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Feds say Yale discriminates against Asian, white applicants
- CincinnatiMan 6y agoThe age-old question of whether we want equal opportunity or equal outcome...
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoHarrison Bergeron is the logical conclusion to fundamentally equal outcome. Is that a society anyone really wants to live in?
- d33lio 6y agoShow me any evidence that this isn't literally what the far left wants? CA is moving to remove hiring anti-discrimination protections, as if nothing could go wrong with that line of reasoning...
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoThe far left wants power, not equality.
- d33lio 6y agoEven as someone who identifies as a liberal, I 100% agree with your sentiment here. Anyone who thinks otherwise is blind to the obvious narrative or too simple to acknowledge basic tenants of human behavior.
- disposekinetics 6y agoMy belief is that this is a compromise of convenience rather than want. It appears to be easy to achieve equality by hampering the best, but much harder work to achieve equality by raising the worst off up.
- jgalt212 6y agoNot for me. But I don't thinks its' A or B, but some blend and it's always been some blend. House of Commons and House of Lords. Representatives and Senators, Electoral College, etc. I believe the right discussion to have is where do we as society want to be between the two outcomes. Not do we want A, or do we want B.
- HPsquared 6y agoI wouldn't use Congress as an example, as both houses have been elected by popular vote since the seventeenth amendment. Slippery slope in action...
- jgalt212 6y agoI was referring the the balance of power between large states (House) and small states (Senate) as a metaphor for not wholly espousing the binary outcome equality of opportunity or equality of outcome.
- pickledish 6y agoMan, I've been frustrated when I see that story recently; it reads like a bad caricature of what a lot of good movements are trying to accomplish. In reality the goal (though not always perfectly executed of course) is always about raising people up, not tearing people down (like the handicaps in the story)
- 5mk 6y agoAs an aside, I find it interesting how Harrison Bergeron is so commonly misinterpreted as a satire of the left. When one considers Vonnegut's personal beliefs and the strawman portrayal of communism in the story, it really should become clear that it is actually a critique of Cold War/anticommunist hysteria. A satire of anticommunist satire, if you will.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoIn context, it was written at a time when the ideological and intellectual opposition to communism hadn't been very well-articulated yet, and hadn't become "obvious" to onlookers. It might be a little on-the-nose, but I think it is a sincere takedown of the authleft (and moreso: crab mentality). These views can and do come from within the left - like Orwell, most notably.
- _jal 6y ago...In the same way that cannibalism is the logical conclusion of capitalism. Don't get me wrong - the impulse is there and some people think that way. Just like are absolutely people who would peddle filet of Steve. But amplifying the marginal to discredit the general is fundamentally dishonest, and we won't do that here, right?
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoI don't see how you draw that path, but maybe you could try explaining it. It seems the story is clearly an extreme form of "equality of outcome," but there's no clear linguistic or conceptual path from capitalism to cannibalism.
- jhowell 6y agoThere has never been equal opportunity. This is clear. The reasons why opportunity has not been equal is becoming more clear, regardless which side of the nature versus nurture debate you fall on. Equal outcome should not be the goal (test scores and grades are not the best nor only indicator the likelihood of success). The goal should be equal access.
- kyleee 6y agoDo you want equal opportunity for everyone? Is "equal access" a synonym for equal opportunity or do you have something else in mind?
- chrisco255 6y agoIn that case, we simply need to publish all lectures online free of charge.
- jhowell 6y agoI don't think online lectures is the opportunity that plaintiffs in this case felt they were deprived of. Do you think that "we simply need to publish all lectures online free of charge" is a good answer for the plaintiffs?
- lotsofpulp 6y agoPeople don't benefit from Yale from the lectures. They benefit from the brand name and alumni you get to be associated with. Which is because Yale restricts admission to people who have high probability of being influential.
- chrisco255 6y agoSo it's really just an exclusive club and not about education and knowledge building at all? Okay, you simply reenforce my point. It's a signalling mechanism for cargo cult employers who would rather simply hire from Yale than do the work of actually assessing people's capabilities. It needs to go the way of the dodo.
- 6y ago
- mucholove 6y agoIs Yale an outcome or an opportunity?
- PeterisP 6y agoEquality of outcome would mean that the race/ethnicity/etc proportion of people admitted to Yale would be similar to the appropriate proportion in the general community instead of being wildly different. Equality of opportunity would mean that if two equally qualified persons of different races/ethnicities/etc have the same chance of getting admitted. The big issue is that you can't have both, mostly due to various family and childhood circumstances that mean that different groups have different rates of "getting to X years old with qualifications/skills/preparations Y". For Yale admissions, you can have one, or the other, or a compromise in the middle. You can have a situation that's unfair/unequal according to both criteria, but you can't get both "types of equality" at the same time, as increasing one generally requires to trade off or sacrifice the other.
- d33lio 6y agoIt's only a matter of time before "asian privilege" becomes a common phrase and / or people start campaigning to no longer classify asian / pacific-islanders as a "minority".
- dx87 6y agoI've already seen people jokingly use the term "schrodinger's minority" to refer to Asian's and Indians. They're excluded from minority statistics when trying to push for more diversity hires, but included in minority statistics when trying to show how many succesful businesses are run by minorities.
- admiralspoo 6y agoAs an asian, I've already been told by a colleague to check my privilege...nevermind my skin color is darker than most blacks in the US.
- olliej 6y agoI mean the systemic racism against black people in America is far worse than Asian people for a long time - Ivy leagues didn’t have blanket bans on Asian students, so they started getting the legacy admission benefits a long time ago. This isn’t to say that Asian Americans don’t experience a ton of discrimination, but rather that the penalties for being black are systemic and reach out a long way.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y ago
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoAny background why the fed is going after yale, but not Harvard Princeton MIT, Penn or Stanford?
