From an op-ed by Marc B. Haefele in the LA Times: "Is UC Opening the Door to Trouble?"
In other words, George W. Bush's Talented Tenth of Texas plan is being imported (which he shoved through when the 1995 Hopwood decision temporarily banned racial preferences in Texas), except in California it will be the Excellent Eleventh.
An old college friend who is a surgeon in Austin, Texas came out to visit Southern California colleges recently with his high school kid. I told him that my opinion is that you ought to go to college where you're most likely to end up so that you'll have your college friends around you when you are in your 20s and need a social set. And if you start out in Austin, which everybody says is a wonderful small city to wind up in (Is that because it's more German-American than the rest of Texas's cities?), then why not go to the University of Texas at Austin?
But his kid is only at about the 85th percentile by class rank in high school, not the crucial 90th percentile. Granted, that's the 85 percentile at the kind of high school that an Austin surgeon who went to Rice sends his children to, but the quality of the student body doesn't matter under GWB's Talented Tenth plan.
Parents finally got the Texas legislature to cut that plan back a little recently, but now they are bringing it to California.
One of the ideas behind having students take three SAT Subject exams is that one can be a foreign language, which makes it a gimme putt for immigrants. (That's bad for blacks, though, because they despise all foreign languages other than French, especially Spanish.) But apparently Hispanics and blacks have a hard time remembering to sign up to take the tests.
Actually, one reason for dropping these three extra tests sounds reasonable, in kind of a stupid way: As the College Board's biggest client, UC forced all sorts of changes to the main SAT, like adding the little-liked Writing test, dropping analogies, and upping the hardness of the math. In other words, a lot of stuff that UC was tracking through SAT Subject Tests has now been incorporated in the main SAT itself, so it might make sense to drop the SAT Subject Test requirements. Of course, screwing around with the main SAT was probably a bad idea, but what's done is done.
It's hard to see why since so many Non-Asian Minorities go to schools that are overwhelmingly NAM. I would think the Excellent Eleventh rule would bring in lots more NAMs than the current Terrific Twenty-Fifth program.
Of course, right now the UC system has about a 1000 open spots each year it can't seem to fill at its new UC Merced campus that Cruz Bustamante had located out in the middle of Damn All on the theory that if you stick a research university out among a bunch of strawberry pickers, the strawberry pickers will turn into researchers by osmosis. Or something. They could have built the latest UC school near Napa Valley or near San Luis Obispo or Escondido or Eureka or at the serene old Camarillo looney bin where Cal State Channel Islands went instead, but, no, the Latino Caucus made them stick it in the Central Valley where Davis already is and nobody wants to go.
For 13 years, University of California officials have wrestled with a seemingly insoluble problem: how to sustain a student body that reflects the state's vast diversity without violating Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot measure banning race-based affirmative action.
The latest attempt to formulate a policy that is both legal and capable of increasing diversity is a controversial new admissions mandate that will take effect in fall 2012. ...
Currently, the top 12.5% of high school seniors in the state are guaranteed admission to a UC school -- something originally set out in the 1960 California Master Plan for Higher Education. More recently, the top 4% of students at all schools in the state have been assured a spot. Under the new guidelines, only the top 9% statewide are guaranteed spots, as well as the top 9% at every high school. The theory is that this will guarantee more spots for students at underperforming high schools where opportunities are not as great and more of the students are underrepresented minorities.
In other words, George W. Bush's Talented Tenth of Texas plan is being imported (which he shoved through when the 1995 Hopwood decision temporarily banned racial preferences in Texas), except in California it will be the Excellent Eleventh.
An old college friend who is a surgeon in Austin, Texas came out to visit Southern California colleges recently with his high school kid. I told him that my opinion is that you ought to go to college where you're most likely to end up so that you'll have your college friends around you when you are in your 20s and need a social set. And if you start out in Austin, which everybody says is a wonderful small city to wind up in (Is that because it's more German-American than the rest of Texas's cities?), then why not go to the University of Texas at Austin?
But his kid is only at about the 85th percentile by class rank in high school, not the crucial 90th percentile. Granted, that's the 85 percentile at the kind of high school that an Austin surgeon who went to Rice sends his children to, but the quality of the student body doesn't matter under GWB's Talented Tenth plan.
Parents finally got the Texas legislature to cut that plan back a little recently, but now they are bringing it to California.
The new rules also will create a larger pool of students entitled to be considered for -- but not guaranteed -- admission. To be considered, applicants must still take required college prep courses, have a 3.0 grade-point average and take the basic SAT exam. But they will no longer be required to also take SAT subject tests, something the plan's designers hope will benefit black and Latino students, who are less likely to take the exams.
One of the ideas behind having students take three SAT Subject exams is that one can be a foreign language, which makes it a gimme putt for immigrants. (That's bad for blacks, though, because they despise all foreign languages other than French, especially Spanish.) But apparently Hispanics and blacks have a hard time remembering to sign up to take the tests.
Actually, one reason for dropping these three extra tests sounds reasonable, in kind of a stupid way: As the College Board's biggest client, UC forced all sorts of changes to the main SAT, like adding the little-liked Writing test, dropping analogies, and upping the hardness of the math. In other words, a lot of stuff that UC was tracking through SAT Subject Tests has now been incorporated in the main SAT itself, so it might make sense to drop the SAT Subject Test requirements. Of course, screwing around with the main SAT was probably a bad idea, but what's done is done.
But as is always the case when admissions policies change, there will be winners and losers. The plan's critics say it is unlikely to bring in more black and Latino students and that white applicants will be the biggest beneficiaries.
It's hard to see why since so many Non-Asian Minorities go to schools that are overwhelmingly NAM. I would think the Excellent Eleventh rule would bring in lots more NAMs than the current Terrific Twenty-Fifth program.
