Lawsuit accusing Harvard of Asian-American discrimination goes to trial

[Hank]

"A lawsuit accusing Harvard University of racial bias against Asian-American students—in favor of increasing on-campus diversity of other minority groups—is set to begin in a federal court."

Anyone following this? 

thoughts?

[LTS]

1 hour ago, Hank said:

"A lawsuit accusing Harvard University of racial bias against Asian-American students—in favor of increasing on-campus diversity of other minority groups—is set to begin in a federal court."

Anyone following this? 

thoughts?

First I have heard of it.  Any recommended articles on it before I go searching?

[Hank]

13 minutes ago, LTS said:

First I have heard of it.  Any recommended articles on it before I go searching?

I don't have any recommendations. I didn't hear about it before today either. I was hoping someone more knowledgeable than me would weigh in. 

[LTS]

I've read a few things regarding the case throughout today.

If there's one thing I am positive of is that the ruling in this case is going to cause more division regardless of what the actual ruling turns out to be.

My personal take is that race should never be a considered factor. It's irrelevant. In many cases race is substituted for ethnic heritage which inherits many more factors than just the color of one's skin. The assertion mentioned in the article is that "Asian-Americans scored lower in the "personal" ratings".  Of course without a clear set of metrics I am not sure how one determines the "personal" rating. Regardless, my guess is that if we were able to change the skin color of triplets such that they appeared as different races at birth and were raised by the same family there's a good chance they would share similar "personal" ratings. They'd also likely suffer from racial bias despite basically being the same except for color.

As a rule of thumb I've always been against affirmative action because it's a band-aid to the real problem. The entire concept of diversity policies is that you will, inevitably, be required to act in a way that demonstrates racial bias. I understand why they exist and it's clear we aren't going to eradicate racial bias anytime soon so policies are put in place to help police it, for better or worse.

A simple example I always think of works like this:

A school has a requirement to score 100 on a test to gain entrance.
The school admits 25% each of race A, B, C, D to allow for diversity.  No group can comprise more than 25%.
There are 100 spots open each year.

Race A has 37 applicants score 100.
Race B has 25 applicants score 100.
Race C has 24 applicants score 100.
Race D has 65 applicants score 100.

The only way to fill the incoming class would be to allow 24 applicants from each racial group. This would fill 96 of the 100 slots and each group would be 1/4 of the admission class. However, because Race C did not do well, the school is forced to not allow admission to someone from Races A, B, and D simply because they are not Race C.  This is a racial bias.

The fear, of course, with this lawsuit, is that if race is no longer allowed as a consideration then schools may actually trend towards only admitting students of a certain race because they can now create a scale that favors them (as subtly as possible I am certain).

[Hank]

14 minutes ago, LTS said:

I've read a few things regarding the case throughout today.

If there's one thing I am positive of is that the ruling in this case is going to cause more division regardless of what the actual ruling turns out to be.

My personal take is that race should never be a considered factor. It's irrelevant. In many cases race is substituted for ethnic heritage which inherits many more factors than just the color of one's skin. The assertion mentioned in the article is that "Asian-Americans scored lower in the "personal" ratings".  Of course without a clear set of metrics I am not sure how one determines the "personal" rating. Regardless, my guess is that if we were able to change the skin color of triplets such that they appeared as different races at birth and were raised by the same family there's a good chance they would share similar "personal" ratings. They'd also likely suffer from racial bias despite basically being the same except for color.

As a rule of thumb I've always been against affirmative action because it's a band-aid to the real problem. The entire concept of diversity policies is that you will, inevitably, be required to act in a way that demonstrates racial bias. I understand why they exist and it's clear we aren't going to eradicate racial bias anytime soon so policies are put in place to help police it, for better or worse.

A simple example I always think of works like this:

A school has a requirement to score 100 on a test to gain entrance.
The school admits 25% each of race A, B, C, D to allow for diversity.  No group can comprise more than 25%.
There are 100 spots open each year.

Race A has 37 applicants score 100.
Race B has 25 applicants score 100.
Race C has 24 applicants score 100.
Race D has 65 applicants score 100.

The only way to fill the incoming class would be to allow 24 applicants from each racial group. This would fill 96 of the 100 slots and each group would be 1/4 of the admission class. However, because Race C did not do well, the school is forced to not allow admission to someone from Races A, B, and D simply because they are not Race C.  This is a racial bias.

The fear, of course, with this lawsuit, is that if race is no longer allowed as a consideration then schools may actually trend towards only admitting students of a certain race because they can now create a scale that favors them (as subtly as possible I am certain).

I don't think race should be on school applications. If an incoming class is 50% black, 40% Asian and 10% white so be it. Race shouldn't play into it, if there's two hundred slots they should go to the top two hundred applicants. 

