Demographics of higher education in the US

Politics International Politics
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Interesting report in the San Francisco Chronicle today. Asians are now the largest ethnic group in next year’s incoming class to the University of California system. This had been long the case at the two most popular schools: UCLA, and UC Berkeley. But for the first time, Asians represent the greatest percentage of the entire University as a whole.

Asians represent about 11% of California’s population, but now 36% of the UC’s student population. Whites represent 59% of California’s population, but only 35.6% of the UC student population. The proportion of Asian students have grown steadily over the past 10 years, and this looks set to continue.

In other words, whites are now an under-represented minority within California’s university system.

sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f … ICVUB1.DTL

What are the social and economic implications of this change? I’d be interested in hearing predictions… even the ones that say this means absolutely nothing, in the long run.

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Ok, I’ll be the first on board to say that its basically part of a larger trend of Asians succeeding in the U.S., and if anything, its a signifier that the U.S. is still the land of opportunity for a large part of the world. I’m sure there are some who will freak out about brain drain or mixed loyalty, but I don’t think those problems are really that big when compared with the number of Asians who have at one time or another immigrated and are just as American as me or anyone else. I’m sure there’s also some people who will try and use this fact to play up some anti-Asian agenda, but they aren’t going to succeed.

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Very interesting news cctang. In spite of affirmative action the Asian Americans have become a majority in the UC system? Good!

I don’t think there’s going to be any big socio-economic impact from it. Individually, education is important but collectively, i don’t know if there’s a measurable impact. Recent articles have talked about the long term impact on choosing Ivy Leagues schools vs. other schools. Traditional school thought had it saying that it did make a difference. New research says that it doesn’t make a difference. Capable people will succeed no matter which school s/he attended.

You might want to post this over at the Model Minority website and see how those flamers handle this :laughing:

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So?

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I wonder if cultural factors perhaps responsible? The usual, sterotypically Asian stress on education may be a factor, but I’d like to know what percentage of the students (from all groups) are first generation Americans.

I know that in Canada, many immigrants (wherever they’re from) often spend years getting the shaft, but teach their children the importance of working hard to better your own situation. As a result, while children from more settled families might grow up with expectations that things will be fine and a feeling of entitlement, children of immigrants work to make it happen.

Also, students often perform at near the same level as their friends. If enough of their friends are diligent, there’s peer pressure–or cover–to be the nerd who studies rather than messing around. Even if there isn’t a large number of 1st generation Americans in this cohort, there may be a sufficient number, exercising sufficient influence on their peers, to skew results in their favor.

As a meritocrat, all I can say is good for them.

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It proves that cultural values matter. Asian-Americans suffer the same social disadvantages a non-white minority in a majority-white country like the U.S. does, yet succeed where many African-Americans and Latino-Americans fail. Why is that?

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another possible side to this coin: what percentage are non-residents? might it have anything to do with the fact that non-residents often pay triple the tuition fees of resident students …

universities are leaving more spaces for them in order to improve bottom lines? i know that in canuckland, funding is continually being cut, while costs go up …

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[quote=“xtrain”]another possible side to this coin: what percentage are non-residents? might it have anything to do with the fact that non-residents often pay triple the tuition fees of resident students …

universities are leaving more spaces for them in order to improve bottom lines? I know that in canuckland, funding is continually being cut, while costs go up …[/quote]

With respect, xtrain, that is exactly the opposite of what is being done.

As Yellow Cartman alluded to earlier, the “affirmative action” policies in the United States have placed racist barriers in the way of most Asian students seeking admission to US universities.

Your average upper-class white kid will generally be given preferential treatment in admissions decisions over a poor Asian immigrant. My cousin, for example (a white girl who has had every advantage in life) would --and was-- given favoured in admissions preference over poor Asian immigrants who had studied hard in the face of adversity and succeeded in spite of the obstacles.

That’s what “affirmative action” means: ‘We treat people of different skin colour differently’.

It is indeed sad, but in most of the US, the decision has been made that skin colour should be a significant component of college admissions – and it is applicants of Asian descent (far more than whites, certainly) who have paid the price for this racist policy.

Any statistically high representation of Asian students at US colleges are in spite of, not because of, institutional barriers.

You make a legitimate point regarding non-residents – but as far as I know the majority of Asian students in the U of C system do not fall into that category. The U of C system allows them to charge the high tuition rate to “out of state” students of any origin – they need not be foreign.