Of course, right now the UC system has about a 1000 open spots each year it can't seem to fill at its new UC Merced campus that Cruz Bustamante had located out in the middle of Damn All on the theory that if you stick a research university out among a bunch of strawberry pickers, the strawberry pickers will turn into researchers by osmosis. Or something. They could have built the latest UC school near Napa Valley or near San Luis Obispo or Escondido or Eureka or at the serene old Camarillo looney bin where Cal State Channel Islands went instead, but, no, the Latino Caucus made them stick it in the Central Valley where Davis already is and nobody wants to go.
More important, they allege, it will slash the UC eligibility of Asian American students, who benefit by the current larger guarantee of placement for top students statewide.
Sacramento's 10-member Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus has proclaimed the plan to be outright discrimination against Asian Pacific Islanders. And many Asian Americans see the move as directly aimed at bringing down their numbers in California's universities.
Is this true?
Who knows?
I haven't seen much evidence presented for this popular theory, other than it's likely that Asians remember to sign up for three secondary tests when everybody else forgets. (You have to get UC applications in by October 31st, two months before Cal Tech applications, so lots of people forget.) Another possibility is that the Asian Caucus just figures that by raising a stink they'll remind people of their power, the way a baseball manager will yell and scream about an umpire's call not because he will get it changed but to get the next one shaded in his favor.
As I've said before, we no longer live in an Age of Ideologies where it's Capitalism vs. Communism, Democracy vs. Fascism. Like Francis Fukuyama said, Communism and Fascism lost. Instead, we now live in the Age of the Fine Print, where you have to read all the fine print to figure out whether some government action is out to get you.
Some people get Legislative Caucuses to read the fine print for them.
Others don't.
Will the Republican Party read the fine print for its supporters? Republican governor George W. Bush sure didn't.
Who knows?
I haven't seen much evidence presented for this popular theory, other than it's likely that Asians remember to sign up for three secondary tests when everybody else forgets. (You have to get UC applications in by October 31st, two months before Cal Tech applications, so lots of people forget.) Another possibility is that the Asian Caucus just figures that by raising a stink they'll remind people of their power, the way a baseball manager will yell and scream about an umpire's call not because he will get it changed but to get the next one shaded in his favor.
As I've said before, we no longer live in an Age of Ideologies where it's Capitalism vs. Communism, Democracy vs. Fascism. Like Francis Fukuyama said, Communism and Fascism lost. Instead, we now live in the Age of the Fine Print, where you have to read all the fine print to figure out whether some government action is out to get you.
Some people get Legislative Caucuses to read the fine print for them.
Others don't.
Will the Republican Party read the fine print for its supporters? Republican governor George W. Bush sure didn't.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
56 comments:
Doesn't diversity just complicate the hell out of everything?! I doubt universities in Japan have this problem.
Austin is no longer that small, but it is wonderful. And a lot of the small towns in the hill country are wonderful (and the small towns are still very German-American, though I don't know if that's why they're nice).
I remember reading Texas top 10 percent stories about student who went to ultra competitive schools like Bellaire in Houston, were in the 11th or 12th percentile, National Merit, etc., accepted to prestigious universities elsewhere, but couldn't get into UT because they weren't the right shade. This was after they brought back AA AND still had the 10 percent. I hadn't heard they had scaled it back. Glad they did.
Is this a benefit for whites disguising itself as affirmative action for underrepped minorities?
I could see how whites would primarily benefit even if many non-asian minorities theoretically could, if whites are more likely to actually USE the benefit.
Hopefully Anonymous
http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com
"if you stick a research university out among a bunch of strawberry pickers, the strawberry pickers will turn into researchers by osmosis"
And buy $750,000 houses.
Peter
Don't take this comment the wrong way. UC should admit students most likely to benefit from a UC education and best represent the school in their post-college careers.
But after reading the LAT article, it's hard to see how the endless machinations of the UC board on behalf of "diversity" are obviously preferable to straightforward racial quotas.
Somewhat related to this article, I was thinking the other day who benefits most under our country's current culture of race-based preferences and who benefits least. The person who would benefit most would be an American-born Hispanic person of 100% European stock (like many of Miami's Cubans). Because of their whiteness they would have no trouble moving among White social and business circles, and because of their surname and heritage they could also do the same among Hispanic circles. But most importantly, they would receive all of the affirmative-action benefits of being Hispanic.
The person who would benefit least would be a Cambodian-born immigrant. Cambodians are the lowest rung of Southeast Asians (who in general are less successful and intelligent than East Asians), and perform more like Hispanics in school and the workplace. So they receive none of the benefits of being Asian, and all of the drawbacks (mainly, discrimination in college admissions).
Another possibility is that the Asian Caucus just figures that by raising a stink they'll remind people of their power, the way a baseball manager will yell and scream about an umpire's call not because he will get it changed but to get the next one shaded in his favor.
Interpersonal conflict in a nutshell.
Is there some actual legal mandate that the student body "reflects the state's vast diversity"?
Achievement gap among students stalled
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/
08/18/BAJS199Q80.DTL&tsp=1
Nonetheless, state education officials - for the seventh straight year as well - bemoaned the seemingly unyielding gap in scores between white or Asian students and their black or Hispanic peers. Since 2003, the gaps between white students and black or Hispanic students has barely budged, fluctuating by a few points, but generally stagnant.
"The number one priority of my office is to close this persistent achievement gap that deprives too many students of color opportunities to succeed in school and in life," said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell in a statement.
The real issue is:there is a mighty big catastrophe in the making.
What happens when this demographic and resource scarcity experiment is scaled to the nation as a whole?