I'm very interested to see how this plays out. 

[LGR4GM]

8 hours ago, Hank said:

I don't think race should be on school applications. If an incoming class is 50% black, 40% Asian and 10% white so be it. Race shouldn't play into it, if there's two hundred slots they should go to the top two hundred applicants. 

I'm very interested to see how this plays out. 

How are you defining the top 200? There is racial bias in the SAT that has been repeatedly demonstrated. Racial testing bias is one of many reasons NYS dropped Pearson and is working on creating their own tests. (or they were from my last understanding) 

[LTS]

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

How are you defining the top 200? There is racial bias in the SAT that has been repeatedly demonstrated. Racial testing bias is one of many reasons NYS dropped Pearson and is working on creating their own tests. (or they were from my last understanding) 

They are as I understand it, but I'm not sure they will fair any better in creating a standardized test that doesn't somehow lend an advantage one segment of society over another based on the wording of questions.

It's a huge dilemma.  How do you compare the capabilities of two people from two different backgrounds against a standardized metric that is not standard between the backgrounds of those two people?

It's easy to ask them what 2+2 is.. it's universal.  It's less easy to ask them to read a passage that deals with a subject that is foreign to one and natural for the other and ask them to interpret it.  The same can be true of mathematical questions that bring in "situational awareness".

 

[Hank]

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

How are you defining the top 200? There is racial bias in the SAT that has been repeatedly demonstrated. Racial testing bias is one of many reasons NYS dropped Pearson and is working on creating their own tests. (or they were from my last understanding) 

I don't know how to define the top 200. I have no idea what goes into a schools application process. Do you have an idea? Or, do you have an idea you think would work better?

Every military base has colleges with satellite campuses on it, I took most of my classes through them. I walked in, filled out my application, then picked my classes. When I finished my BBA after retirement it was the same thing. I filled out the application, went down the hall to set up my GI bill, went across campus to sit down with my advisor, and had my class schedule before I left campus. I've never had to go through an admission process for college. 

[LGR4GM]

SAT's. GPA. Extracurriculars. Usually an Essay. 

54 minutes ago, Hank said:

I don't know how to define the top 200. I have no idea what goes into a schools application process. Do you have an idea? Or, do you have an idea you think would work better?

 

 

[LTS]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/politics/harvard-affirmative-action-asian-americans/index.html

That's a CNN article referencing Harvard's process.

[5th line wingnutt]

22 hours ago, Hank said:

"A lawsuit accusing Harvard University of racial bias against Asian-American students—in favor of increasing on-campus diversity of other minority groups—is set to begin in a federal court."

Anyone following this? 

thoughts?

Yes, a blog I read (instapundit) has had several links to stories about this during the last couple of months. 

[5th line wingnutt]

6 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

How are you defining the top 200? There is racial bias in the SAT that has been repeatedly demonstrated. Racial testing bias is one of many reasons NYS dropped Pearson and is working on creating their own tests. (or they were from my last understanding) 

The evidence for this is very weak.  The SAT is a good predictive test.  It actually slightly over predicts black academic performance.  If it was biased it would under predict performance.

[LGR4GM]

I do not agree with that conclusion.

[LTS]

18 hours ago, 5th line wingnutt said:

The evidence for this is very weak.  The SAT is a good predictive test.  It actually slightly over predicts black academic performance.  If it was biased it would under predict performance.

 

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

I do not agree with that conclusion.

In the interests of furthering conversation on the subject it would be good to post supporting evidence of both assertions made here. 

It is also important to note which version of the SAT you are referring to.  It was recently revamped.  I think it's important to examine the evidence because it will be critical to understand how controlled the data sets were.

For example, to say that inner city youth with a high latino/black ethnicity scored poorly on the SAT and as such it shows ethnical bias may be misleading.  The test may be fine but the education of those students may be severely lacking.  As such they perform poorly compared to others from different backgrounds and ethnicity.

The reference in the article on CNN shows the same overall demographic of Asian-Americans jumping up significantly in the year after the test was changed. On the surface that does make it appear that somehow the questions may be better understood by that demographic. Of course, it could be an anomaly as well.

[LGR4GM]

We don't have good data yet on the new SAT. The attempted to correct for some racial bias. The other point you bring up is very important. It helps to continue the poverty cycle by keeping poor people in poor distracts. 

4 hours ago, LTS said:

to say that inner city youth with a high latino/black ethnicity scored poorly on the SAT and as such it shows ethnical bias may be misleading. 

This was the part I meant. 

[Hank]

8 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

We don't have good data yet on the new SAT. The attempted to correct for some racial bias. The other point you bring up is very important. It helps to continue the poverty cycle by keeping poor people in poor distracts. 

