Harvard’s Asian Problem
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
Except, of course, that it leads to these kinds of policies. Just like Jewish people are ascribed the stereotype of being good with money leads to other policies that have occurred in the past and probably still continue to this day.
To me, though, this is just another example of why higher education is becoming a parody of itself. To become personally angry about decisions that are based on the angle of my eyelids is a waste of my time; and this reaction is overwhelmingly common in the Asian community. It has been for decades since Korematsu v. United States, too. I'm not sure it's the "best" approach, but I've learned to live with it, knowing that others have it a hell of a lot worse. Is that rationalization and "giving up?" Perhaps. But I just can't bring myself to care.
Another reason is probably the culture differences. Asian people are not only interested in STEM. We do have other majors in universities. However, Asian has an equally long, if not longer, history with Europe. Many fields are "stateful", i.e. they rely on the history. For example, a physicist could have a very successful career even he does not know Newton's anecdotes. However, a art-majored student probably needs to know some history in his field --- at least, he needs to remember some names and their corresponding achievements.
People majored in literature in China definitely know poets like Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi and they have devoted lots of time to learn these poets' work. The culture barrier prohibits them from studying in another country in a different language. That's probably another reason why there's little Asian students outside STEM.
> That's probably another reason why there's little Asian students outside STEM.
I totally read that wrong the first time.
Not only are candidates more numerous, they are better prepared, some even doing a year or two in a local university to stack on the skills. In my experience, "locals" in the West don't see the sheer drive and intelligence of these students because of the language barrier (yours truly was, of course, guilty of that back then - it's been an expensive lesson). I've seen engineering undergrads with a tenuous grasp of English skip every lecture in the year and still get in the top 5% of the class (after all, grad-level maths lectures were so much more interesting) - the "Western" students were just nowhere near as prepared. There is nothing inherently special about the mythical Asian undergrad, it's just a numbers game - the top 100 Chinese candidates by IQ are equivalent, statistically, to the top 30 American ones.
The same story plays out with capital and is driving real estate prices up in major global cities. And in both cases, it is dismissed the same way that the British would dismiss the rise of the USA as a global economic power just as the Fabians put the finishing blows to prosperity at home (or, in Sydney's case, happily embraced with negative gearing and rationalized via any graspable straw). The region has issues the US did not, so the story's not written up yet.
FWIW I've seen plenty of Asians do great in non-STEM subjects (including publishing, acting and music). As a classically trained musician, I know many more Asians with a great knowledge, understanding and interest of music history and theory than Westerners, even those who studied the subject full time, even though it is theoretically the latter's "cultural baggage". I'm not a fan of Lang Lang, but hearing musicians like Yuja Wang is incredibly promising and shows that "foreigners" with not much local exposure to so called Western culture can easily master "our" arts.
Edit: Now that I eventually figured out how to get around the paywall (hint: Chrome makes it easier than Firefox, I wonder why), the article mentions this: "The suit compares its current racial admissions to Harvard’s quotas limiting Jewish students in an earlier era. In both cases, Harvard kept out minorities who would have been admitted based on academic merit."
The response I usually get when I point out this problem on HN is a glib "Hey, it's a free country. Nobody prevented you from starting up your own minority program for Asians." [1] Unfortunately, so far I haven't been able to find a proper response to this.
We're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're substantially under represented, and at the same time our presence is used as justification that other races aren't being discriminated against.
Asians are tremendously more privileged than Blacks or Hispanics in tech, but still suffer from tremendous problems ourselves. Many seem unable to comprehend this in a world view where privilege is binary.
Do you have data on this? Anecdotally it isn't hard to think of Asians in the upper echelons (e.g. Satya Nadella). A quick glance at google's management team finds Asians to be overrepresented at 4/18 Asians (6/18 if you include middle easterners).
http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/
Microsoft (2/16) and Twitter (2/14) seem similar:
http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-leaders/
https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership
(0.8/16 is what would be expected based on proportional representation.)
In the same way Barack Obama is evidence that black people have it pretty easy around here ;) There are definitely some high-profile Asians in tech, they're not exactly rare like unicorns, but the underrepresentation is plenty real.
I dug up the original article I was reading: http://the-toast.net/2014/10/23/asian-americans-media/view-a... - btw, this is IMO the most approachable/parseable summary of where Asian-Americans fit into the greater American race relations landscape I've seen yet. It's well worth a read.
