
Harvard’s Asian Problem - softdev12
http://online.wsj.com/articles/harvards-asian-problem-1416615041
======
icelancer
As someone who is Asian, I've just kind of accepted this kind of casual
racism. The stereotype of Asian men are that we are better at math, science,
and logic (sadly enough, this is where I spent most of my working career) and
everyone kind of laughs about it and jokes how it's great this stereotype is
so positive.

Except, of course, that it leads to these kinds of policies. Just like Jewish
people are ascribed the stereotype of being good with money leads to other
policies that have occurred in the past and probably still continue to this
day.

To me, though, this is just another example of why higher education is
becoming a parody of itself. To become personally angry about decisions that
are based on the angle of my eyelids is a waste of my time; and this reaction
is overwhelmingly common in the Asian community. It has been for decades since
Korematsu v. United States, too. I'm not sure it's the "best" approach, but
I've learned to live with it, knowing that others have it a hell of a lot
worse. Is that rationalization and "giving up?" Perhaps. But I just can't
bring myself to care.

~~~
dengnan
As I said in another comment, this stereotype of American Asian men is partly
caused by the universities admission procedure and the country's immigration
policy. In short, they just like foreigners in STEM.

Another reason is probably the culture differences. Asian people are not only
interested in STEM. We do have other majors in universities. However, Asian
has an equally long, if not longer, history with Europe. Many fields are
"stateful", i.e. they rely on the history. For example, a physicist could have
a very successful career even he does not know Newton's anecdotes. However, a
art-majored student probably needs to know some history in his field --- at
least, he needs to remember some names and their corresponding achievements.

People majored in literature in China definitely know poets like Li Bai, Du
Fu, Bai Juyi and they have devoted lots of time to learn these poets' work.
The culture barrier prohibits them from studying in another country in a
different language. That's probably another reason why there's little Asian
students outside STEM.

~~~
obviouslynot
I guarantee you they do not "just like" foreigners in STEM. I currently live
and work in Asia and the growth in the region (particularly China) can be
orders of magnitude that of the US. Just looking at Vietnam, you went from
0.25% to 43% internet penetration between 2000 and 2014. China alone has over
a billion people to the US' 0.3 and the percentage of Asians in the middle-
upper class (those that both can afford, and desire an Ivy education) is
rapidly rising, whilst the quality higher education supply remains constant.
It's one of these cases where you have to refresh your view of the world every
couple of years.

Not only are candidates more numerous, they are better prepared, some even
doing a year or two in a local university to stack on the skills. In my
experience, "locals" in the West don't see the sheer drive and intelligence of
these students because of the language barrier (yours truly was, of course,
guilty of that back then - it's been an expensive lesson). I've seen
engineering undergrads with a tenuous grasp of English skip every lecture in
the year and still get in the top 5% of the class (after all, grad-level maths
lectures were so much more interesting) - the "Western" students were just
nowhere near as prepared. There is nothing inherently special about the
mythical Asian undergrad, it's just a numbers game - the top 100 Chinese
candidates by IQ are equivalent, statistically, to the top 30 American ones.

The same story plays out with capital and is driving real estate prices up in
major global cities. And in both cases, it is dismissed the same way that the
British would dismiss the rise of the USA as a global economic power just as
the Fabians put the finishing blows to prosperity at home (or, in Sydney's
case, happily embraced with negative gearing and rationalized via any
graspable straw). The region has issues the US did not, so the story's not
written up yet.

FWIW I've seen plenty of Asians do great in non-STEM subjects (including
publishing, acting and music). As a classically trained musician, I know many
more Asians with a great knowledge, understanding and interest of music
history and theory than Westerners, even those who studied the subject full
time, even though it is theoretically the latter's "cultural baggage". I'm not
a fan of Lang Lang, but hearing musicians like Yuja Wang is incredibly
promising and shows that "foreigners" with not much local exposure to so
called Western culture can easily master "our" arts.