- rconti 6y agoTiming, I'm guessing. >The Justice Department had previously filed court papers siding with Asian American groups who had levied similar allegations against Harvard University.
- olliej 6y agoHarvard has already faced this and had it shut down. Because it’s the fed maybe they’re subject to some kind of double jeopardy type thing? Or just tying different courts?
- skissane 6y agoSFFA vs Harvard isn’t over yet. Harvard won at District Court level but SFFA is appealing. It is likely to ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, but it is probably going to take a few years for the case to get there.
- ggggtez 6y ago> A federal judge in 2019 cleared Harvard of discriminating against Asian American applicants
- mrosett 6y agoTo be clear, Yale absolutely does discriminate against Asian applicants. As far as I can tell, they justify it using the same language about "personality" that they used to justifying discriminating against Jews in the the first half of the 20th century.
- jhowell 6y agoSeems like this statement might need a little support to make its point without being inflammatory, or worse inaccurate. edit: typo
- jonathanyc 6y agoThat a supposed lack of personality was used as cover for discrimination against Jewish applicants to universities is well-known. I’m not sure why you’d express concern over that reference being inflammatory ex nihilo. There are citations for that point specifically in this article: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions... > Harvard itself found a bias against Asian-American applicants in an internal investigation in 2013, but had never made the findings public or acted on them.[1] Plaintiffs and commentators have compared thetreatment of Asians with the Jewish quota in place in the early 20th century, which used deficient personalities as the reason for excluding Jews in elite universities.[4][1] - https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-quotas-repeat-an-ugly-history-11570575962 https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-quotas-repeat-an... - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollment-applicants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...
- renewiltord 6y agoThe "well-rounded" fraud against Jewish-Americans is one of the most well-established direct educational discrimination of recent US history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell#Admissions_and_Jewish_quota_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell#Admissions_... Lowell wanted a quota, but couldn't get it and introduced this well-roundedness thing and weirdly and totally coincidentally Jewish people found themselves unable to match up. Turns out they were all one-dimensional human beings less skilled at all those other things White Americans were capable at. It is sheer good fortune Lowell was there to rescue us from these nerdy egg-heads. Close one.
- kevingadd 6y agoKind of a complicated assertion here: The investigation also found that Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.” The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity If they're "racially balancing" their classes, that does sound like it is a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity in their classes. Whether or not that's actually a noble or appropriate goal is a different question, but it sounds like it's allowed... Of course the definition of "balance" here is tricky. Corresponding ratios to the overall racial balance of the country? The state? Overall racial balance of all applicants? Of all alumni?
- olliej 6y agoOf all alumni is dangerous because these schools banned black students until the 70s. Then when allowing them actively worked to limit entrance. Finally they all operate with legacy admissions so the racist bans on applicants have a long tail
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoWhich schools? The school in question never formally disallowed blacks. "Yale’s first black graduate was Courtland Van Rensselaer Creed, who received his medical degree in 1857 and went on to have a prominent practice in New York City"
- oh_sigh 6y agoIf trans-genderism is accepted, is there room for trans-racialism? ie a person born Asian but identifies as black and puts so on their college application?
- HPsquared 6y agoIt didn't go well for Rachel Dolezal, however that did happen a couple of years back.
- chrisco255 6y agoElizabeth Warren identified as Cherokee Indian to get her professorship, so, why not?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- scott31 6y agoYes
- admiralspoo 6y agoIt is already a fact since race is not a well-defined category. People with mixed backgrounds choose the category with the most affirmative action benefits.
- totalZero 6y ago> People with mixed backgrounds choose the category with the most affirmative action benefits. This statement is a sweeping assumption about a whole lot of people.
- dmurray 6y agoNo. There was a prominent case of Rachel Dolezal who identified as black and used that in college and job applications as well as welfare claims. She got sacked, sued by the state government, and vilified in the court of popular opinion. You might get away with this kind of fraud, but it's not a good time for it if you do get caught. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal
- virtuous_signal 6y agoRemember when The College Board was developing an "adversity score" but then dropped it in the face of criticism? I honestly wish we would just do that. We would actually have something quantitative instead of vague generalizations about "personality". The methodology could be scrutinized, and centralized (instead of every college coming up with its own special formula), and we could stop talking about this every X months.
- HPsquared 6y agoWe'd just talk about the weightings of the various "adversity factors" instead, it's the same problem.
- virtuous_signal 6y agoRight, at the beginning sure, and ideally it would quickly improve. But why have all of these institutions do it individually, and out of the public eye? I doubt some random Yale admissions specialist has unique societal insights that the other institutions don't.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoExcept racking up points for your adversity is the point of such policies. Avoiding doing so basically means you need to rack up the inverse - privilege points - except you're not allowed to do that, so it turns into obscure "penalty points" hidden in euphemisms.
- s1artibartfast 6y agoat least it would be more intellectually honest and transparent.
- president 6y ago> We would actually have something quantitative They're called standardized tests
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
- three_seagrass 6y agoLots of soapboxing in the comments here. The Justice Dept made the exact same allegations against Harvard, and last year a Federal Judge found that Harvard was constitutionally in the clear. SCOTUS has said that race can be narrowly used in admissions to promote diversity, which Yale says they are doing. The fact that the Justice Department wants Yale to cease all uses of race in admissions (despite this interpretation) is suspect.
- bllguo 6y agounfortunately i find it hard to take the justice dept. seriously these days. it's become a political tool. i say this as someone who would have been directly affected if this claim were true
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoWhen wasn't it, at just at the high-profile margins? Its daily work currently consists of fighting sex-trafficking and other inarguably good pursuits... The claim that the DOJ is any more political today than a decade or three ago doesn't seem borne out by the facts, IMO.
