% Australia: 39.4% US: 34.1% South Korea: 22.3% Japan: 20.3% (OECD)

208 points by prawn 8y ago

mc32 8y ago

With a low reproduction / declining pop rate, this was the wrong thing to do from a socio-economic perspective, not to mention morality. But really Japan has to seriously put an effort to positively utilize the other half of their able worker pool. If they engaged and got similar participation rates as men, that could go a long way in expanding their economy.

whatshisface 8y ago
It is way more expensive for households with two working parents to raise children than it is for households with one working parent, and as a result it is possible that even fewer Japanese people would elect to have children.
- bangau1 8y ago
  Ellaborate please or link that strength your argument about why it is more expensive if both parents are working
  - usaar333 8y ago
    Day care costs of course. Total paid on childcare is higher in a family without a stay at home patent, though the two earner family generally will have more net disposable income (After child-care)
    - stenl 8y ago
      Solution: free day care. It’s a win for taxpayers if those parents go to work and pay taxes instead of staying home with the kids. Also a win for women’s liberation.
      - lambdaphagy 8y ago
        There is a strongly negative relationship between women's education and fertility. Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?
        muricula 8y ago
        Why should taxpayers get a say in an individual’s choice to pursue an education or fertility? That’s an incredibly personal decision.
        barry-cotter 8y ago
        Well if they're not paying for the daycare they don't. If they are they are then they do.If you want someone else's money then you're going to get it on their terms or not at all.
        doombolt 8y ago
        This is downpayment for the future taxes by their children. Seems fair to me. But, for some reason, not for you?
        PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        Does going to daycare over have a stay at home parent lead to an increase in the money made? And if we were considering just the number of children and how having more children will lead to more tax payers, then cutting funding for education in ways that result in more children being had is even better because you save money now and have more tax payers later. If you begin to optimize social and political decisions on the basis of having more tax payers, you'll get weird results. For a second example, cutting reproductive education funding in schools will lead to more tax payers (though arguably tax payers who pay less, so then the question becomes are you optimizing for tax payers or for future taxable income in total).
        8y ago
- ijlkr 8y ago
  If females are denied good job opportunities in Japan, they'd be less inclined to work at all. So if your first sentence holds true, then this kind of discrimination actually should help Japan's reproduction rate.
  - doombolt 8y ago
    This is not what is observed to happen. The observation is that they will cling to worse opportunities, delay having children or avoid having them entirely. See e.g. France vs. Italy.
    - ijlkr 8y ago
      maybe my reasoning only applies to big cities? In manhattan daycare is like $3k/child. To break even, one has to get paid ~$5k, since there are federal tax/city tax etc.
    - ijlkr 8y ago
      What happened to France vs. Italy? I'm curious.
      - doombolt 8y ago
        France has 1.5x birthrate of that of Italy, because it helps moms to get education and jobs, as opposed to Italy who put the bet on "family values".
- sulam 8y ago
  That entirely depends on what the parents do. Certainly doctors generally make more than caregivers so in this specific case the family would net more with a physician mother. There is also evidence that female children of working mothers tend to go on to better education and career outcomes themselves, so this is effectively a heritable advantage for some offspring.
- mc32 8y ago
  Not all potential graduates affected would have become mothers, so from that standpoint it’s not applicable to a significant portion of the graduating class. But the real issue is the women were artificially denied an opportunity to decide by themselves.
- tecleandor 8y ago
  You're implying that: - only women will take care of kids - daycare is as expensive as in your place of origin. (in Tokyo there are public daycare schools, and you have preference for entering if both parents work)
  - w00kie 8y ago
    And yet hundreds of families are on waiting lists. If you don't get a spot, you have to go to a private facility which can easily cost more than one parent's monthly salary, or drop out of work until you get a spot, but then you're relegated even further down the waiting list. Also, once you're in, you'll have to pick the kid before 6pm in most daycares which means you must leave the office at 5pm and since a lot of companies do not have flex time, that single hour will push you to a part-time position. Then the daycare will refuse to take your child if they have a fever of 36.8℃ and do regular temperature checks during the day and force you to drop your work and come pick the child straight away if they go above 36.8℃. Unless you work close to home and have a very flexible and comprehending employer (or have grand parents close by and ready to help), even with a lucky spot in daycare it is extremely complicated to continue working. Let's not even talk about elementary school where mandatory partake in time-consuming useless PTA activities basically assumes one of the parent does not work.
    - topmonk 8y ago
      36.8 C is less than normal human body temperature.
      - dingo_bat 8y ago
        Maybe it is different for babies? https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/how-to-take-your-babys-temperature/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/how-to-take... says: > A normal temperature in babies and children is about 36.4C (97.5F)
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- epx 8y ago