It's a more general look at Asian-Americans, but there is a section specifically addressing tech.
More concretely giving numbers to the representation deficit:
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23100254/glass-ceiling-asian-a...
Even in Google's own numbers Asians represent 34% of the tech workforce and 23% in leadership roles.
Facebook's a bit worse - 41% of tech workforce Asian, 19% leadership.
Yahoo is particularly egregious - 57% Asian, 17% leadership.
Even Twitter isn't particularly great: 34% Asians in tech, 24% in leadership from their own report: https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-p...
Apriori I would not expect the demographics of leadership to look like those of tech. My simple model (with allusions to michaelochurch) is that tech is generally not the path to leadership. I.e., if 3% of techies go into leadership vs 5% of non-techies, then leadership demographics will look more like non-tech demographics than tech demographics.
The demographics of leadership actually get worse once you leave tech: Asians represent 0.8% of C-level roles, and 2.1% of board seats - against 5% in the general population. Tech is actually a relative bright spot when it comes to Asians in leadership roles.
> "The real question is why they aren't more overrepresented in leadership."
This really isn't the question at all. You're conflating two separate problems: over-representation of Asians in tech overall, vs. under-representation of Asians in progression of tech leadership. Both can be true simultaneously.
Accepting the precondition that Asians are over-represented compared to the general population, their progression to leadership roles (from both tech and non-tech origins) suggests under-representation. i.e., based on the precondition we'd expect to see more Asian leaders in these companies.
That the precondition exists is a fairly interesting problem itself, but largely separate from the argument of leadership.
At the heart of it is the notion of equality - that two equal candidates get a fair shake at a promotion/role regardless of race. Regardless of whether or not leadership positions bias towards tech candidates or non-tech candidates, the gap exists - Asians are promoted/hired into leadership positions at a lower rate than their participation in the rest of the industry.
This is particularly visible in professions where the advancement track is less vague and more straightforward - for example in law Asian-Americans represent 6.7% of associates, but only 1.8% of sr. counsel, and 1.7% of partners.
This sort of gets at the original problem I brought up - that Asians have a problem, and are a problem. The over-representation of Asians in white collar professions is used as a bludgeon with which to attack other minorities, and used to invalidate real inequities within these professions such as whether or not they're being treated fairly when it comes to promotions and advancement. The Model Minority myth is damaging all around - to other races, to Asians themselves.
And pointing out that Asians (or whoever) are underrepresented does NOT prove they don't get a "fair shake". It's also possible they are getting a fair shake and coming up short, or choosing not to be shaken. More evidence is needed.
The over-representation of Asians in white collar professions is used as a bludgeon with which to attack other minorities...
No one is "attacking other minorities". Asians are brought up to refute the "mirrortocracy" hypothesis: white gatekeepers in the industry will prevent entry by people different from them.
Describing that as an "attack" is silly.
This article contains numbers for a lot of companies: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/In-tech-even-Asians...
Why? It's only in the context of the rest of the country that complaints about the underrepresentation of other minorities makes sense.
If you really want the downvotes and accusations of racism that come with asking provocative philosophical questions, ask whether unpopular private organization of the week can do the same. Is it morally/ethically permissible (as opposed to legally permissible) for Uber to discriminate in favor of Asians?
Note that once folks have no glib answer, they will attack you.
It is an interesting choice to compare Harvard's racial admissions with that of CalTech. I would think that Harvard vs. MIT or Stanford would create a more convincing argument. So, here are the numbers:
Stanford class of 2018: 22.6% Asian [1]
MIT class of 2018: 30% Asian [2]
Harvard class of 2018: 20% Asian [3]
It looks like the writer of the article chose the school with the highest percentage Asian population to make this comparison (excluding Hawaii). [4]
[1] http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile
[2] http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile
[3] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
[4] http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-hi...
>While Supreme Court justices question the role of racial consideration as a factor in the college admissions, Stanford remains committed to upholding affirmative action, arguing that the policy helps to ensure a diverse student body. One Stanford professor has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court defending the practice.
http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/10/16/stanford-administrat...
FWIW, this line from the article is wrong, according to CalTech's CDS statements over the last decade or so: http://finance.caltech.edu/Resources/cds (see section C7 in the filings).