- bllguo 6y agowell I am not nearly expert enough to debate your points about the DOJ's history. What I _can_ say with confidence is that from my POV that this is a hot button issue for my parents, many in their circles, and I imagine asian families nationwide. Given the other actions of this administration I can't shake the feeling that a strong motive for this is to curry favor with that demographic. It strikes me as an awfully convenient time to start making noise here.
- three_seagrass 6y agoConsidering that the Justic Dept has dropped cases against friends of the president (one of whom confessed to the crime of lying to the FBI to cover up for the president) and given that we're a couple months from an election where race is an issue, I also share your doubt about the Justice Dept being agnostic here.
- admiralspoo 6y agoThe whole undergraduate system in the US needs dismantling and rebuilding. it is costly, wasteful, discriminatory and largely about signaling than any skills. If race-based admissions moves to STEM graduate school, then we're in trouble. https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is-un.. https://medium.com/swlh/y-combinator-not-lambda-school-is-un....
- chrisco255 6y agoThe higher education sorting hat has really got to be disbanded. It is increasingly at odds with the 21st century.
- ggggtez 6y agoThat's a nice thing to say, but it's utterly unrealistic when 29,000 students apply to Yale every year. So you need a system to decide who gets in and who doesn't. Just like a job interview, you don't just hire people at random. Some kind of system is necessary.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ProfessorLayton 6y agoThis is a symptom of issues that still very much exist in the 21st century. In the US access to a good education is closely tied wealth, which is closely tied to homeownership and property values, which are in turn still benefiting from discriminatory housing policies [1]. As an example, the Bay Area has some of the best schools and most expensive real estate in the country. This is due to a lack of supply, yet to this day it is illegal to build high density and inexpensive housing in the vast majority of lots so that the less wealthy can start building equity, which again is a huge portion of wealth. Ordinances like high minimum lot sizes and low coverage were deliberately designed to make it more expensive for POC to buy into a neighborhood. This is covered extensively in The Color of Law, and is a great read [2]. Perhaps the better approach is to fix these systemic issues so that schools didn't have to compensate for them. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853 https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segreg...
- chrisco255 6y agoYeah but in the 21st century it's ridiculous to associate physical buildings with good education. There's no reason, today, why students can't consume lectures from several world class instructors at scale. Video lectures are not even inferior to the actual experience. Do you know how many lectures are skipped entirely by students in college? Do you know how many students are distracted by phones and laptops in lectures? This whole system needs to be retooled. The main thing students need from college is enforced accountability and pacing to keep them from dawdling. This can be done with proctors and tutors coupled with world class video lectures from top professors.
- freen 6y agoI wonder what the makeup of the 14% of the incoming freshman class that are legacy’s is...
- ggggtez 6y ago>The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity Sounds like SCOTUS will agree with Yale on this one.
- vivjay30 6y agoThe real discrimination is continued legacy and athletic admissions which artificially inflate the number of white students (discriminating against Asians and other minorities). 43% of white students at Harvard are legacy, athletes, or related to donors. Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-percent-white-students-are-legacy-athletes-n1060361 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/study-harvard-finds-43-...
- olliej 6y agoWeird that they don’t mention that the vast majority of legacy entries are white, followed by Asian. Any school that had racist policies that banned black and other PoC that still has legacy admissions is fundamentally biased in favor of white applicants, and will always be. The bar for legacy entry is incredibly low, far below GPA requirements for any affirmative action has ever been.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoIsn't that obviously going to wean itself out of existence in a generation or two, if whites are (as alleged) being discriminated against so heavily?
- olliej 6y agoIt will take more than a couple of generations, because the children of people who got legacy admittance also get legacy admittance, which removes available slots for people who don't just have the benefit of being born to the right parents. That's the big cudgel right: look at the racial spread of legacy acceptances, and if that does not match (within reason) the average racial spread then legacy admittance is adding a discriminatory pressure against those races that are less represented.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoI don't mean to be edgy here, but this is necessarily true in service of affirmative action. It's obviously impossible to enact affirmative action without the corresponding penalty on outgroup members. Although it's perplexing just how...nasty?...the discrimination against Asians is. I can't imagine ever trying to justify that "all Asians" have personality defects that make them disproportionately bad candidates for college, as is proven to be what the colleges are doing here. Utterly unacceptable, IMHO.
- ggggtez 6y ago>proven Nothing was proven. This is just an allegation right now. Wait until the court date. And then the SCOTUS overruling the decision, because like you said: discrimination is required for affirmative action. And universities like Yale are specifically allowed to discriminate for that purpose. For any allegation to stick, the Feds will have to show that the reason was not for diversity. Which, obviously, it is.
- throwaway189262 6y agoI may get a lot of hate for this... But I think affirmative action has opposite the desired effect. The majority groups are dicriminated against by design. I don't think this does anything to fix the tensions causing racism in the first place. I think it makes them worse. The government should find a way to benefit minorities without outright descrimination against those that doesn't fit their definition. My personal favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago>My personal favorite idea is improving schools. If we diverted enough money and resources to primary schools in poor areas, we could achieve similar outcomes to affirmative action without just switching the groups we discrimate against. The problem is student outcomes aren't linked to how much money and resources the school has, they're linked to how much money and resources the parents (and the network of the parents) of the children have. Networking is the primary benefit of top tier schools, and so unfairly giving a chance to those without the network is the only way for them to move up the ladder as a group. This will necessarily displace individually who might deserve to be there more, but the problem is an intractable one due to the outsize gains of being part of that network. I am not endorsing affirmative action, or discrimination against certain "successful" minorities, simply offering a chain of reasoning for it.