  Yeah, but it is not acceptable to try to boost natality by denying opportunity to 50% of adults. My response would be "ok, you don't want me to be a productive member of the society in the way I wanted, I won't be in any other way whatsoever". OTOH I'd guess that low natality in Japan has other factors, as other comments pointed, even for men: long, long hours of work, living in a cage called "apartment", probably no leeway in the work to handle domestic problems (yes, even living under the most conservative marriage arrangement possible, there will be domestic emergencies all the time, where a man needs to step in).
- KirinDave 8y ago
  This is ludicrous. Firstly, this is a small and modestly exclusive institution. So much so that it could hardly be a causal factor in motivating women to decline to have children in preference to their career. Simply declining to let qualified women be doctors to make room for privileged rich sons is a repugnant insult to human intelligence, and should be viewed as the sexist attitude it is. Secondly, if the "force women to stay at home by disadvantaging them in the workplace" were such a great strategy, Japan wouldn't have a declining birthrate because until very recently (and ongoing, to a marginally lesser degree) this is the case.
kaitai 8y ago
Japan would not have the low reproduction rate it has if it made it easier for women to have kids and also stay in the workforce. Amazingly, women don't like giving up their entire societal and intellectual life to have a baby and live, isolated, in a tiny apartment. Japan's low birthrate is in part a symptom of the fact that motherhood is a career death sentence there. To be crude and still discriminatory, even a half-assed, difficult, crippled career limping along after motherhood would be much more motivating than the zero currently allowed in Japan. (BTW, the previous HN discussion referenced above is definitely worth referencing if a reader wants a more wide-ranging discussion.)
- fiblye 8y ago
  Germany's birth rate is 1.5. Japan's is 1.46. Saudi Arabia's is 2.71. Vietnam's is 1.96. Canada is 1.6. Making employment easier for women is clearly not related to birth rate. It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > Germany's birth rate is 1.5 > It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything. Well, at least for Germany I can provide some anecdata: either you're on welfare and have the state fund your life including kids or you're rich. The middle class and especially the young (20-30y) population in the major cities simply often cannot afford kids, not with the exploded rents and the trend to unpaid (!) internships, year-limited contracts, "gig work" and other things making my generation's life a living hell. I'm 27 and lucky to have landed an unlimited employment contract. The whole situation reminds me more and more of the setting of Idiocracy, and that without the US president in that movie being obviously inspirational for the current real world one. In addition the young population that fled the rural areas (due to e.g. job availability, the lack of public transport, any form of Internet faster than ISDN, ...) but left their parents/grandparents behind cannot rely on them to help with bringing up a child, further lowering the birth rate. For Italy, the situation is even worse - depending on the source and demographic target, up to 70-80% of young people still live with their parents because they cannot afford their own home (https://www.thelocal.it/20161024/two-thirds-of-italian-millennials-live-with-their-parents https://www.thelocal.it/20161024/two-thirds-of-italian-mille...). Hard enough to... uh, get going with your partner when your parents are next room, much less actually wanting to raise a child.
prawn 8y ago
I was baffled that the university appeared to get away with just "oops, we'll stop doing it now". Years and years of something this serious should be enough to end an institution.
- close04 8y ago
  Where's the benefit in that? End the people responsible for this, not the institution that still provides invaluable services for the country (if run properly).
  - prawn 8y ago
    Fair enough. I meant more the operational tier that oversaw this rather than scrap buildings and general staff. But realistically, you'd hope there are alternative educators that can step in and provide a better, fairer service.
drak0n1c 8y ago
The noble goal of increasing the supply of doctors is, unfortunately, also what motivated the discrimination. They made this policy because they did not want limited doctor spots going to women who may drop out of the workforce after 5-8 years. In Japan, most women who have a child do end up dropping out of the workforce regardless of profession. My Japanese mother once told me that women being expected to or made to work by their family is distasteful, and that women should be "treasured". Her opinion is not the overwhelming majority, but it is a sizable part of the spectrum. Regarding policy - of course the size of the class should instead be expanded to accommodate all who meet the bar, but unfortunately Japan also has issues with institutional rigidity and artificial licensure restrictions.
Chris_Jay 8y ago
Japan is probably more concerned about boosting their declining pop rate, which is inversely correlated with women's education, than expanding their economy in the short term and accelerating the population decline.
- doombolt 8y ago
  It doesn't really work like that. You can't unmince meat back. Once there is demand for education you can't roll it back by not delivering. Moreover you can't fix anything by cheating on people and/or making their lives miserable. That's putting oneself in a very bad position indeed. It sounds more and more of a bad joke. In Russia, you cheat on exams for University, but in Japan, University cheats on exams for you. I would be interested in seeing the opposite examples where screwing people over fixed their birth rates (and introduced pink unicorns) but I'm pretty confident there will not be any.