(this is assuming that "racial preferences" is being used to mean "racial/ethnic consideration" or "affirmative action")
The numbers apparently conflate Asian-Americans with Asian foreign students. A breakdown of the two groups would be more useful to work from given the huge numbers of wealthy Chinese fighting tooth and nail to send their kids to the most prestigious American schools.
The numbers are also skewed by simple geography. The West coast has more Asian-Americans and would be more desirable for foreign students in terms of quicker and cheaper travel between home and school. California schools can't be equitably compared to the East coast.
It's not a perfect control, though, because of Caltech's focus on STEM. Caltech does actually offer non-STEM courses (and majors). In fact, it requires students to take about 1/4 of their coursework in humanities and social sciences, which is similar to what a science major at a good liberal arts school would take. Nevertheless, no one chooses Caltech for the humanities or social sciences, whereas people DO choose Harvard for them.
Although undergraduates are generally not admitted on a department by department basis, surely the schools have to try to get some idea from the application what fields the student is interested in majoring in, and they have to take that into account in making their decisions. If you have facilities for 50 new chemistry majors a year and 50 new English Literature majors a yer, and you get 500 applicants from people whose application suggests they might go into chemistry and only 60 applicants who appear likely to go into English Lit, you are going to reject a lot of those potential chemistry majors, even if their applications look better (grades, tests, and so on) than those of many of the people you accept from the group that looks interested in English Lit.
Since many high achieving Asians are driven by pressure from their parents, and parents push their kids toward STEM a lot more often than they push toward English Literature, it is possible that Asians could be getting effectively discriminated against as a side effect of them concentrating in STEM.
[1] http://findlawimages.com/efile/supreme/briefs/02-241/02-241....
What language in that brief makes you conclude that MIT and Stanford both use race as a "significant" factor (at least as compared with Caltech)? All three schools put race in the "considered" category of their CDS submissions.
MIT considers all aspects of each candidate's background,including racial and ethnic factors..
Stanford is strongly of the view that race and national origin should no more be entirely ignore..
http://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/2014...
That will give you a few other sites that have covered the story. Some details might differ from the WSJ coverage, but it will give you enough to be able to appreciate the comments here and participate meaningfully in the discussion.
Another significant fraction are legacies.
Funny, what you say about Asians and sports "anecdotally" is exactly what was said to "explain" discrimination against Jews in the Ivy League.
Edit: That was using Firefox's incognito mode; in Chrome incognito it worked. I can't imagine how that could possibly be true. Maybe it's because the first time I clicked on the wsj link in FF I wasn't incognito and the WSJ recorded my IP/UA? In any case, no, it's not an easily solved paywall.
If it can help anyone access the article, I use the Disconnect, Adblock plus, and self destructing cookies add-ons.
HN wants the most substantive article for a story, and also prefers non-paywalled links. From that we can deduce one bit of etiquette, which is that if you post a paywalled article you're implicitly promising that it's the best one, i.e. that you searched and there's nothing else as good on this story. In such a case, as long as it falls in the workaround-able category (which most paywalls do), it's ok.
That's on the submitter side. On the reader side, the etiquette might be that you should point out a non-paywalled URL if you can find one that's as good (in which case we'll be happy to switch to it), and also that you probably shouldn't post generic complaints about paywalls to the thread, which are guaranteed to be off-topic.
It's not a status quo anyone's happy with, and we'd be happy to hear suggestions of a better way, but please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8634076 before you do.
The anti-European ruling class of the Western world is unintentionally hurting Asians as well. No kidding. But they really didn't want this to happen, and any Asians hurt by these policies should try to understand: You are just collateral damage--the real enemy is people of European descent. This has been going on for a long time.
I'm sure they'll straighten it out. Trial balloons on the topic are always going up.
What's your point?
And fair to those who have no control over their genotype?
_______
1. When I say "on the side", I basically mean that probably nobody is going to be upset at BlackGirlsCode.com enough to actually file a lawsuit(and have a chance at winning) the way Harvard is getting sued now. Is this fair/right? Probably not, but I think this is the best way to navigate the shaky terrain of public opinion & racism.
About GPA/SAT: According to Goodhart's Law, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." However, a measure is required and should be consistent.
Asians are not born to be good at GPA, American Asians are good at that because the universities admission system and immigrant policy are specifically designed to select students who are good at school. The first generation of Asians in the US are most grad students from foreign countries.
Put another way: If fairness is your goal what about the kids who don't have a high GPA score? What happened to their fair chance to go to Harvard?