How can there be any social peace?
How many more states have to be wrecked beyond repair before White Amerians revolt against the multi-racial dystopia? And if they do, what happens? Does anybody here have the guts to state the obvious. It is time to take this issue out of the policy wonk realm.
American society will implode at some point in time. Anybody want to predict when it will implode?
Thanks a mill, Kennedy clan ,Bush Clan, Jacob Javitts-his niece Darlene Javitts was Miss NYS in 1976-Emanuel Celler,Lindsay Graham,congressmen Peter King,Steve Israel...and all the other traitors in the Beltway.
Steve - Austin is not a wonderful "small city." It's the fourth largest city in Texas, I believe the 11th largest MSA and will probably be the center of the largest MSA in the world within 20 years (the emerging "Texas Triangle" between DFW, Houston and San Antonio)."
So it's extremely debatable that Austin is a "small city." It's also debatable that it's "wonderful." All the associated social woes of a big city are beginning to manifest in Austin - higher crime, increased drain of social services, long waits at hospitals, failing health infrastructure, traffic issues, on and on. Sadly, Austin's city council and management have historically been as liberal as say, Berkeley's. Fortunately, the incredibly property-rights, weak government constitution of Texas limits their excesses. But still it's a disaster - the Austin City Council lives in utter denial of the social woes here.
In addition, Austin is a de facto "sanctuary city." Massive costs are accrued at the municipal and county level by a huge immigrant base that, for example, doesn't know you can't dump used motor oil into a creek bed.
Back on topic, Bush's "talented tenth" plan sort of works in the short run because the top ten percent from the Valley and Houston's, DFW's, San Antonio's and increasingly, Austin's abysmal public schools flunk out quickly, leaving the top ten percent of schools like Westlake High (a wealthy micro-community that is more or less within the Austin city limits) to stay on and not ruin the academics of UT and TAMU. Additionally, there are tons of crappy state system schools like UT san antonio and TAMU - Corpus Christi (an incredible party school) to handle the middle achievers who do manage to hang on.
Overall, a lot of the reason why Texas is not a disaster (yet) like California is the Texas state constitution.
Check out Austin sometime Steve. It's a real proving ground for a lot of your ideas.
You know the simple solution to Asian American overrepresentation in the UC campuses is for the state of CA to pay the tuition differential between going to a public state college out of state and attending a UC school. That will expand the number of inexpensive options for Asian Americans in CA and free up some spots for non-Asians.
I loved the following sentence:
"But California must take care to not have the gains of one ethnic group come at the expense of another"
UT's solution to the problem was to simply admit everybody. Besides Top10 and very lenient transfer programs, until recently the school admitted every in-state applicant meeting some arbitrary, not-too-high SAT cut off(~1320, last i heard). But now that Top10 threatens to swallow the entire entering class (to the point where the school with be unable to recruit athletes!) has it become a problem.
http://www.discriminations.us/2009/02/more_entertainment_from_califo.html
"According to data prepared by the university and just starting to receive attention, 36 percent of those admitted to the university system in 2007-8 were Asian Americans. Applying the new admissions standards, that percentage would drop to 29-32 percent. In contrast, white applicants made up 34 percent of those admitted in 2007-8. Under the proposed reforms, they would have made up 41 to 44 percent of the entering class. The bottom line is that Asian Americans would shift from being the largest group gaining admission to the University of California to the second."
It's going to be very, very difficult to wish away the following numbers:
Students by Ethnicity, State of California, 2007-08
ed-data.k12.ca.us
Hispanic: 48.7%
White: 28.5%
Asian: 8.2%
Pacific Islander: 0.6%
Filipino: 2.7%
Black: 7.4%
American Indian: 0.8%
Multiracial: 3%
The people who make the babies make the future.
Frankly, in another 10 or 15 years, most of the admissions to the UC system will be incapable of passing remedial English or remedial Mathematics.
Thing is, there is no 'Anglo' caucus to say, hey, why can't we keep the benefit of the institutions that our forefathers built. Sure there have been 'Asians' in California for a long time, but the overwhelming number of these kids, I'll bet, are first generation. When my nieces and nephews grandparents -- i.e. my parents -- were paying for the UC, a lot, perhaps most, of the Asian kids grandparents were in Korea or wherever. So, while I don't want quotas for whites, I am not going to feel bad if a new admissions system helps us and hurts Asians, Latinos, or blacks.
Too bad we don't have a 'White' caucus to stick up for the white kids.
Hey, funny that the question of the day at the local radio station is whether race should be a factor in college admissions.
http://www.ktrh.com/main.html
Chronicle of Higher Education article, August 17, 2009
Federal Court Throws Out Challenge to U. of Texas Admissions Policy
By Katherine Mangan
Austin, Tex.
A federal judge on Monday tossed out a lawsuit filed by two white applicants to the University of Texas at Austin who said they were rejected because of admissions policies that unfairly favored members of minority groups.
Judge Sam Sparks of the U.S. District Court here ruled that the university's admissions policies were narrowly tailored, especially as they relate to race, and were thus constitutional.
http://chronicle.com/article/Federal-Court-Throws-Out/48023/
Off-topic, but in a recent thread, people were talking about Hussein Bolt & Cris Cyborg Santos being doped out of their minds.
Well check out this story:
Is she really a HE? Women's 800m runner shrugs off gender storm to take gold
By Stewart Maclean
Last updated at 9:02 PM on 19th August 2009
dailymail.co.uk
US News Blog Report on Texas case
You can post a comment.