This was the part I meant. 

I don't understand what you're saying here. I would think if a kid is smart enough, and has the grades to apply to Harvard, they are most likely getting out of whatever poverty they grew up in regardless of whether or not Harvard accepts them. 

[5th line wingnutt]

https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sat-cutoff-scores-based-on-race/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=facebook_app&fbclid=IwAR1coamvzhhgyuy6qOtE-bYMTX3Hgt0UG0roZHbxJm_Z5bAhj-pNGfVZwAE

Seems like discrimination to me.

[5th line wingnutt]

17 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

We don't have good data yet on the new SAT. The attempted to correct for some racial bias. The other point you bring up is very important. It helps to continue the poverty cycle by keeping poor people in poor distracts. 

This was the part I meant. 

I have not seen any data on the New SAT.  Have they published anything?

Let's start at the beginning...there are 2 possible causes of the racial test score gap; environmental causes, and biological ones.  Biology is pretty easy, how good a brain did you inherit from your parents.  Environmental ones are very messy and include, but are not limited to, home, neighborhood, culture, quality of education, and test bias.

These causes are not mutually exclusive.  I think some of the gap can be explained by pretty much everything in my list.  I think testing bias is somewhere between small and negligible.

[LGR4GM]

10 hours ago, Hank said:

I don't understand what you're saying here. I would think if a kid is smart enough, and has the grades to apply to Harvard, they are most likely getting out of whatever poverty they grew up in regardless of whether or not Harvard accepts them. 

How many kids who grow up in single parent homes in extreme poverty have the opportunity or better yet, environment to grow them into smart enough kids to go to Harvard? You think Roquan who lives is section 8 housing, goes to the poorest school, sees his mother only once a day because she works 3 jobs is getting into Harvard? Maybe but it is a hell of a lot easier for Jimmy, who lives in a nice house, goes to a wealthy school, sees both his parents in the morning and all evening because they work steady jobs, who also got help when he was a little slower at reading in 3rd grade, and who doesn't have to worry if he is going to eat that night, to get into Harvard or have good grades at all. 

[LGR4GM]

Roquan has 20 barriers to overcome

Jimmy has like 3.

[Hank]

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

How many kids who grow up in single parent homes in extreme poverty have the opportunity or better yet, environment to grow them into smart enough kids to go to Harvard? You think Roquan who lives is section 8 housing, goes to the poorest school, sees his mother only once a day because she works 3 jobs is getting into Harvard? Maybe but it is a hell of a lot easier for Jimmy, who lives in a nice house, goes to a wealthy school, sees both his parents in the morning and all evening because they work steady jobs, who also got help when he was a little slower at reading in 3rd grade, and who doesn't have to worry if he is going to eat that night, to get into Harvard or have good grades at all. 

There's the confusion. I thought you were talking about SAT scores being biased against Harvard applicants, this being a thread about a discrimination lawsuit at Harvard. You're generalizing. I would think if a kid applying to ANY college must have at least decent grades. The obviously survived the many hurdles of poverty to get through high school. The mere fact they apply to college shows they are determined to get out of poverty. If they can't get into an ivy school they'll go to a state school. If they can't get into a state school they'll start at community college and transfer. Or, maybe they'll choose the military instead of CC and use the GI Bill. The enlisted ranks are mostly filled with kids escaping poverty for a better life. Poverty has much more to do with income than race I find your use of Roquan and Jimmy in your examples very telling. Do you have any thoughts at all on the thread topic? If not, what are you doing here? What is your objective? I'm sure you'll disagree with much of this post, and that's fine, I'd be happy to go back and forth with you on it, but how about you start a separate thread for it instead of derailing this one?

[LGR4GM]

I used Roquan and Jimmy deliberately, that was not a Freudian slip. It was used to demonstrate a point. 

You say, "Poverty has much more to do with income than race."  Ummm yes if you are poor your income is low and you are in poverty. The race side of things comes into play when you look at demographics of poverty. If you are black in almost every US state, you are more likely to be living in poverty compared to the white people. This has to do with how segregated we are as a society and how we use property values to fund school taxes. 

As to the OP, there is bias in the SAT. It is unclear if was a factor in Harvard's admission or in other words were they trying to correct for it? I suppose the trial will teach us a lot about how Harvard did things. 

Edited October 18, 2018 by LGR4GM

[LTS]

5 hours ago, 5th line wingnutt said:

https://nypost.com/2018/10/17/harvards-gatekeeper-reveals-sat-cutoff-scores-based-on-race/?utm_campaign=iosapp&utm_source=facebook_app&fbclid=IwAR1coamvzhhgyuy6qOtE-bYMTX3Hgt0UG0roZHbxJm_Z5bAhj-pNGfVZwAE

Seems like discrimination to me.