- pyrophane 6y agoI'd rather colleges were just forced to give up legacy preference.
- totalZero 6y agoWhy do schools need to know the race and ethnicity of their applicants in order to make merit-based admissions decisions? Even things like geographical location and economic adversity can be anonymized and quantified. It seems like a no-brainer to hire some accounting firm to filter applications for racially identifying material before they are reviewed by the admissions board.
- elliekelly 6y agoI think this gets to the crux of the issue that's almost impossible to solve for in a "blind" way: if you don't look at race you're going to have a very wealthy, white, suburban, homogenous class of admitted students. And there is definite value in a diverse class: differences of thought, background, opinion, and lived experience make for a much more interesting discussion in the classroom.
- shajznnckfke 6y agoImportant correction: affirmative action at these schools mostly doesn’t take spots away from white people. It mainly takes them from Asians, because Asians outperform whites on quantitative metrics like grades and GPA. IMO this is a critical piece of information, considering the place affirmative action holds in the politics of white resentment. White people who didn’t get into top schools: turns out you can’t blame affirmative action! Affirmative action as practiced by top schools is completely consistent with the white power structure, which shouldn’t be too surprising, considering these institutions are part of that power structure.
- skissane 6y ago> I think this gets to the crux of the issue that's almost impossible to solve for in a "blind" way: if you don't look at race you're going to have a very wealthy, white, suburban, homogenous class of admitted students Why not provide racially neutral class-based / disadvantage-based affirmative action instead? You get points if your parent(s) are poor. You get points if you have a single parent. You get points if you or your parent(s) have been on welfare. You get points if your parent(s) are in or have been to prison. You get points if you went to a high school with a low average academic achievement. You get points if your parent(s) have a history of homelessness or drug addiction or serious mental illness. You get points if you reside in a low income area. That would produce a diverse student body without any direct consideration of race.
- simmanian 6y agoIt's easy to engage in a zero sum game of fighting for the "fair" share of the pie, but I believe the fundamental problem is that our education system as it exists today has immense scalability problems: it's built upon the idea of creating scarcity around qualifications and putting people against each other. I honestly think we are already headed in the direction of providing a more open education through the internet. COVID has probably accelerated the process. I hope we can find ways to lift each other up rather than bring each other down.
- klipt 6y agoBy definition elite qualifications will always be scarce. Everyone can attend college, if we include things like community college. Not everyone can attend Harvard. Some community colleges may even be better at teaching, but they'll never have the prestige.
- thrav 6y agoThe question they’re asking is, does it need to be, or is this antiquated? Is there a good reason to pit people against each other? Is it possible to provide a great education for everyone who wants one and meets some base qualification, etc. I think the answer is pretty clearly that the best education, in many fields, will always require proximity and therefore scarcity. I just wrapped an OMSCS degree, and as much as I loved the program and the education, missing the on-campus experience definitely makes it a different thing. Not because I learned any less of the material. More so because I walked away with very few relationships and very little spontaneous creativity amongst peers. Some of that is on me for doing it while working full time, but it would’ve been hard regardless. Many people consider those community aspects to be the some of the most valuable qualities of the college experience.
- jmoss20 6y agoCredentials vs. education. Credentials are a positional good, education an intrinsic one. We've decided the two should be bundled together, but they don't have to be. Maybe they shouldn't be; that would be a much more interesting conversation to have.
- supernova87a 6y agoI've had a couple of observations about this whole process, and I would love to be convinced (either way!) with real data / evidence. 1) For all the contortions that universities in the US go to, to adjust and hand-tune their population -- does it produce a meaningfully better class than if they used a simple score cutoff? Would such a class (chosen by simple, unbiased score cutoff) be so much worse at innovation, leadership, (alumni donations??) than a class chosen by our heavy judgement-laden process? Sports, maybe? What is all this extra effort and political decision-making worth, in actual outcome? Many other countries use purely exam based entrance. Or allow anyone in, and test them once there and kick out if they don't pass. What is the value of the "high judgement" method of admissions? Is it that you're more likely to produce a president or CEO? 2) To echo Justice O'Connor's final question on the matter in oral arguments, when do we know that we're done with this policy? Who says we're done and fixed the situation? How will we know we've reached a point where we can agree that we've achieved something that was the goal, or is it just arbitrary, up to whomever is in power at the moment? If not, will this just go on forever? Is that not ripe for some bad side effects, or worse, corruption of the process? 3) Why have universities adopted themselves as the place where this modification of outcomes should be applied? As I understand it, the problem of diversity etc. etc. happens long before the college/university stage. Attempting to fix it at the end does no one very much good, than if the effort was applied earlier in students' lives. Or, the metrics by which you decide if it's working become softer and softer. I struggle to find satisfactory answers to these questions, and therefore don't find myself convinced for why AA is reasonable (or legal).
- polyomino 6y agoThe alumni admissions point is an interesting one. I wonder how one's propensity to donate is affected by their perception that they were chosen by the institution vs. they were selected by a deterministic process.
- jmoss20 6y ago1) The incentives are different for different universities. Less elite universities don't (generally) do all this because, you're right, there's no point. More elite universities do, because they're incentivized to. Elite universities play a zero-sum game with one another for the far right tail of prestige/power/access. Part of that game does depend on producing the right sort of graduates -- but no exam will find them, and the sorts of things that identify them aren't generally the sorts of things you can grade/fail them on either. The other part of the game is played not with the graduate but with _everyone else_. Harvard is Harvard (to most people) not because of the mean Harvard grad's success, but because everyone else couldn't get in. Those two incentive structures point more or less at what we've got: painstaking care taken to identify a very small group of candidates, who are then _highly_ credentialed (ex: grade inflation). (All while retaining the aura of meritocracy.)