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2009/08/18/court-upholds-texas-admissions-policy.html
Court Upholds Texas Admissions Policy
August 18, 2009 05:33 PM ET | Jessica Calefati | Permanent Link | Print
A federal judge on Monday ruled in favor of the University of Texas-Austin and against two white applicants to the state's flagship public college who sued because they felt the school's admissions policies unfairly favored minority applicants, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks found that the university's admissions policies were narrowly tailored, especially in terms of race, and therefore constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the University of Michigan Law School's use of race in admissions, guided Sparks's decision. "The Texas solicitor general summarized this case best when he stated, 'If the plaintiffs are right, Grutter is wrong,' " Sparks wrote in his decision.
- continue reading story at US News blog
"And if you start out in Austin, which everybody says is a wonderful small city to wind up in (Is that because it's more German-American than the rest of Texas's cities?)"
Yeah, I dunno about that. Toledo, OH is heavily German, and it's no paradise. It's like Detroit, if it was run by the Disney corporation. For that matter, even metro-Detroit is heavily German. Even if you ignore the city entirely, most of Detroit's suburbs are also extremely dysfunctional.
"Besides Top10 and very lenient transfer programs, until recently the school admitted every in-state applicant meeting some arbitrary, not-too-high SAT cut off(~1320, last i heard)."
They cut out that SAT automatic admit when they implemented the top 10 percent rule or very shortly after, and transfers got harder due to the top 10 as well. There were people with high SAT scores being rejected due to the top 10 percent.
"Somewhat related to this article, I was thinking the other day who benefits most under our country's current culture of race-based preferences and who benefits least. The person who would benefit most would be an American-born Hispanic person of 100% European stock (like many of Miami's Cubans). Because of their whiteness they would have no trouble moving among White social and business circles, and because of their surname and heritage they could also do the same among Hispanic circles."
I think you would have to include Jews as among the winners of this system. Not simply from well, just actually counting the winners, but because of their whiteness they're not really a visible, elite minority easily recognized by the majority of white gentiles. Jews compose a significant part of elite white social and business circles, and enjoy passing under the radar so to speak as part of a homogeneous white elite in the eyes of the white gentile majority.
And they are often invulnerable to the attacks or criticisms of whites in general and of the white elite in particular, despite being a major part of it because explicitly specifying Jews is almost impossible and prevented, as it's considered 1) anti-Semitic and 2) somehow suggesting that Jews aren't, or are less, or different from, "white" than white gentiles and this is a huge no-no. So the attacks and criticisms of the white elite often still involve trotting out the old "WASP elite is still running things" idea despite being a moribund and virtually nonexistent class for decades, attacking "blue-eyed bankers", etc.
In Germany, Jews were very assimilated and composed much of the economically successful professional class, but their high degree of assimilation didn't protect them from being a relatively recognizable and distinct minority in the absence of more different, distinct minorities. In the US today, the presence of more different minorities i.e. blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc., Jews are less liable to be recognized as distinct from the white gentile majority.
If Asians rather than Jews composed such a significant part of the elite media, business, professional, entertainment circles, the dynamics in relations between the white gentile majority and the elite class would be much different.
"For 13 years, University of California officials have wrestled with a seemingly insoluble problem: how to sustain a student body that reflects the state's vast diversity without violating Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot measure banning race-based affirmative action. Perhaps it's high time UC officials asked themselves why they -- and the taxpayers' of the state -- should care."
Article fixed.
PR
Asians are already positioned to take advantage. Usually, once a school turns 30% NAM, the white student population just clears out, but frequently the Asians will stay and enjoy easy access to AP courses and high class rank. Whereas, in Cupertino, where nearly every kid has a father with a graduate degree, being a B+ student with a 1350 SAT means epic fail and San Jose State.
I have a Chinese colleague living in Hayward who gamed the system by sending his two brightish kids to competitive private schools K-8. After junior high, he enrolled them in the iffy local public high school where they academically excelled. Result: his two kids attended UCBerkeley. I concur with his strategy since pretty much all the academic skills you're gonna have, you get before the age of 15. I took the SAT my freshman year(for fun)and junior year in high school; the scores were statistically identical.
So one unintended consequence of the UC admissions policy change might be Chinese and Indian parents busing their own kids to the wrong side of the tracks.
I was thinking the other day who benefits most under our country's current culture of race-based preferences and who benefits least. The person who would benefit most would be an American-born Hispanic person of 100% European stock (like many of Miami's Cubans). Because of their whiteness they would have no trouble moving among White social and business circles, and because of their surname and heritage they could also do the same among Hispanic circles. But most importantly, they would receive all of the affirmative-action benefits of being Hispanic.
What about a person of completely white appearance with a very tiny amount of black ancestry? One thirty-second, something like that. They'd qualify for AA and be able to mix in both black and white society.
Peter
"They cut out that SAT automatic admit when they implemented the top 10 percent rule or very shortly after, and transfers got harder due to the top 10 as well. There were people with high SAT scores being rejected due to the top 10 percent."
The Texas top 10% automatic admission only guarantees admission to the university, not any given program. Back in the early 80's my sister got in on the top 10% rule but many majors weren't open to her. I was not in the top 10% but got accepted into the engineering program on SAT score.
You mean to say the top 10% of each individual high school is guaranteed to get into university? This system is completely unfair, and would be even if California was all white. It might be easy to be in the top 10% in some small rural schools and much more difficult in a trendy schools in the city.
If you want to accept the top 10%, then it should be the top 10% in some sort of state-wide exams that everyone writes.
OT
Which way LA discusses "reverse red-lining," foreclosure's "disparate impact" on Blacks and Latinos and banks targeting "communities of color" via "institutional racism."