tristanj 8y ago

Discussion from 5 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675807 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17675807

supernova87a 8y ago

Kind of reminds you of the score changing going on at universities here in the US (in the news lately) for the goal of favoring some applicants over others?

muricula 8y ago
Did scores actually get changed, or were they judging by different metrics?
- dingo_bat 8y ago
  Is there a difference?
  - KirinDave 8y ago
    Yes. One practice is honest and one is dishonest. Do you really not see a difference? "We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards." Biasing entry standards is a thing that may or may not make sense. For public and public-funded institutions, transparency and honesty are absolutely essential.
    - hnaccy 8y ago
      >We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed This seems like a generous description of affirmative action given it punishes asian students and examples of demographics that benefit underperforming once accepted.
      - intended 8y ago
        How? One of the key criteria for performance today is "grit", which is an evolution over the previous performance indicators such as education/SAT scores (which had poor long term correlation). The assumption that they will underperform is unsubstantiated. Especially considering - all/most Asian American/SE Asian kids go through the ringer to prepare them from the word go, to get into a prestigious school. (Do note - that if they dont get into their first choice college, they will get into their equally good backup schools.) As the dean of Harvard said - he could fill his class with Valedictorians (and probably have many more to spare). Academic achievement is not the main criteria for admissions - and at least in an american system it shouldn't be. ---- Living in a world where Academics decide everything, you can easily see the kind of damage it does to daily life. Societal worth, marriage prospects depend on what is said on that Degree - even if you are terrible at solving real world problems or have 0 motivation to actually work in your field.

aravindet 8y ago

"We won't do it again" is incredibly inadequate. I'm not familiar with the Japanese legal system, but punitive fines for the university plus the criminal charges on the individuals involved seem warranted here.

deepsun 8y ago
Japanese legal system is not. Their society is based on shame and status.
- throw2016 8y ago
  Every society is based on shame and status. Legal systems are based on codified rule of law, social systems are based on culture, and all cultures use shame to varying degrees to control behavior ie slut shaming, jobs loss, deviant behavior, low status jobs. This forum itself never fails to remind MacDonald and Wallmart workers of their status. Status has always been a central facet of every society. Even a cursory scratch beneath the surface will reveal the rigid class consciousness and status hierarchies in every society.

