From: Arthur_T_Hu@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.asian.american,ca.politics,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: New Quotas at Berkeley, UCLA, UC Santa Cruz?
Date: 4 Sep 92 06:53:29 GMT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)


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doc923:admit92.doc
Arthur Hu
1194 Fargate Circle
San Jose CA 95131
day 415-968-4800 x240
August 29, 1992


Asian University Quotas: The Next Generation

It has been just about a decade since Asians first
complained of hidden admission quotas at various campuses
during the early and mid-80s'. What ever happened to these
alleged quotas? Are they still active today? Have Asians
truly been kicked off Affirmative Action? If you ask the
admissions offices of any of the campuses in question, they
will all disavow any knowledge of any quotas or racial
preferences. But based on my surveys of a few universities,
the answer is not at some, used to be at others, and it's
just starting at others, depending on which Asians we're
talking about.

Not all universities release their full admission data,
which consists of the number who applied, were admitted, and
registered, and their test scores and grade distributions
broken down by race and gender. The classic pattern to look
for is to compare the admission rate and academic
credentials of accepted minorities compared to whites, or
white males. Groups which are preferred under affirmative
action inevitably have lower test scores and grades and a
higher admit rate of those who applied. When Asians have
complained of discrimination, the pattern is of higher test
scores and grades, but a lower admission rate.

The complaints first started at Ivy League schools when
Asians were evidently first removed from affirmative action
at Brown University. Before 1979, Asian American admit rates
were 33 to 71 percent higher than whites, consistent with a
perferred status for Asians. Between 1979 and 1980, that
margin fell to only 5 or 10 percent, which was more neutral.
But after 1981 Asian American admission rates stayed 15 to
25 percent below whites.

Asian admit rates at Harvard fell 10 percent further below
whites in 1982 in a single year. This 20 disparity continued
until it bounced back to a 10 percent margin in 1987 after
years of complaint and controversy. The Department of
Education concluded in 1990 that this 10 percent dip was due
primarily to a preference for children of alumni, who were
more likely to be white. While this preference was upheld,
they glossed over critical period of 82-86 citing less data.
Similar dips were reported at Princeton and Yale, along with
evidence of higher test score and grade standards.


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The number of Asian Americans doubled at Stanford in 1986
after then-student Jeffrey Au stirred up questions of why
Asians were still at a 8 percent level when they were
approaching 15 to 20 percent at other simlar institutions,
and an internal investigation concluded there was
"insensitivity and unconscious bias" in the admissions
process. That study found a 30 percent disparity in the
admissions rate, which was eliminated in the 1986 admissions
group.

Both UCLA and Berkeley incurred the wrath of the Asian
American community when the Asian American admissions rate
fell by 20 percent in 1984. Less publicized was the fact
that in the next two years, the white admit rate was allowed
to fall to parity with the Asians, and in order to avoid
conflict with other minorities, Asian American leaders chose
to keep silent on the evident pattern that Asians were
sacrificed while whites were protected in 1984 to increase
affirmative action for other minorities. Chancellor Ira
Heymann of Berkeley eventually apologized to Asians for the
error without ever really explaining what happened.

Thus, the evidence is quite good that unstated policies that
unfairly favored whites over Asians at Harvard, Stanford,
Berkeley and UCLA did in fact appear. But the evidence also
shows these patterns, with the possible exception of Brown,
also "fixed themselves" by the end of the 80s.

At some universities and programs, Asians were and still are
evidently given racial preference under affirmative action.
Officially, admission offices are reluctant to admit the
existence of any racial preferences, despite their stated
commitment to "diversity", often in place of a statement of
nondiscrimination. Tufts University in Massachusetts was
admitting Asians at the rate comparable to other minorities
well into the 80's. At MIT, women are admitted at twice the
rate of men. This includes Asian women, even though Asian
women are not at all underrepresented relative to the US
population, and they score just as high at SAT math as white
males. Because Asians have the highest proportion of women,
up to half, Asians as a group have had a slighter higher
admit rate than whites.