A teeth grinding amount of cognitive dissonance.
http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPlayer2.html?type=audio&id=ww090819prop_8_goes_to_feder
UT's solution to the problem was to simply admit everybody. Besides Top10 and very lenient transfer programs, until recently the school admitted every in-state applicant meeting some arbitrary, not-too-high SAT cut off(~1320, last i heard)
Isn't a 1320 (out of the old 1600) close to what black students at Harvard average? 1320 is only reasonably discriminating in white and Asian students, but that's a pretty big barrier for NAMs.
... the UC system has about a 1000 open spots each year it can't seem to fill at its new UC Merced campus that Cruz Bustamante had located out in the middle of Damn All ....
The lovely Michelle Khine found herself at the UC Merced campus in 2006 to manage her first biomedical lab. She wanted to develop chip based microfluidic diagnostic chips, but had no funding. Instead she used her childhood experiences painting and then cooking 'Shrinky Dink' material to design and cheaply make her own microfluidic diagnostic chips using AutoCAD, a laser printer, and a paper-like plastic. Well, the rest is microfluidics history, since labs everywhere are adapting Michelle's microfluidic prototyping technique. This year Michelle Khine is among Technology Review's TR 35 Young Innovators for 2009. However, Professor Khine was unavailable to welcome America's first Michelle at UC Merced's graduation last Junes as a UC Merced biomedical researcher, since she had left to accept an attractive offer from UC Irvine months before.
"Frankly, in another 10 or 15 years, most of the admissions to the UC system will be incapable of passing remedial English or remedial Mathematics."
The coming Latino majority will generate insufficient tax revenue to support the current UC and Cal State systems. And what state money there is will be chiefly directed to welfare, public housing, law enforcement, prisons, and daycare (public schools).
I have often pointed out to my professorial friends that to celebrate diversity is to invite irrelevance in a NAM dominated society with no intellectual curiosity. Already, we see the Obama administration hobbling the NASA budget, killing off any hope of a US manned mission to Mars -- probably forever. But that was only a high IQ, white science nerd aspiration anyway, celebrated in the imaginations of 1960’s White America.
The way I see it UC will need to close about half its campuses and cut way back on fluff academic departments which don't bring in much federal or private grant money. The state colleges will need to concentrate on occupational training along the lines of the DeVry Institute or the community colleges. UC's raison d'etre was strongly tied to the European immigrant dream of social mobility through higher education. But Latinos are a backward caste, who will become increasingly downwardly mobile as more of them compete for a diminishing number of low skill jobs.
Case in point. I’ve lived in Berkeley for 16 years. During that time, I have occasionally visited a certain corner market, always owned by Koreans. In 1993, two Hispanic teenage girls were employed to work in the deli. Since that time, the store has changed owners three times. The girls are in their early 30’s, still working at the deli counter, but now they each have three kids apiece. The ones in middle school sometime stop by the store. They barely speak English. What future is there for them but to follow mami’s footsteps into the sandwich assembly trade?
"UT's solution to the problem was to simply admit everybody. Besides Top10 and very lenient transfer programs, until recently the school admitted every in-state applicant meeting some arbitrary, not-too-high SAT cut off(~1320, last i heard)
Isn't a 1320 (out of the old 1600) close to what black students at Harvard average? 1320 is only reasonably discriminating in white and Asian students, but that's a pretty big barrier for NAMs."
The statewide average SAT score in California is 1500 out of 2400.
http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Accountability/highschoolreports.asp?reportNumber=1&tab=3&fyr=0708&county=00&district=00000&school=#satresults
I get so confused now that they changed from 1600 to 2400 because I never know what is being referred to.
Anyway 1350 out of 1600 is about the 84%tile.
1350 out of 2400 is about the 32%tile.
http://professionals.collegeboard.com/data-reports-research/sat/data-tables
Pretty lame reasoning here Steve. I'm not sure if it's because you're fishing for comments or blinded by the anti-asian resentment engendered by having a white son about to enter the college application fray in CA.
An earlier post of yours stated that NE Asians UC applicants outperformed Whites in the SAT subject tests (measure of motivation and preparation) but were about equal in the SAT exam itself (measure of general intelligence g). Motivation and general intelligence are the two dominate factors for predicting success in college.
By eliminating the SAT subject test, the UC system will obviously hurt Asians who top this meaningful metric. The primary beneficiaries will be whites who will suddenly appear equally academically competitive based on an ever diminishing set of objective criteria.
This is an affirmative action handout for whites at the expense of asians no different than the handout blacks/hispanics receive at the cost to whites/asians. In the latter all academic standards are lowered to boost NAM percentages and in the former the valuable predictive metric of motivation/preparation in the SAT Ach Tests are thrown out to depress asian acceptance rates to benefit whites. So much for a merit-based society that rewards individual talent and effort.
Why toss out the two red herringsat at the end of your post? Why do you suggest only asians can remember the SAT Ach Test deadline? Is it asian's higher IQ that gives them better future time orientation than those impulsive low-IQ whites? Why do you suggest that NE Asians may be flexing their special interest lobby muscles when you know they lack both the numbers and such mau mauing goes against the strategy, character and history of the NE Asians who head such organizations? Have you ever seen a pattern of such mau mauing by NE Asians. The few that care just ride on the traditional NAM AA crusades to the detriment of asians.
It will be interesting to watch the long-term effects this double reverse racism asians face at UC schools and in the US in general. The operating assumption will be that any UC Asian is much brighter and capable than other UC graduate. You can see this effect already in how one Shanghai University ranks UC universities near the very top of the world: UC Berkeley is #3 (after Harvard and Stanford) and UC schools make up 20% of the top 20 universities worldwide.
As hard as you son has it in his UC college applications, have a little pity for the even more systematically screwed over american-born asians. These schmucks suffer even greater reverse discrimination and have to directly compete against the top parachute kids from China's 1.3b population (and elsewhere in Asia).
pretty much all the academic skills you're gonna have, you get before the age of 15. I took the SAT my freshman year(for fun)and junior year in high school; the scores were statistically identical.