- bitxbit 6y agoThey need to make clear it’s discrimination against Asian AMERICANS.
- atom-morgan 6y agoAnd? Why the exception for African Americans?
- throwaway5752 6y agoFree advice: there is no reason this suit could not have been brought in the prior 3 years. It is shameless election year politics via the courts. Whatever you think of the merits of the case, realize what this is from the timing and the unprofessional release accompanying the filing. "Yale College could fill its entire entering class several times over with applicants who reach the 99th percentile in standardized testing and who have perfect high school grade point averages, but we do not base admission on such numbers alone," President Peter Salovey wrote. "Rather, we look at the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants." (https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/08/13/us/politics/ap-us-yale-discrimination.html https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/08/13/us/politics/ap-u..., the other post on this on the front page) This argument will be shown to have merit. Simply put, the question of whether to have a class that represents the population vs the applicant pool is at the discretion of the college. A lower ratio of acceptance by race is not de facto indicative of individual discrimination. They can pick and choose a class from the top tenth of a percent of the graduating seniors in the US. Every student there is elite.
- downvoteme1 6y agoJust wondering if it is a crime to lie about your race n college applications. What if a bunch of Asians just decided to write black on their college admissions applications - - Will the colleges rescind the applications. Also do mixed race individuals get to pick either white or black on college applications?
- fmajid 6y agohttps://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-kaling-brother-affirmative-action/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-kaling-...
- khawkins 6y agoOn a very related note, California Prop 16 will be on the ballot in November, seeking to remove the following text from the CA constitution: >The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting. https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Proposition_209_Affirmative_Action_Amendment_(2020) https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal_Pr...
- supernova87a 6y agoIt will be interesting to see whether the BLM movement and attitudes plays a factor into this proposition's turnout, or cases like this one cause other people to rethink their support.
- drusepth 6y agoI wonder what impact the ordering of those clauses has on people reading/voting. I didn't even notice "or grant preferential treatment to" until the ~third read through, still trying to figure out why anyone would vote to repeal this. Alternative ordering for comparison: >The State shall not grant preferential treatment to, or discriminate against, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
- raxxorrax 6y ago"Are we the baddies?"
- vowelless 6y agoThe issue is not really that they discriminate (which is bad). But the fact that they have arbitrarily made this into a Zero Sum Game. Why an organization with 30 BILLION in endowment cannot admit more than 2000 eighteen year olds baffles me. If you want to admit more POKs then increase the class size and hire more professors with that vast amount of money. I realize places like Yale try to be like old, exclusive country clubs. But if that’s the case then they should be taxed on that money.
- gruez 6y ago>I realize places like Yale try to be like old, exclusive country clubs. But if that’s the case then they should be taxed on that money. How would this be enforced? That private universities can't get tax exempt status if they don't spend a certain % of their net assets each year? Doesn't this effectively penalize organizations operating on an endowment funding model?
- jessaustin 6y agoLots of people have wanted to do just that for a long time. At least this proposal gives the universities a (perhaps temporary) way out.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 6y agoThe whole idea of an institution being "elite" is that it restricts access. The smaller the % of applicants to make it through, the more prestigious the placement. It's a high-end night club with VIP access for the rich, famous, and the connected. And with a long line outside the door to signal that many are fighting to get in. Elite universities are luxury brands, and by definition a product is no longer a luxury if everybody gets one. If you just want a quality education, you can get it anywhere else. What people are complaining about here is that don't get to access an intentionally carefully-restricted item. I'm not going to be writing to my senator because you don't get to drive a Lamborghini. Get in a Corolla like the rest of us, you'll be just fine.
- slaymaker1907 6y agoIt can get extremely competitive for universities to attract the top talent in terms of professors. All these students need someone to teach them.
- hardwaregeek 6y agoBefore we get our pitchforks out here, let's remember that Yale's percentage of Black students is 7.4%[1]. That's not exactly a gigantic portion. In fact Yale is on the lower end compared to Harvard's 14.3%[2] and MIT's 12% [3]. If Yale is truly discriminating in favor of Black and Hispanic students, well, they're not doing an excellent job of it. [1]: https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2018-19_031020.pdf https://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/factsheet_2018-19_0... [2]: https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics [3]: https://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html https://web.mit.edu/facts/enrollment.html
- dba7dba 6y agoMeanwhile, I read on this thread that UCSF admitted less Asians. It was 40% last year. It's been now cut to 22%. That is a gigantic shift of a demographic of a new medical school class. Within one year.
- virtuous_signal 6y agoIt's actually not very hard to see how discimination-in-favor can be compatible with overall low numbers. The simplest way is if they comprise less than 7.4% of the applicant pool. Another way is if they comprise less than 7.4% of "qualified" applicants, in some definition of qualified. But those breakdowns of the applicant pool are typically not shared except from lawsuits.
- swimfar 6y agoBut what percentage of college students are black? (sincere question, couldn't find the answer from a quick search). Without knowing that I don't think it's fair to say they aren't doing a great job. Just because other colleges are doing better, doesn't mean Yale is doing bad. edit: This report says 14% of college enrolled U.S. residents were black in 2017. But that makes it sound like it doesn't include international students. https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=98
- hardwaregeek 6y ago
- setpatchaddress 6y agoHow is everyone's first reaction not that this is Trump electioneering? I have no idea if there's merit here or not, but the replies below seem to largely fail to acknowledge two facts: (a) All top schools weigh race and gender. They consider student body diversity important. You can disagree that they should, but it's true. (b) Bill Barr's DOJ is one of the least trustworthy entities in the USA on this subject this side of the KKK.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoSigh. This is something that has been pursued by the DOJ for years. The lawsuit that began this process was in 2014. Also, allusions to the KKK are just obscene. You can have political views, but shoehorning them in while exhibiting such ignorance about the underlying facts of the case just destroys the quality of the conversation. IMO.
