Recently, a controversy erupted at University of California Berkeley, one of America’s most renowned public universities. In an effort to highlight the absurdity of racial preferences, the Berkeley College Republicans announced a satirical Increase Diversity Bake Sale, complete with a racially determined pricing structure. For male students, whites would pay $2, Asian-Americans would pay $1.50, Latinos would pay $1, African-Americans would pay 75 cents, Native Americans would pay 25 cents. Women in every category would pay 25 cents less.
Naturally, defenders of preferences were offended. Many maintained that the Increase Diversity Bake Sale ignored and trivialized the discrimination and injustice faced by black and Latino students. Others stood up for the college Republicans. Though preferences are banned by the 1996 California Civil Rights Initiative, critics fear that California legislators intend to bring them back. Moreover, a UCLA professor, Tim Groseclose, has alleged that the UC system systematically flouts the law by gaming the scoring of the personal essay portion of applications to give students from select backgrounds a boost. The bake sale was motivated by a rebellious streak common to undergrads everywhere, and also by a sense that the admissions game is being unfairly rigged.
But what most critics missed is the small fact that the Increase Diversity Bake Sale’s pricing structure suggests that Asian-Americans get a leg up on whites. If anything, the exact opposite is true. At elite U.S. universities, there is considerable evidence that students of Asian origin are punished in the admissions process relative to their white peers. And incredibly, almost no one outside of a small number of Asian-American high school students and their parents seems to care.
Fortunately, we have hard numbers on the phenomenon. In an analysis of the National Study of College Experience, an anonymous survey of several highly selective private colleges, scholars Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford calculated the strength of admissions preferences for various groups, ranging from the children of alumni to recruited athletes to members of various racial and ethnic groups. Among the private schools in the study’s survey,Asian students have to score 140 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a white student. If race weren’t a factor in admissions, the proportion of white students at these elite private schools would fall from 60 to 53 percent while that of Asian students would rise from 24 to 39 percent.
As Espenshade and Radford make clear, however, we can’t simply assume that Asian applicants are being discriminated against. The authors only had access to hard, quantifiable data, and it is at least possible that Asian applicants write such poor personal statements and are so lacking in leadership abilities that they in fact deserve to take a 140-point hit in the admissions process. Somehow, this seems unlikely. Indeed, it seems at least as plausible that admissions officers are more dismissive toward the accomplishments and personal qualities of Asian applicants than toward those of non-Asian applicants, including whites.
Granted, it is also possible that Asian applicants are somewhat less likely to graduate than white students. Perhaps they are less likely to graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, the STEM fields that everyone from the president on down have identified as a priority for America’s economic future.
But wait a second. Asian students are in fact overrepresented in STEM relative to white students, and they are also considerably more likely to graduate within four years.
Of all the injustices in the world, this one might seem minor. After all, the Asian-American students who are losing out in gaining admission to elite private universities will probably do just fine. They’ll attend somewhat less selective schools and go on to have rewarding careers. That’s not the most pressing problem. Rather, the most pressing problem is that by systematically discriminating against large numbers of our most talented students, elite private universities are shortchanging themselves and the country as a whole.
In a democratic society, we have an instinctive presumption against elitism. Yet we suspend judgment when it comes to our elite universities. Collecting the nation’s brightest minds in one place has many advantages. Doing so can create an intellectual hothouse, in which researchers collaborate to advance the frontiers of useful knowledge. There is a reason Silicon Valley mushroomed around Stanford. Discrimination against Asian-Americans, like the discrimination against Jewish-Americans that was once so widespread in the Ivy League, represents the kind of unforced error we can no longer afford, particularly when the emerging economies are happy to exploit talent wherever they find it.
The corruption of the admissions process is part of why elite institutions are losing their legitimacy. New educational institutions are quickly taking their place. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the innovators behind Khan Academy and Skillshare, the most promising nonprofit and for-profit startups in the education space, respectively, were founded by Asian-Americans. Call it the revenge of the nerds.
Naturally, defenders of preferences were offended. Many maintained that the Increase Diversity Bake Sale ignored and trivialized the discrimination and injustice faced by black and Latino students. Others stood up for the college Republicans. Though preferences are banned by the 1996 California Civil Rights Initiative, critics fear that California legislators intend to bring them back. Moreover, a UCLA professor, Tim Groseclose, has alleged that the UC system systematically flouts the law by gaming the scoring of the personal essay portion of applications to give students from select backgrounds a boost. The bake sale was motivated by a rebellious streak common to undergrads everywhere, and also by a sense that the admissions game is being unfairly rigged.
But what most critics missed is the small fact that the Increase Diversity Bake Sale’s pricing structure suggests that Asian-Americans get a leg up on whites. If anything, the exact opposite is true. At elite U.S. universities, there is considerable evidence that students of Asian origin are punished in the admissions process relative to their white peers. And incredibly, almost no one outside of a small number of Asian-American high school students and their parents seems to care.
Fortunately, we have hard numbers on the phenomenon. In an analysis of the National Study of College Experience, an anonymous survey of several highly selective private colleges, scholars Thomas J. Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford calculated the strength of admissions preferences for various groups, ranging from the children of alumni to recruited athletes to members of various racial and ethnic groups. Among the private schools in the study’s survey,Asian students have to score 140 points higher on the SAT to have the same chance of admission as a white student. If race weren’t a factor in admissions, the proportion of white students at these elite private schools would fall from 60 to 53 percent while that of Asian students would rise from 24 to 39 percent.
As Espenshade and Radford make clear, however, we can’t simply assume that Asian applicants are being discriminated against. The authors only had access to hard, quantifiable data, and it is at least possible that Asian applicants write such poor personal statements and are so lacking in leadership abilities that they in fact deserve to take a 140-point hit in the admissions process. Somehow, this seems unlikely. Indeed, it seems at least as plausible that admissions officers are more dismissive toward the accomplishments and personal qualities of Asian applicants than toward those of non-Asian applicants, including whites.
Granted, it is also possible that Asian applicants are somewhat less likely to graduate than white students. Perhaps they are less likely to graduate with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, the STEM fields that everyone from the president on down have identified as a priority for America’s economic future.
But wait a second. Asian students are in fact overrepresented in STEM relative to white students, and they are also considerably more likely to graduate within four years.
Of all the injustices in the world, this one might seem minor. After all, the Asian-American students who are losing out in gaining admission to elite private universities will probably do just fine. They’ll attend somewhat less selective schools and go on to have rewarding careers. That’s not the most pressing problem. Rather, the most pressing problem is that by systematically discriminating against large numbers of our most talented students, elite private universities are shortchanging themselves and the country as a whole.
In a democratic society, we have an instinctive presumption against elitism. Yet we suspend judgment when it comes to our elite universities. Collecting the nation’s brightest minds in one place has many advantages. Doing so can create an intellectual hothouse, in which researchers collaborate to advance the frontiers of useful knowledge. There is a reason Silicon Valley mushroomed around Stanford. Discrimination against Asian-Americans, like the discrimination against Jewish-Americans that was once so widespread in the Ivy League, represents the kind of unforced error we can no longer afford, particularly when the emerging economies are happy to exploit talent wherever they find it.
The corruption of the admissions process is part of why elite institutions are losing their legitimacy. New educational institutions are quickly taking their place. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the innovators behind Khan Academy and Skillshare, the most promising nonprofit and for-profit startups in the education space, respectively, were founded by Asian-Americans. Call it the revenge of the nerds.