Personally, I share YC’s surprise that despite the racist admissions policies Asian students have still managed to form 36% of the student body.

Makes you wonder what the percentage might be if they actually admitted students of all races equally…

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On the one hand, affirmative action should be scrapped out of simple fairness, but on the other side of the coin, we would likely have a situation where the percentage of blacks and Latinos in U.S. colleges would drop into the single digits. Everyone should have a shot at the American dream through higher education, and the world is not fair - some people really are disadvantaged due to social and economic circumstances. It seems unfortunate that due to the numbers game, in order to help one person we have to hurt someone else - by being admitted to a university, you are denying another person an admission.

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Affirmative action was scrapped in the University of California system about 10 years ago. This definitely has contributed to the recent surge in students of Asian descent, although the trends were already showing strong Asian growth.

In place of affirmative action, the UC system put in to place a mechanism of “recruiting” and outreach, trying to prepare more qualified under-represented minorities (Latinos, African-Americans, Native Americans) for the UC system… and walking them through the application process. In these communities where there’s no legacy of applying to higher education, that sort of help can really pay off. In fact, I think the article I linked above discusses this. I believe under-represented minorities are now a greater percentage of the UC population than they were a decade ago… (although at the flagship campuses of Berkeley/LA, their representation has dropped). In other words, this growth of Asian students over the past decade hasn’t come “at the cost of” other minority students. It’s the percentage of white students at the UC that has mostly fallen over the past decade.

I personally see both sides of the coin. The advantages of a meritocracy are obvious; you could explain it to a 4 year old. The advantages of affirmative action, on the other hand, probably requires a little more thought… but I do think it serves society well to not allow race/religion to be strongly correlated with wealth and power. History suggests this happens all too often, and a “meritocracy” will exaggerate its effects.

I’d point out that in southeast Asia, for example Malaysia, reverse-affirmative action has been institutionalized for decades. The Chinese minority is explicitly limited in higher education, while favorable policies support ethnic Malays (making up 65%+ of the population). Is there a chance that a similar policy could be implemented in California? Under what conditions, and on what time frame?

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Also keep in mind that even in places where there is affirmative action, it won’t necessarily cut against Asians as opposed to whites, even if Asians are “over represented.” For example the Michigan system that was struck down a couple years ago (03’ I think) was one that simply awarded points for being black, native american, etc. In that case you had whites and Asians equally at a disadvantage, which I think is more common than having whites actually preferable treatment.

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[quote=“Hobbes”][quote=“xtrain”]another possible side to this coin: what percentage are non-residents? might it have anything to do with the fact that non-residents often pay triple the tuition fees of resident students …

universities are leaving more spaces for them in order to improve bottom lines? I know that in canuckland, funding is continually being cut, while costs go up …[/quote]

With respect, xtrain, that is exactly the opposite of what is being done.[/quote]

:blush: i guess i let my (possibly out of date) knowledge of the great white north interfere with reading carefully. thanks for tactfully pointing it out …

i am really unfamilar with the US higher education system - also did not know that out of state must pay more - i believe that in canuckland, we all pay the same no matter which part we come from. it’s only the non-residents who get dinged for triple.

anyways, carry on …

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Not so. If you wanted to study in Quebec, you’d have to live there several years before you’d qualify for the same rates as Quebecers pay (by far the cheapest in the country). That province more heavily subsidizes posts secondary education, so they had to put in residency requirements to prevent a flood of people from everywhere else taking advantage. B.C. used to be the same, but I’m not sure it does so anymore. It’s tuition rates likely aren’t signifigantly cheaper than other provinces now.

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is quebec still a part of canada?

:stuck_out_tongue:

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[quote=“Hobbes”]As Yellow Cartman alluded to earlier, the “affirmative action” policies in the United States have placed racist barriers in the way of most Asian students seeking admission to US universities.

Your average upper-class white kid will generally be given preferential treatment in admissions decisions over a poor Asian immigrant. My cousin, for example (a white girl who has had every advantage in life) would --and was-- given favoured in admissions preference over poor Asian immigrants who had studied hard in the face of adversity and succeeded in spite of the obstacles.

That’s what “affirmative action” means: ‘We treat people of different skin colour differently’.