- cluse 6y agoI think if Yale had a true meritocracy for admissions, they would have a majority Asian student body. And I think if they actually admitted all of the Asian students that fulfilled their acceptance criteria, they would probably want to expand the school so that a more diverse student body could fit into Yale. Out of curiosity, I wonder how much larger Yale would have to be, in order to retain all th Black, Hispanic, and Native American students that they currently have, while also including the white and Asian students who were discriminated against. Would Yale be twenty-five percent larger? Twice as large? What's the scale here?
- jessaustin 6y ago...the white and Asian students who were discriminated against. I know you're repeating a framing from TFA and from numerous other sources, but the discrimination against Asians primarily benefits whites, because there are so many more of them. There simply aren't enough BIPoC students to make room for the Asians who would be accepted if the discrimination against them stopped, as implied by your "majority Asian student body" comment. (Also, lots of BIPoC students are not "just over the line" and perform as well as or better than Asian and white students.) The eventual result of this lawsuit will be a much lower percentage of white students, while BIPoC percentages might drop slightly.
- protomyth 6y agoI would love for them to report enrolled Native Americans and what tribes they are from did they attend high school on a reservation. I keep discovering Native Americans who don't actually have any connection to any tribe.
- chmaynard 6y agoThis is election-year flack, pure and simple. Can we trust anything the Dept. of Justice does? The Attorney General is clearly a proxy for Trump's desire to reward his friends and punish his enemies. Barr's first priority is not enforcing the law, it's enabling Trump's twisted agenda.
- fmajid 6y agoYale discriminates in favor of Whites. If admissions were based purely on merit as they are at Caltech or Berkeley, you would have far more Asians and far fewer Caucasians. This was also true when they discriminated against Jews (using the same techniques) at a time when Jews were not considered White.
- golemiprague 6y agoJews are not necessarily white, it is just a common misconception among Americans because most Jews in the US are from an east European origin, but that's not the case in France or Israel. Also, what do you mean by merit? who said trying hard and wasting hours and hours to improve high school marks is "merit"? I am not sure the Asian culture of studying signal anything but the ability to invest a lot of time in a young age to solve relatively easy problems. It doesn't signal talent and it might not even signal a particular conscientious in later ages or in the work place. I think the ivy league know that, they know that those Asians are not going to be anything special and that there are many other parameters and signals they have to look at in order to define this elusive "merit".
- _--___-___ 6y agoBy your own post, you seem to consider Jews a separate population from gentile whites. If that were the case, I'd suggest you double check the relative (to national proportion) population of non-athelte/legacy gentile whites at Yale and similar schools before making posts like this.
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- ip26 6y agoI wonder if you could build a model to assign handicaps to each applicant? Forget racial quotas, just assign a modifier to each applicant based on the difficulty they have likely faced in their lives. Race, but also household income, zip code, alma mater, siblings, how many parents, etc... Then just hide all that info from the review board. In that way, you could get right at what is most interesting- which students are actually the most impressive. Past student body provides the training dataset- just define what measures a successful student whom you are happy to have. College GPA, graduation date, post-graduation compensation, whatever.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoIn my opinion, policies like this stem from having good intentions, but intervening where there is just friction instead of where there is most value. Intervening at Ivy League admissions is a surefire way to benefit those minorities who are currently the least inhibited, while expending a lot of social (and potentially "real") capital to do so. Intervening much earlier in the process would be much harder, but would provide relatively more assistance to those who are so disadvantaged as to otherwise end up nowhere near college admissions anywhere, much less the Ivy Leagues.
- nataz 6y agoMan, I remember appplying to colleges and being rather selective about how I self identified. I'm half Asian, and half "white" (which is weird in itself because it's technically a bunch of different races bundled into one light skinned bucket). On almost all my applications I identified as Asian (better chance of acceptance and scholarships!). The only exceptions were Ivy and California schools which even in the late 90's were obviously discriminating against Asians. You know it's bad when you identify as white to get a diversity edge. Even today at work,I regularly get ignored for diversity metrics. Being an Asian American is so weird.
- scruple 6y agoMy brother-in-law is half Vietnamese and half Chinese. He asked me to review his personal statement and help him with college applications a few years back. I encouraged him to self-identify as Vietnamese instead of Chinese. He was accepted to multiple Ivy's (but ended up staying in state in the end) where his Chinese friends were all rejected. They are otherwise indistinguishable. Even their personal statements were all more-or-less on the same level, at least the few that I helped out and recall. They all learned a pretty valuable lesson there.
- xiaolingxiao 6y agoWhy is Vietnamese the right kind of Asian?
- scruple 6y agoIt's not that Vietnamese is the "right kind" of Asian. It's that Chinese-Americans dominate the landscape compared to Vietnamese-Americans. So here you have a Vietnamese-American who has excelled (just ever so slightly, in his case) beyond his immediate Chinese-American peers, which made him a standout in that regard.
- usaar333 6y agoTrue, but Vietnamese Americans are well represented in undergrad at least. In fact about double the white representation in UCs (https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/disaggregated-data https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/disaggrega...)
- Petrova 6y agoHonestly at this point the US should just adopt the East Asian college entrance model. One exam per year at the same time with no exceptions. Completely race blind and no additional criteria other than school class rank and average school exam score.