neya 8y ago

Not saying this is right, but the opposite is also more common than you'd think. For example, this is no different than: 1. Oxford University - extends exam times for women's benefit - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/02/01/oxford-university-extends-exam-times-womens-benefit/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/02/01/oxford-univ... 2. Prof Bumps Female Students’ STEM Grades (Because They’re Women) - https://reason.com/archives/2018/05/23/prof-bumps-female-students-stem-grades-b https://reason.com/archives/2018/05/23/prof-bumps-female-stu...

scrasmussen 8y ago
It's not the same at all. Oxford extended time for both men and women equally and the professor wasn't allowed to bump the grades. Neither was a systematic manipulation of scores to keep men out of a field.
dandare 8y ago
I have long argued that any act of positive discrimination results in an equal amount of negative discrimination. Be it sex, race, social background, income or any other attribute. Some argue that positive discrimination is the most efficient way to right past wrongs or that it has a net positive effect on a society but that does not negate the effect of the negative discrimination on the affected individuals. What does HN think?
- hhjinks 8y ago
  University enrollment is a zero sum game, but not everything is. Positive discrimination in a zero sum game will indeed result in negative discrimination, but not by virtue of discrimination being subject to Newton's Third Law.
  - dandare 8y ago
    I didn't get the Newton's Third Law part.
    - 8y ago

tompccs 8y ago

I'm still waiting for a "smoking gun" such as this to come out of hiring or admission practices for tech firms and STEM courses. In much of the Western world the majority of people starting their careers in medicine and law are women (this is the case in my own country), but these fields are not, as far as I can tell, any less prejudiced or discriminatory against women than fields which men have a large male majority. Even with actual systematic discrimination in place in Japan, the rate of female doctors (30% according to the article) is still higher than the percentage of women studying CS in the UK (19%, according to [0]). [0] https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/11-01-2018/sfr247-higher-education-student-statistics/subjects https://www.hesa.ac.uk/news/11-01-2018/sfr247-higher-educati...

ironjunkie 8y ago

I said this here before, but this is exactly what is going all over the world whenever "affirmative actions" are used. The only difference is that in this specific case, they decided to use a clear different required test score in order to apply the unfair advantage at selection. In most other places, specifically in the US they use soft, improvable information (such as an "essay") to cover their base and make it non-obvious that the selection process is unfair. The most famous case would be the Asian discrimination case at Harvard, weirdly everyone is mostly ok with that one

cbolton 8y ago
A more important difference is that affirmative action is generally used to favor under-represented demographics (or equivalently, to disfavor over-represented demographics). In this case it looks like they disfavored women while they were already under-represented! I'm not quite sure of this but that's what another article [1] suggests: In 2010, before the measure was allegedly introduced, female student participation was about 40%. The newspaper reported that after the two-round application process earlier this year, only 30 female applicants were accepted to study, versus 141 men. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45108272 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45108272
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  >A more important difference is that affirmative action is generally used to favor under-represented demographics That may be the intent, but in practice it also hurts certain underrepresented groups. For example, among all Asians, if you break down the demographic further by nationality, you'll find some groups strongly over represented and other groups strongly underrepresented. Affirmative actions applied to Asians as a whole hurts the groups which are already underrepresented, and while it hurts Asians in general compared to all other demographics, it helps over represented Asians compared to underrepresented Asians.

AIX2ESXI 8y ago

Who are we to question Japanese society? They have their reasons.

genericid 8y ago
Do you also never question other individuals because they have their reasons?

known 8y ago

Doctors who are female, 2015. Spain: 51.6% Sweden: 47% UK: 45.8% Germany: 45.2% France: 44.3% Ireland: 43.2% Italy: 40.3% Turkey: 40% Switzerland: 39.7% Australia: 39.4% US: 34.1% South Korea: 22.3% Japan: 20.3% (OECD)