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Comment by patrickgzill | Hacker News Reader

"It was understood that since Jews represented a minority percentage of the overall population, the university would only accept that percentage into the student body. This was in line with the Soviet Union’s unofficial policy of anti-semitism in the post-Stalin era."

So, quotas... are there quotas, official or unofficial, in the USA university system?

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US laws essentially encourage unwritten quotas. While actual numbers are prohibited [0], race is explicitly listed as a legal factor to consider in admission. (Supreme court decision; can't remember the citation.)

So you can't say "we're letting in 300 of RACE this year." But, when you have 301 of RACE, you can say, "I feel like the number of RACE we've admitted this year negatively impacts the diversity of our student body."

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action#cite_ref-6

It is different, however, to say "we want more of minority X at the expense of the majoity" than to say 'the maximum number of minority X is Y"

At public schools in the US, quota systems are officially illegal (UC Regents v. Bakke), but they are allowed to use admissions to encourage diversity (Grutter v. Bollinger).

In general, both public and private schools tend to over-admit minorities (in proportion to their presence in the population), so from the other perspective, are discriminating against majorities.

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