It is indeed sad, but in most of the US, the decision has been made that skin colour should be a significant component of college admissions – and it is applicants of Asian descent (far more than whites, certainly) who have paid the price for this racist policy.

Any statistically high representation of Asian students at US colleges are in spite of, not because of, institutional barriers.

. . . .

Personally, I share YC’s surprise that despite the racist admissions policies Asian students have still managed to form 36% of the student body.

Makes you wonder what the percentage might be if they actually admitted students of all races equally…[/quote]

I’m not familiar with the racist policies against Asian-Americans to which you are referring, but I am interested. Do you have any links? articles? And, is this unique to California or to all of the States?

Bodo

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One reason is that affirmative action is for people who need a hand up. The vast majority of Asian-Americans are middle to upper middle class. They aren’t “poor immigrants” as Hobbes said; they have much more in common with the rich white kids who had all the advantages and have nothing to complain about. They didn’t grow up in the projects in one-parent households on welfare, so why should they be able to leech off the government dole?

Most Asian expats are like the Hong Kong businessman fleeing from the '97 takeover, or intelligent professional grad students able to win a green card through years of finagling. Totally different experience from the typical half-literate Mexican fruit picker which is typical of the Hispanic immigrant to America. So of course a population of highly skilled, mostly aristocratic (cream of the crop in riches and IQ from their Asian countries) is going to do well in America. It’s the same reason that Massachussets, settled by the cream of the crop of England, did better than Georgia, which was settled by British criminals.

I mean, take a look around you, your typical Taiwanese is generally of a lot lower quality in IQ, looks, and job prospects than you typical Taiwanese-American. It’s what they call “brain drain”. The best Chinese immigrate, leaving the less competent Chinese to hold the fort back home.

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Affirmative action is not about disallowing ethnic groups into employment and school, but rather setting a quota for ethnic groups to be accepted and admitted. If anything, it is discrimination against the majority, not the minority. Affirmative action was confusing to me at first…discrimination in reverse. I think I have the basics of it down now. Correct me if I am wrong…

Affirmative action began as corrective for past governmental and social injustices against demographic groups that have been subjected to prejudice. Such groups are characterized most commonly by race, gender, or ethnicity. Affirmative action seeks to increase the representation of these demographic groups in fields of study and work in which they have traditionally been underrepresented.

During the Nixon administration, affirmative action was adopted as a federal mandate for companies with federal contracts and for labor unions whose workers were engaged in those projects. This “revised Philadelphia plan” was spearheaded by Labor Department official Arthur Fletcher.

In the 1960s and 1970s, affirmative action became overwhelmingly popular on campuses across America as mass student protests spurred schools to actively recruit minority applicants. National excitement died down in the late 1970s, and quickly turned to national controversy.

In the U.S., affirmative action programs at universities benefit mostly African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans and women (in engineering and the physical sciences). Asian Americans, although a racial minority, do not benefit at most colleges because the rate of college education among Asian Americans is higher than the other racial groups (including whites). So I can agree where you guys are saying that asians will benefit from the abolishment of affirmative action.

I personally believe that affirmative action, in universities, does more harm than good.

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The preceeding post is a nice brief sum of AA in the U.S, though I would make a couple notes. At some point along the line, the rationale switched from a reconciliation of past injustice to a promotion of diversity. Under this rationale quotas and automatic point systems have been struck down, at least in the State run educational setting (Gratz v. Bollinger). However, a type of diversity engineering is still allowed provided that its narrowly tailored to satisfy the “compelling state interest” in educational diversity. Some, for example the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, have argued that it essentially allows quotas, just not if the school explicitly calls it a quota.

Presumably the “narrowly tailored” element is supposed to require schools to consider the whole package, and not just the applicant’s race. So for example , a school presumably would have to show that the rich white kid would provide more “diversity” than the poor asian immigrant. In reality, however, people are more than a bit skeptical, though in most cases it would more likely be the poor asian kid against the black kid or hispanic kid. Even if a school wanted to limit the # of asians in the school, its unlikely they would go so far as to count a member of a minorities race against him. More often they just stop awarding any diversity benefits for asian kids, which brings them even with white kids.

Personally, I think the time has come to drop affirmative action altogether. The situation of having a dominating majority race is pretty much over, or at least will be within the next few years, so its time to move on and let racial groups sink or swim on their own.