I read the article and am wavering on this being discrimination rather than just marketing.  In this article they are talking about recruitment letters and not admissions policies. So, as I read it and took into account the Dean's statement it came across to me that they are targeting groups that might not consider applying because they consider their SAT scores too low for Harvard.  It would make sense to have varying ranges by race because there are varying average SAT scores by race.  I can understand the argument being reversed to say that they should only recruit using the same cut-offs. I also wonder that if you consider the SAT to show an unnatural race bias if you wouldn't correct against it in your recruitment. For example, if the SAT tends to score African-Americans 250 points lower than Asians and Harvard accepts and recognizes this so they recruit at 250 points lower in their recruitment letters are they not actually equalizing the playing field more than discriminating?

3 hours ago, LGR4GM said:

How many kids who grow up in single parent homes in extreme poverty have the opportunity or better yet, environment to grow them into smart enough kids to go to Harvard? You think Roquan who lives is section 8 housing, goes to the poorest school, sees his mother only once a day because she works 3 jobs is getting into Harvard? Maybe but it is a hell of a lot easier for Jimmy, who lives in a nice house, goes to a wealthy school, sees both his parents in the morning and all evening because they work steady jobs, who also got help when he was a little slower at reading in 3rd grade, and who doesn't have to worry if he is going to eat that night, to get into Harvard or have good grades at all. 

Very true. I am glad to know a guy who is all "inner city" and has lived his life in the traditional "hood" way but who is also busting his butt and not giving his kids any excuses to not get educated.  He is working his butt off to put them into private school and his oldest just started at University of Rochester.  I think he's a great role model on how to break the cycle... but there's no doubt that the hurdles to overcome are significant.

1 hour ago, LGR4GM said:

I used Roquan and Jimmy deliberately, that was not a Freudian slip. It was used to demonstrate a point. 

You say, "Poverty has much more to do with income than race."  Ummm yes if you are poor your income is low and you are in poverty. The race side of things comes into play when you look at demographics of poverty. If you are black in almost every US state, you are more likely to be living in poverty compared to the white people. This has to do with how segregated we are as a society and how we use property values to fund school taxes. 

As to the OP, there is bias in the SAT. It is unclear if was a factor in Harvard's admission or in other words were they trying to correct for it? I suppose the trial will teach us a lot about how Harvard did things. 

I wanted to add on that some percentage of that poverty cycle is self-induced.  In some ways people have wanted the quick fix for these poverty problems but the only real fix is to get the kids educated and stabilized so they have a fighting chance. Unfortunately you can't make the kids go to school and you can't make them learn and in some cases kids are being fed lines of garbage about how to deal with the system that is stacked against them.  Rather than get educated they are encouraged to seek other means of succeeding in life and this only perpetuates the problems.

2 hours ago, Hank said:

There's the confusion. I thought you were talking about SAT scores being biased against Harvard applicants, this being a thread about a discrimination lawsuit at Harvard. You're generalizing. I would think if a kid applying to ANY college must have at least decent grades. The obviously survived the many hurdles of poverty to get through high school. The mere fact they apply to college shows they are determined to get out of poverty. If they can't get into an ivy school they'll go to a state school. If they can't get into a state school they'll start at community college and transfer. Or, maybe they'll choose the military instead of CC and use the GI Bill. The enlisted ranks are mostly filled with kids escaping poverty for a better life. Poverty has much more to do with income than race I find your use of Roquan and Jimmy in your examples very telling. Do you have any thoughts at all on the thread topic? If not, what are you doing here? What is your objective? I'm sure you'll disagree with much of this post, and that's fine, I'd be happy to go back and forth with you on it, but how about you start a separate thread for it instead of derailing this one?

The discussion of SAT scores applies both the the Harvard standards as it does to a demonstration of education in America.  Harvard actually uses other factors than just SAT and that's what is really in question.  Your indication was that the spots go to the top 200 applicants and it was asked how that should be determined.  The SAT was recommended and thus the discussion of racial bias in SAT scores was born.  It's relevant to the thread.

These standards that Harvard uses are not going to be very dissimilar to what other institutions use although there may be varying scales and weights.  Certainly higher end colleges are more selective but overall admission rates versus application rates are low for many institutions.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/lowest-acceptance-rate

For example, Duke is 10% (Harvard is 5%).  This article doesn't speak to applications received though.

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/the-short-list-college/articles/2017-09-14/10-colleges-with-the-most-applications

California Universities are usually ranked the highest because of the free tuition (I think they have that still) for residents.

But Boston University had 57,000+ applications... and admitted 16,907... roughly 29%

https://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/massachusetts/boston-university/admission/

That's a lot of people getting turned away who I am sure are fairly similar in standardized metrics.