Filipinos have long been separately classified as a separate
Affirmative Action group at the University of California. In
1984, both UCLA and Berkeley increased the admission rate of
Filipino students at the same time Chinese and Japanese were
cut. But as administrators finally realized after 25 years
of affirmative action that Filipinos were well over parity,
and would have exceeded their 2 percent population even at
normal admission rates, this preferential admission rate
announced to be officially withdrawn as of 1988 and 1989,
despite protests from some students. Filipinos still receive
preferential admissions at UC Santa Cruz.

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For reasons that UCLA cites as "economic preference", most
Asian groups in 1990 got preferential admission rates. But
since Filipinos, who were most definitely kicked off
affirmative action, and far more deserving than the affluent
Japanese Americans had no such preferential rate, this must
have been a purely political decision to placate all the
other Asian groups that were never included under
affirmative action.

In law schools Asians are now about 3 percent of students,
not better or worse than their national population. Yet,
since LSAT Law School test surveys show that Asians are
significantly more likely to be accepted into the most
selective schools than whites at each GPA or test score
level, Asians are probably included under affirmative action
at many law schools. Stanford Law School doubled the number
of Asians it accepted in 1991, despite the fact that Asians
were not under-represented in 1990. Perhaps since the total
number of Asian lawyers already in the population is far
below parity, even though student proportions have caught up
and are rising, this policy may be justified.

The Asian Pacific American Advisory Committee to the
Democratic Party Convention advocates that Asians should
never be excluded from Affirmative Action. But personally, I
believe that the remedy of underrepresentation makes no
sense when no such underrepresentation exists. Such a policy
should only be used in situations and fields where there is
a demonstrated shortage of Asians.

In 1992, there are some interesting trends to highlight. At
MIT, Asians will be over one-third of registering fall
freshmen, all all-time high for a mainland national
university. UC Irvine became a majority Asian campus in
1991. After passing the one-third mark, Asians have exceeded
whites since last year at UCLA and Berkeley. Meanwhile,
white applications have fallen dramatically, bringing some
to call it a new form of "white-flight". 5 years after the
fact, many new reports still are saying minorities will
become a majority after 2000 when this already happened in
California in 1987.

Although I was the first to predict this in 1986, others
have also finally made note of the fact that from 1988 to
1990, whites were the only underrepresented minority at UCLA
and Berkeley. While some whites are pointing fingers at
affirmative action, blacks and Hispanics seem to be pointing
quietly at Asians as well, as Eugene Garcia of UC Santa Cruz
suggested on KQED's Forum program that it unfair for Asians
to crowd out whites, no matter how good their test scores.

Exact parity with state high school graduates for blacks and
Hispanics was achieved or exceeded in 1988 at both UCLA and

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Berkeley. This lead to the filing of a complaint by this
author, leading to an investigation of quotas by the
Department of Education. It may be no coincidence that both
campuses have since renounced the principle of parity, and
as this fall, both campuses will have offically fallen short
of parity, even though both campuses insist this has nothing
to do with policy changes. Berkeley's 1990 Carabell report
resulted in the repeal of numerous policies which according
to the 1989 complaint were at odds with the 1978 Bakke
decision which laid out allowable practices.

Far from being the dominant super-majority non-Hispanic
whites are now near, or have already fallen below the 50%
level at Harvard, Stanford, CalTech and MIT. That is
significantly underrepresented compared to the 70% white SAT
pool, primarily because of Asians taking 25 to 33 percent of
students compared to their tiny 3 percent population.
Meanwhile, Affirmative Action at some of these schools has
boosted African Americans at some of these schools to parity
with the 9 percent SAT or ACT pool. If whites are below
parity, while blacks are equal or above, this means the fact
that blacks are better represented that whites on average is
the best kept secret on campus. At UCLA or Berkeley, there
are only 4 whites per black on campus, compared to 8 in the
high school graduate population.

