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The Los Angeles Times is running an article describing the challenges faced by Asian Americans as they apply for acceptance to top colleges.
The article describes the impact that their race and ethnicity has on their SAT scores:
Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth.
She points to the first column. African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.
She points to the second column. “Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”
The last column draws gasps. Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.
“Do Asians need higher test scores? Is it harder for Asians to get into college? The answer is yes,” Lee says.
A core tenet of the American philosophy, even from before the days of the Founding Fathers, is that through hard work and excellence one should be able to obtain success in life. But is this ideal even possible when certain underachieving groups are given artificial advantages, while those with the most merit are artificially held back?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @11:08AM
Firstly lowering/different standards to achieve target racial demographics is a stupid and bad idea. Doubt you'd want the pilots of your airliner passing because they were black and there weren't enough black pilots ;).
But basically they're saying that the SAT test isn't that useful a test for selecting candidates. There's no actual "pass" score that's useful, so they can set different pass points based on race and still end up with graduates of desired quality. If this is not true then they'll just have to let fewer blacks in till enough blacks get better at the SAT.
I don't think you can have a "better" test because if you do a cultural and experience diversity test, the Asian Americans will probably go to tuition for that too and learn them some hip-hop (in additional to violin, piano, tennis and starcraft ;) ) and maybe do some charity/aid work too. While the poor blacks stuck in inner cities might not do as well in such tests. Proponents of "winner-takes-all" systems should take note.
A possible workaround is to have vocational paths of high standard too: http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-04-29/what-germany-can-teach-the-u-dot-s-dot-about-vocational-education [bloomberg.com]
See also the Finnish approach - their priority is equality in that everyone gets good education - there's not supposed to be a huge difference in quality amongst schools, thus there's no big "battle" to go to particular schools.
p.s. I suppose it's a good thing for the Hawaiians and "Other Pacific Islanders" that they are no longer put in the same category along with Asians ;).
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday March 02 2015, @04:46PM
Why is this even necessary? You say "desired quality", but it seems that standards are adjusted to the available space, rather than the other way around of adjusting the available space to the standards. What do we do about a bigger high school graduating class? Hire more professors? Not entirely. We raise standards! That is totally backwards. It gives the lie to the whole idea of merit.
But why? Why even do this screening? Shouldn't every high school grad who sincerely wants a college education be able to go? Don't we have the space? Is it lack of money? Richest nation in the world, and we can't afford to educate everyone, WTF? The system of grants and scholarships is pretty patchy, and as for student loans, well, we know that's a whole different game of exploitation of the young. To their shame, universities indulge in a lot of financial scams, such as the textbook racket, the 4 year degree plan that actually takes 5 or 6 years, refusing to accept credits for classes taken at other institutions, and of course the football program. Lately, we've had the problem of the administrative level sinecure, and the outrageous compensation of even the ones who do a good job. Then there's the whole question of how teaching should be done. Is the lecture really the best way? In a classroom? I like seeing pushback on these issues with open textbooks and MOOCs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 02 2015, @05:36PM
Why even do this screening? Shouldn't every high school grad who sincerely wants a college education be able to go?
In the USA they like having winners and losers. Allowing everyone into college who has a reasonable chance of graduating college is unamerican.
And yes it is due to the lack of resources. There are just so many teachers, professors, labs and particle accelerators available for students.
Plus they prefer to have expensive wars in the middle east, very expensive warplanes and ships, and billion-dollar bailouts for bankers.