- heraclius 6y agoIn practice it seems that affirmative action primarily takes from Asians and unconnected whites to give to blacks. I have no objection to the latter—indeed, I can see some justification in taking from educated middle class Asians like me—but the obvious people from whom to take places are those who get in on connexions (most of whom are white). If this creates a shortfall, the obvious solution is to dismantle a bureaucracy that was clearly unneeded, say, 40 years ago. Unfortunately there is no political incentive to do this—the Republicans will almost certainly attempt to restore a situation by which blacks end up in the grand scheme of things disadvantaged, with no correction at university admissions, whilst the progressive narrative is controlled by mostly white liberal bourgeois class interests, and therefore will continue to find some other group to make the sacrifices it deems (not incorrectly in this case!) necessary, and happens to create not inconsiderable employment for them, inter alia—indeed, one might go so far as to say is necessary for their broader control of the capitalist system by holding onto cultural power within education.
- walamaking 6y agoMaybe universities should consider adding an optional box to specify if the applicant is willing to give up their potential seat for an affirmative action candidate. /s
- heraclius 6y agoI don’t see why this is would actually be a bad idea—it just sounds like the offer wouldn't be taken up much. Most systems that allow people to express some preference to be kinder to someone else probably won’t end up causing harm—the worst case is that they just don’t cause anything.
- supernova87a 6y agoBy the way, you all know this is going to come up in California this fall? Because there is a proposition on the ballot (Prop 16, ACA 5) to repeal the current CA Constitutional section that government shall not discriminate based on race. https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ballot-measures/pdf/aca-5.pdf https://elections.cdn.sos.ca.gov/ballot-measures/pdf/aca-5.p... http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=CONS§ionNum=SEC.%2031.&article=I http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection... "The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting."
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- darkengine 6y agoWashington has a similar law, and a referendum to repeal it was on the ballot last year (I-1000/R-88). It was narrowly defeated (ie, the law was not repealed). Interestingly, according to Ballotpedia, there were many newspaper editorials in favor of repealing the anti-discrimination law, but only one against (in the WSJ [1]), and it also makes mention of the issue of Ivy League admissions. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/legalizing-discrimination-11571602815 https://www.wsj.com/articles/legalizing-discrimination-11571...
- komradeKow 6y agoFunny how this is hidden from the front page eh
- flo58 6y agohttps://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/ https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of... This has been an open secret since at least 2012. Quotas restricting Asians, and affirmative action benefiting Jews, who make up an astounding full quarter of the student bodies of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, despite being only 2% of the population, which is 5x their rate of admission at Caltech, an elite school with a famously merit-based, AA-free admission process: The campus is located in the Los Angeles area, home to one of America’s largest and most successful Jewish communities, and Jews have traditionally been strongly drawn to the natural sciences. Indeed, at least three of Caltech’s last six presidents have been of Jewish origin, and the same is true for two of its most renowned faculty members, theoretical physics Nobel Laureates Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann. But Caltech’s current undergraduates are just 5.5 percent Jewish, and the figure seems to have been around this level for some years; meanwhile, Asian enrollment is 39 percent, or seven times larger. It is intriguing that the school which admits students based on the strictest, most objective academic standards has by a very wide margin the lowest Jewish enrollment for any elite university. The author is apparently Jewish himself, BTW.
- justanotheranon 6y agomy solution to this problem is the same as my solution to the tech megacorp oligopily problem. there are too many students chasing to few colleges. there should be 20 Yales, 30 Harvards and 50 MITs. just like there should be 10 Microsofts, 20 Googles and 50 Apples. if competition for credentials wasnt so pirate cut throat due to induced artifical scarcity, then society wouldnt be nitpicking over admissions quota minutia. imagine a world where we cut the Pentagon's budget by 15%, and poured that $150 billion into turning every Community College into a University on par with Yale and the Ivys. imagine a world where unemployable grad students were not ground up and churned out through a system that only has teaching jobs for a fraction of them. the solution to all higher education problems is to radically increase the supply to meet the demand. dont you want humanity to have an orbital base around Alpha Centauri someday? how else are we going to achieve that?
- raxxorrax 6y agoVery true, especially with the modern logistics of education. Today we could show the best lecture any prof has ever given to a village in nirvana that got running water 10 years ago. That doesn't replace direct mentoring, but would still elevate education to new standards. Special schools for particularly gifted people should exist, but the product today is more prestige than quality of education (which is good, but not the primary selling point anymore).
- letusknow123 6y agoHow is this not considered actual racism?
- ausjke 6y ago1. it's all about diversity and equality these days, meaning every thing should be distributed proportionally based on race population and by gender. the ultimate goal will be wealth re-distribution(or, communism), until then, it is not going to stop. 2. especially in hi tech and elite universities. 3. NBA is an exception, actually all sports can be an exceptions. 4. Asian is not considered as minority when it come to college admissions, what doe minority mean? 5. MIT and many other STEM universities has 50:50 boys and girls, if not so, it's called gender discrimination. ... So, let's throw out SAT/ACT/GPA and admit people via 'holistic' review, i.e. totally subjective, which means, the more miserable you're the better chance you will have, we joked as parents the best we can do for our kids is going to jail, do drugs, go bankrupt, so our kids can get some benefits. Nice family, law-biding family are basically punished. I have not seen anywhere more communism like in USA now, you cut the corner because of your race or gender, merit-based is racism, we're going to hell. I wish those AA pumpers will get a doctor who was admitted/graduated/career-ed based on AA rules, when they need a cure the most at hospitals.
- bighead777 6y agothe United States population is equivalent to 4.25% of the total world population while accounted for 15.2% of global gross domestic product (GDP). The world definitely need more diversity in the wealth distribution , let's start by just cutting every single American's income every month by 11% and donate it to other countries in the world.