Not only that, UCLA national surveys of freshmen show that
60 percent of students at the most selective private
universities are Asian or belong to white religious groups
such as Jews, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians that compose
only 25 percent of the population. Thus if blacks are at
parity, they are far better represented than all but the
most elite white groups at some of the nation's top
universities and law and medical schools.

I have already heard explanations from admissions officers
who have quickly devised a remedy to the irony in the
problem changing from not enough blacks to not enough
whites. Now the explanation is that blacks are entitled to
parity where whites are not because of historical
reparations. There is nothing wrong with undoing the past
until parity is achieved everywhere in society, not just in
one class of admissions. Thus, the original intent of merely
to redressing underrepresentions compared to whites has
evolved into a justification for permanent racial
preferences regardless of parity. This argument could
logically be extended to giving preference even in Black-
dominated sports like basketball because of the legacy of
discrimination against Blacks in sports.

After all this, one might think the story of anti-Asian
discrimation on campus is over. But unbelievably, it is not.
Starting in 1990, the admission rate for Filipinos and Other
Races fell 20 to 30 percent below that of whites at

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Berkeley, just as big a gap as the one that caused the 1984
racial firestorm, when no such gap existed at UCLA which
also announced a policy of neutrality. But in 1992, the
Filipinos are the only Americans with at 15 percent lower
admission rate than whites at UCLA. Politically, I can
understand that there is no civil rights organization like
the National Association for the Advancement of Other Races.
But why reduce Filipinos, a group that is no where near the
mathematically excessive overrepresentation of the Chinese
or Japanese? This is precisely the pattern followed by Brown
ten years ago - drop from affirmative action to neutral, and
then to discriminatory admission rates.

That's not all. A look at 1992 admission rates at UC Santa
Cruz shows Filipinos, Blacks, and Hispanics at 7 to 25
percent above European Americans, which isn't too
surprising. But the admit rate for all Asians is 5 percent
less than whites. The Chinese and Japanese are short by 8
percent. The Koreans are short by a relatively whopping 25
percent. Neutral admissions at UCLA and Berkeley show they
should be much closer to whites. If 7 percent is a sign of
the sign of affirmative action preference, 25 in the
opposite direction is certainly very likley to be the result
of intentional policy as well.

UC Santa Cruz is a much less competitive school than UC
Berkeley and UCLA where admit rates for preferred groups are
50 to 100 percent higher, not just 7 to 25. It may be saying
a lot that this alone is proof of anti-Asian discrimination
in admissions. But in view of the fact that UCSC is
continuing the illogical policy of boosting Filipinos far
beyond parity, they obviously haven't consulted with UCLA or
Berkeley on this. The all-time high of 19 percent Asians may
well be the number of Asians it usually takes to bring out
mysterious policies that cut back on Asians. It may be
premature to convict, but it is certainly worth
investigating test scores and GPA averages, and asking
around if this isn't just a repeat of UCLA and UC Berkeley
1984 all over again.

This situation seems to be perfect for coalitions between
Asian American organizations. The problem isn't affirmative
action, it's putting Asian groups at a disadvantage relative
to whites. Most Asian groups may be affected at UC Santa
Cruz, which draws equally from the bay and LA, while the
Filipinos are affected at UCLA and Berkeley, which both draw
heavily on both urban centers. Asians Americans for
Community Action covers the South SF Bay, while Chinese for
Affirmative Action covers SF and Filipinos for Affirmative
Action is centered in the East Bay. LA and campus Asian
organizations should also be interested, as well as JACL,
OCA, and other national organizations and alumni
organizations.


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Even groups opposed to affirmative action such as the
National Association of Scholars could be signed on with the
proviso that there is unanimous agreement at least on this
point of what is wrong, even if other policies are less than
unamimous. Instead of being just one isolated Asian Week
column, this deserves a press release backed up by every
Asian organization we can muster on this one, complete with
an official complaint filed with the Office of Civil Rights,
Department of Education.


     Arthur Hu