I took the (old) SAT twice as well. I think once as a junior and once as a senior. My score was 110 points higher the second time 'round.
"Back in the early 80's my sister got in on the top 10% rule but many majors weren't open to her. I was not in the top 10% but got accepted into the engineering program on SAT score."
A high SAT score will no longer guarantee you even basic admissions, and has not for about 10 years. I don't doubt Business and Engineering and Nursing still have even more stringent requirements, but now your SAT score might not even get you in. There have been NUMEROUS cases of people with high SAT scores NOT getting in. That is the controversy. Before the top 10 percent rule, which came into effect as state policy in the late 1990s in response to Hopwood, people were admitted under a matrix of class rank and SAT. If your class rank was high you could have a lower SAT score and vice versa (back in the mid 1990s at least you did have to have some minimal score for automatic admit). The top ten percent rule, which, again, was implemented in the late 1990s, meant you didn't even need that.
Some Texas districts yet to change grading policies
07:01 AM CDT on Tuesday, August 18, 2009
kunmuth@dallasnews.com
A new state law aims to stop school district policies that bar teachers from giving students grades lower than a 50, a 60 or even a 70.
But with less than a week before fall classes begin, some districts aren't ready to change their policies.
Dallas ISD officials say that because the law doesn't specifically mention report card grades, district policy remains that teachers may not assign a grade lower than a 50 on six-week grades.
"Districts need to give accurate grades to students, and that includes report card grades," said TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe. "It's pretty simple, give the grade students earned and stick with that."
Dallas school district spokesman Jon Dahlander said the language in the bill does not address low report card grades.
"Our interpretation is that our policies do not need to be changed," he said. "The language of the bill is very specific to teachers' grades on assignments and does not address the lowest grade appearing on a report card."
Fort Worth school officials aren't yet changing their policy that sets 50 as the lowest six-week grade. But they say they will convene teachers' committees to re-examine their current grading policies."
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081809dnmetgradingchanges.3d76d47.html
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Notice the determination of school officials to avoid assigning accurate assessments of student performance.
"You can see this effect already in how one Shanghai University ranks UC universities near the very top of the world: UC Berkeley is #3 (after Harvard and Stanford) and UC schools make up 20% of the top 20 universities worldwide."
The Shanghai rankings have nothing to do with this imaginary effect.
In the first place, how could we "see this effect already" when the cause you attribute to it hasn't even been implemented yet?
Secondly, look at the methodology of the Shanghai rankings: "The ranking compared 1200 higher education institutions worldwide according to a formula that took into account alumni winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (10 percent), staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals (20 percent), “highly-cited researchers in 21 broad subject categories” (20 percent), articles published in Nature and Science (20 percent), the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index (20 percent) and the per capita academic performance (on the indicators above) of an institution (10 percent).
If anything, considering the underperformance of Asians on measures like winning major academic prizes and being highly cited, influential, and innovative researchers and academics, reducing the number of Asian students and faculty might actually boost an institution in these rankings. At the very least, we can see that Berkeley and the UC schools' high placement in these rankings has little to do with your idea that the "UC Asian is much brighter and capable than other UC graduate."
"one Shanghai University ranks UC universities near the very top of the world:"
So? Who cares what one university says about another. What metrics were applied? I can tell you one of the metrics: the East Asian fraction of the student body. UC is good, maybe even world class, but in the US it's top 20, not top 3. Pure ethnic hubris on the part of the commenter. As for the new admissions policy being white AA, why not? Asians are heavily overrepresented and whites heavily underrepresented, even after controlling for SAT scores. Higher education is as much about high intelligence as hard work, and it is clear at UC Berkeley that lower IQ Asian grade grubbers are displacing smarter whites who don't sign up for AP classes in HS. Ugh, some of the papers they write in humanities classes are just incoherent nonsense. It really is a scandal.
Pro-Asian American Anonymous (can you creative types come up with some SN, sheesh)
I do not think Steve resents Asians too much (at least when it comes to this college admission thing) and I am sure his kid can compete with the best of em.
That being said, while the UC system is arguably the best public higher education system in the US, there are so many good private and public colleges in the country. I doubt not attending a UC will ruin your son's chances in life Steve.
Also why did they open up another UC campus? Don't you guys have enough of em?
From the linked L. A. Times article:
The theory is that this will guarantee more spots for students at underperforming high schools where opportunities are not as great and more of the students are underrepresented minorities.
Notice how in L.A. Times World, it's the high schools that are "underperforming," and not the students. Especially not the "underrepresented minorities."
Anonymous wrote:
"Higher education is as much about high intelligence as hard work, and it is clear at UC Berkeley that lower IQ Asian grade grubbers are displacing smarter whites who don't sign up for AP classes in HS. Ugh, some of the papers they write in humanities classes are just incoherent nonsense. It really is a scandal."
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I'd be careful about saying this sort of thing. If the Asian students obtained higher grades on the AP exams through any honest means then they deserve the grades and the places in university they win. Of course if English is not their mother tongue then they must also pass tests in English.
Maybe non-Asian minorities (NAMs?) use this type of thinking to justify their low grades compared to whites.
As the college classmate and father referenced in the original post, I just want to clarify a couple of points:
1. The UT policy applies in Texas (meaningfully, anyway) only to UT-Austin. Students who fail the top 10% but are desired otherwise are admitted if they go to summer school first or get admitted to other UT campuses (San Antonio, for example) and transfer to Austin in their sophomore year. Interestingly, the policy applies to A&M as well, but it is not an issue de facto because - well, draw your own conclusions.