- leafboi 6y ago>The findings detailed in a letter to the college’s attorneys Thursday mark the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges. I'm an Asian liberal and I think trump is an idiot but the reality is that all people, as altruistic or immoral as they appear to be, are, in fact, complex amalgamations of good, evil, intelligence and stupidity. My judgement of trump is just a biased simplification of reality and the complexity of his character. Props to trump for supporting this initiative.
- ur-whale 6y agoThe thing I never understood about the US is why asking for someone's "race" (or whatever the current PC term for it is) on a form, government or otherwise, is not flat out illegal on account of being a) entirely meaningless b) downright insulting c) guaranteed to produce the kind of outcome we're discussing here.
- ecmascript 6y agoAs a european I don't get why americans are so obsessed about race. I would never even think of writing about my skin color on a university application. That seems very foreign to me. People today are making the same old mistakes, just treat everyone the same and it'll sort itself out over time. Such an obvious thing imo, but now it's simply popular to discriminate against whites and asian people. Awesome, we've come full circle.
- Moway 6y agoIt's partly due to specific historic reasons, but it's also just a consequence of different groups or races sharing a country. I'm afraid you might start to see similar things in Europe with the demographic changes: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IPR32133/end-racist-discrimination-against-afro-european-people-in-the-eu https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20190321IP...
- LatteLazy 6y agoI feel sorry for Yale (et al) in this case because they're being presented with a very hard problem (defining and measuring merit in a reliable non-game-able way), one that likely has no widely accepted solution, and one that we as a society have actively decided to completely ignore in favor of everyone looking out for themselves.
- omginternets 6y agoI sympathize as well, but I think the problem is much more fundamental; I think there is no universally acceptable solution. - If you think merit is a function of de facto performance, you will not deem it justified when the bar for admission is lowered for under-performing groups. - If you think merit is a function of effort[0], then you will not deem it justified when everybody is held to the same standard of performance. The reason this is such a touchy issue, I think, is that both approaches result in a de facto racial (and/or other immutable-trait-based) hierarchy. In my estimation, the determining ideological factor in picking a side is whether one prefers implicit vs explicit hierarchies. [0] There's probably a better word than effort, but it's not coming to mind.
- nudpiedo 6y agoI see how everyone speaks about the discrimination against Asian males, but what about white males? If Freedom is not for everyone then no one is trully free. In this rebel youth aim to destroy older "conservative" ideas apparently someone broke some of the oldes hard earned lessons by mankind about freedom and equalty.
- colmvp 6y agoTo be clear, I'm not saying I don't care about the discrimination against white men, but generally speaking white men have more societal advantages in North America than Asian men such as likelihood in getting positions in leadership roles at companies, political positions, as well as desirability in online dating. My hunch is that's why it's not as 'highlighted' (for lack of a better term) than Asian men who are discriminated against.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y agoI don't even blame Yale, I blame the stupid government incentives to do this. The question of your race should never even be raised.
- jenkins6g 6y agoThis "finding" is absolutely tasteless. Studies found that SATs have little to no correlation to graduating from a university, same thing with GREs in grad school. African American students are proven year over year to have far less educational resources in their communities, live in poverty, etc. And far less African Americans apply to get into Yale compared to their white or Asian counterparts and the ones that do apply have a better shot of getting in due to their hard work than the African Americans that don't apply. And on top of that still has to deal with inequality across the board. So yes, to the 5% of Yale students that are African Americans, their acceptance was very well deserved. Knock off the bs about IQ this and IQ that. Try that crap in the real world at your job and see how far that gets you.
- yc3po 6y agoThere is very much discrimination against White applicants at some of the top tier schools and I'm glad it's finally being acknowledged.
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- charlesu 6y agoHN is weirdly silent about identity politics except for threads like these. Threads about discrimination in tech get a few dozen post, a third of which are to the tune of “does this belong on HN?” But an article about discrimination at a college with a horrific engineering program and no cachet in the tech industry gets 500 posts. Can anyone explain why this belongs on HN or why it gets so much attention? I don’t understand it.
- tgv 6y agoPossibly because commenting on those threads is a minefield, so nobody votes for them and they end up quickly forgotten.
- charlesu 6y agoThis thread is a minefield. Any claims about discrimination on race or gender is going to ignite controversy. Why is it OK to talk about this subject despite the fact that it’s in no way relevant to tech? Why is this on HN?
- tgv 6y agoOn other sites, much of the posts are fueled by indignation. That's a bit less here, and very few people are going to reply: "yeah, I know. It's a shame.", especially because that's against the rules. But it's only a possible factor. > Why is this on HN? Relatively many students and recently graduated under the members, more than on e.g. reddit?
- charlesu 6y agoThese threads appear to be driven by indignation as much as anything I’ve read on reddit, hence my confusion.
- JuliusPullo 6y agoHas it occurred to any of you that somebody might just want to intentionally make us hate each other with this "racism" BS? To keep us divided? In the end, who really cares if someone is black, white, Korean, or half Vietnamese? Denying an earned admission to someone because that someone is of the color, sex, religion or original nationality not in fashion at the time for the leftist taste only serves to make us dislike each other more and more.
- cossatot 6y ago> In the end, who really cares if someone is black, white, Korean, or half Vietnamese? Yale, in this case.
- themmranger 6y ago"During the rise of the BLM movement, Trump appointee thinks Yale is racist against white people, oh and Asians" There fixed the headline.
- thunkshift1 6y agoWhy race information is needed for college and job applications?
- fatjokes 6y agoWith no data backing this up, I feel like people would be happier with quotas. If Asians were told that at most X% of school Y could be Asian to save room for other ethnicities for social reasons, they could probably accept that better than being told that it was because they were being categorically determined as having shitty or empty personalities.
- rasengan0 6y agoSome numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Unit...