2. The rule has just been changed and now only controls 75% of admissions, starting in 2011 - too late for my kid.
I'm ambivalent about the whole thing. Most of us on this site want no affirmative action, but that is somewhat less likely than the deportation of all of the illegal aliens in the country. At least this sort of policy is not race-based and has some justification. Kids like my daughter get great schools and advisors, SAT prep, and take the exam multiple times, while the kid across town gets none of that. The achievement of the top 10% in a bad environment, whether ghetto or rural or whatever, has some relevance, I think. So if you have to have affirmative action of some kind, this one is at least based on an affirmative achievement. I don't have a better idea.
UT publishes ongoing updates comparing GPA compared to SAT scores of kids admitted under the 10% rule who to kids who come in as sophomores as I described and other groups, and they seem to do well (and are only, interestingly, only very more ethnically diverse). I think the graduation rates are the same, too, but I'm too lazy to look it up. The latest update is at http://www.utexas.edu/student/admissions/research/CAPreport-CAP06.pdf. This may be a biased report, as it appears to lump the most brilliant kids in with those who wouldn't have gotten in without the rule, but I don't have the time and statistical skills to give this the analysis it deserves: Steve, have at it!
And do come visit Austin: your family is welcome any time.
Whenever I hear 'Cruz Bustamante' I giggle like the hyenas in the Lion King when they heard the name 'Moofasa'.
"Cruuuuuuuize BoooosssTaManTae"
*giggle*
Oops, that was supposed to say NOT much more ethnically diverse.
Melykin: The performance of many Asian undergrads at UCB, especially in courses that require English fluency and verbal analytic skills, IS a scandal. As Steve has pointed out, Asians don't score any better on AP tests than whites, they just take more AP courses -- which lifts their GPA because such courses are graded on a 1-5 instead of a 1-4 scale. And taking the actual AP test is optional; most don't bother.
Accused Pro-Asian Anon
You can find more info on the Academic Ranking of World Universities by Jiao Tong University. Bollag (2006) wrote on Chronicle of Higher Education that ARWU “is considered the most influential international ranking”. As the wikipedia article relates, the authors designed the ranking was “to find out the gap between Chinese universities and world-class universities, particularly in terms of academic or research performance” (not to make Asian Universities or high % Asian US universities look good as someone suggested here).
It is widely known the standards are higher for asians at UC and other elite universities just as they are lower for NAMs due to the hugely disproportionate asian representation among the most qualified applicants. Even with the high overrepresentation of asians at UC and other elite universities, the diversicrats are not sitting on their hands but are doing all they can to hold the line and pull them down regardless of merit. One of the less covert strategies is to openly drop the SAT Achievement Test despite it being a valuable measure of motivation, preparation and predictor of success in college.
The attempts by UC and other elite colleges (where the best qualifed asians disproportionally apply) to supress the number of asian admitted is a practice that goes back at least 30 years.
In the mid-80s these practices were becoming so egregious they were no longer in doubt (despite the usual silence and partyline denials) and precipatated a reaction by some asian-americans. In 1989, CA rep Dana Rohrabacher opined on the widespread practice of anti-asian discrimmination in a Heritage Foundation lecture stating:
“The more they investigated the problem, the more information they uncovered that seems to suggest that there is a conscious effort by some of our finest institutions of higher learning to limit the number of their Asian students. At the University of California at Los Angeles, an internal memo from the Director of Admissions said the campus "will endeavor to curb the decline of Caucasian students.” The memo went on to predict that Asian-Americans would begin to express concern as their numbers declined. At Harvard University, 12 percent of Asian-American applicants are admitted contrasted with an overall admissions rate of 15.2 percent, despite the fact that Asian-Americans average higher grades and SAT scores than other students - 112 points higher in 1982. Admitting Discrimination. Amid complaints from Asian-Americans, the University of California at Berkeley initiated an internal study to determine whether bias against Asian applicants existed. Chancellor Heyman later admitted the school's policies caused a decline in Asian-American undergraduate enrollment stating, "It is clear that decisions made in the admissions process indisputably had a disproportionate impact on Asians." That is academic gobbledygook for: "We discriminated." Brown and Stanford Universities have conducted internal studies showing the percentages of Asian-American students accepted have remained roughly the same, even though the number of highly qualified from Asian-American applicants has risen dramatically…
For example, since the beginning of major publicity on this issue in November 1988, Harvard has announced that its next freshman class, the one entering this month, will be 15 percent Asian - the highest rate in Harvard's history. Stanford announced that their September 1989 entering class was over 18 percent Asian - their highest ever. UCLA announced that an Asian-American professor who had published data critical of - universities' Asian admission policies, and who had to fight for three years, has finally received tenure. And UC Berkeley has apologized to the Asian community for their past admissions practices…”
"It is widely known the standards are higher for asians at UC and other elite universities just as they are lower for NAMs due to the hugely disproportionate asian representation among the most qualified applicants."
Nonsense. Like I said, even controlling for SAT scores, Asians are way overrepresented in the UC system. They are clearly getting more than their fair share of a public university that was built by whites, has a mostly white faculty, and floats mainly on white taxpayer dollars. Asians make up only 14% of the population but get nearly half the total admission slots to UCB. Based on IQ the white student population in California eligible for UC is more than double the Asian population. Yet Asians have them outnumbered at UCB by 5:3. That means they are overrepresented by a factor of 3. That pretty much proves my point that higher IQ whites are being displaced by lower IQ Asians given that whites apply to UC at about the same rate as Asians. So don't give me this whiny nonsense that Asians are discriminated against.
Feel free to attend Jiao Tong University and raise it to the same eminence as UC.
Nonsense Anon
Assuming the SAT equality you raise, why are you ignoring both the GPA and SAT Subject Tests where Asians outperform whites? Why do you think a lazy white guy who avoids the most challenging (AP) courses in HS (or has a lower GPA for other reasons such as a poor work ethic, low-motivation or unfocused efforts) should have an equal shot at UCB as an asian who is equally natively intelligent (IQ) but works much harder to successfully cultivate it to accomplish much more? Given the higher motivation and gamesmanship of asians in admissions, we can probably also assume asians generally have more impressive applications regarding factors such as leadership, extracurricular, volunteerism, etc.
If you answer that whites should be preferred over equally intelligent but harder working, more organized, more focused and more accomplished asians simply because they are white at least you’re being a logically consistent white nationalist. You’re just arguing for an affirmative action handout to help weaker average white applicants who are then generally less likely to graduate college, more likely to party while studying some BS subject and in general be a poorer risk for society to invest in overall. The handful of truly brilliant whites or whatever get into a decent unis and advance society, but we’re talking about the more replaceable averages that make up the bulk of UC or other elite college admits.
Like IQ, behavior traits are beginning to be found to have some genetic heritability. If Asians have evolved to have behavioral genetics slightly better suited for mainstream success in an advanced globalized information society (less violent, more diligent, more focused, more competitive, etc) that would be unfair and all the more reason government must be grown and empowered to redress such moral injustices. No my comrade, we must struggle for the strict blank slate maxim of “from each according to their willingness, to each according to their ethnic societal proportion” because anything less is either institutional racism or a toxic remnant from European colonialism.
If anything, considering the underperformance of Asians on measures like winning major academic prizes and being highly cited, influential, and innovative researchers and academics, reducing the number of Asian students and faculty might actually boost an institution in these rankings.
When you make a statement like this, cite some evidence. I on the other hand, have some evidence to the contrary:
In the last 15 years, the United States has won 47 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry. Of these, 6 were Northeast Asians. That would be 10.63%. Over representation.
"Assuming the SAT equality you raise, why are you ignoring both the GPA and SAT Subject Tests where Asians outperform whites?"
The SAT I was originally created to calibrate GPA. Used in this way, the difference between whites and Asians more or less vanishes. Asians are obsessed with the appearance of success rather than actual proficiency. As for whites being lazy, well, they do things other than sitting around doing homework problems by the "infinite book method." They're active in sports, they volunteer in the community, they build stuff (check out YouTube for how many ways there are to build a tennis ball cannon), they read extensively following their own interests, they use their imagination -- mainly because they have one. Asians don't have much of a track record for inventing paradigm shifting things or theories. They are good at gaming the system. Not inventing the system.
"Like IQ, behavior traits are beginning to be found to have some genetic heritability. If Asians have evolved to have behavioral genetics slightly better suited for mainstream success in an advanced globalized information society (less violent, more diligent, more focused, more competitive, etc) that would be unfair"
Asians are good at following orders; they are money driven conformists and natural born bureaucrats. Meanwhile they dress in the clothes of White Europeans, play the musical instruments and music of White Europeans, use the science, medicine, and inventions of White Europeans. Even the economic systems they adopt to get rich are Western. Whites are the R&D race (they invented pretty much everything related to the information age)because of their individualism, imagination, and high intelligence. What little advantage Asians have is in the area of spatial reasoning. Their verbal reasoning is somewhat the worse for this.
It's funny how, on the one hand, you are claiming Chinese have some genetic advantage, then admit that China is looking to Western Universities to figure out how to become world class. The best way to become world class is to have world class intellectuals. In fact many Chinese Universities are hiring some of the best white scholars, who focus on groundbreaking research, while the Chinese focus on playing the academic career game and diligently publishing what's known in academic circles as the "minimum publishable unit."
I advocate White nationalism because it is globally beneficial. Unless whites of European ancestry are allowed their independence and self governance, the ability to profit from their own labors and follow their own traditions, well, you can expect the advancement of global civilization to grind to a halt. Under the Chinese, we can all anticipate a return to authoritarian rule, the reinstitution of slavery, and technological stagnation that could last a millennia.
I made a typo. I meant 5 NE Asians won Nobel Prizes, not 6. But it's still 10.63%.
One of the ideas behind having students take three SAT Subject exams is that one can be a foreign language, which makes it a gimme putt for immigrants.
Not true. I'm not a Spanish teacher, but share the same students with a few, in a middle school. I'm surprised every year by the number of Hispanic/Latino students who fail Spanish. Being able to speak a language has nothing to do with the ability to dissect it, analyze it, write it coherently...Once they discover that they are not going to be allowed to just skate, but are actually expected to identify the correct verb tense, etc., they fold. Another common thread is hatred of the Spanish teachers, for having the temerity to expect them to work.
...[East Asians] play the musical instruments and music of White Europeans....
I thought Asians only sat around ruminating on their homework problems, at least according to you.
Anonymous:
"Higher education is as much about high intelligence as hard work, and it is clear at UC Berkeley that lower IQ Asian grade grubbers are displacing smarter whites who don't sign up for AP classes in HS. "
First of all, how do you know these "Asian grade grubbers" have lower IQs than whites? Because in your white supremacist mind whites are the smartest? Hah. The SATs do not back up your assertions. And second of all, don't you have to put in more work in an AP class as opposed to a regular class? So by your own definition, Asians are the best-suited for higher education, since they have both higher intelligence and works harder, something that cannot be said about you because of your lack of logic and the inability to back up your statements.
As for "Asian grade grubbers," hey, don't hate the player, hate the game. And if you are not smart enough to game the game, then mau mau some more to people who cares, oh, wait, I thought whites do not like mau maus. Hah, white supremacists crack me up.
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