------
dengnan
When talking about Asian's stereotype, one thing is always ignored: the
stereotype of Asian in the U.S. is a direct result of the education system and
immigrant policy. Most 1st generation Asian immigrants are students who come
to the U.S. for grad school. They (and their children) are better at STEM
simply because they (or their parents) are/were grad students in that area. As
an Asian, I saw lots of students who are not good at STEM and simply did not
get an offer from any U.S. university. The immigration policy and
universities' admission procedure are intentionally designed to select foreign
students who are good in those majors.

------
greglindahl
Back when Harvard didn't admit (many) blacks and women, they also had an anti-
Jewish quota. See:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States)

Edit: Now that I eventually figured out how to get around the paywall (hint:
Chrome makes it easier than Firefox, I wonder why), the article mentions this:
"The suit compares its current racial admissions to Harvard’s quotas limiting
Jewish students in an earlier era. In both cases, Harvard kept out minorities
who would have been admitted based on academic merit."

~~~
msherry
Just read an interesting article on boingboing (I know, I know) about this.
[http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/for-god-for-country-and-
for...](http://boingboing.net/2014/11/20/for-god-for-country-and-for.html)

------
parennoob
As I have tried to point out before, this exact same problem is also present
in efforts to bolster minority participation in tech. Asian men are often
completely ignored in minority programs, because "Uh, there are a lot of Asian
guys in tech", completely ignoring the strongly inferior position that they
hold in American society as a whole (in my opinion, definitely one below that
of white women; though this is only an opinion.)

The response I usually get when I point out this problem on HN is a glib "Hey,
it's a free country. Nobody prevented you from starting up your own minority
program for Asians." [1] Unfortunately, so far I haven't been able to find a
proper response to this.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665)

~~~
potatolicious
I read an article once that phrased it well regarding Asians: "we have a
problem, and we are a problem, at the same time".

We're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're
substantially _under_ represented, and at the same time our presence is used
as justification that other races aren't being discriminated against.

Asians are tremendously more privileged than Blacks or Hispanics in tech, but
still suffer from tremendous problems ourselves. Many seem unable to
comprehend this in a world view where privilege is binary.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_We 're "represented" in tech, but not at the upper echelons where we're
substantially under represented..._

Do you have data on this? Anecdotally it isn't hard to think of Asians in the
upper echelons (e.g. Satya Nadella). A quick glance at google's management
team finds Asians to be overrepresented at 4/18 Asians (6/18 if you include
middle easterners).

[http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/](http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/)

Microsoft (2/16) and Twitter (2/14) seem similar:

[http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-
leaders/](http://news.microsoft.com/microsoft-senior-leaders/)

[https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership](https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership)

(0.8/16 is what would be expected based on proportional representation.)

~~~
potatolicious
> _" Do you have data on this? Anecdotally it isn't hard to think of Asians in
> the upper echelons (e.g. Satya Nadella)."_

In the same way Barack Obama is evidence that black people have it pretty easy
around here ;) There are definitely some high-profile Asians in tech, they're
not exactly rare like unicorns, but the underrepresentation is plenty real.

I dug up the original article I was reading: [http://the-
toast.net/2014/10/23/asian-americans-media/view-a...](http://the-
toast.net/2014/10/23/asian-americans-media/view-
all/?utm_content=buffere0bba&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer)
\- btw, this is IMO the most approachable/parseable summary of where Asian-
Americans fit into the greater American race relations landscape I've seen
yet. It's well worth a read.

It's a more general look at Asian-Americans, but there is a section
specifically addressing tech.

More concretely giving numbers to the representation deficit:

[http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23100254/glass-ceiling-
asian-a...](http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_23100254/glass-ceiling-asian-
americans-still-under-represented-silicon)

Even in Google's own numbers Asians represent 34% of the tech workforce and
23% in leadership roles.

Facebook's a bit worse - 41% of tech workforce Asian, 19% leadership.

Yahoo is particularly egregious - 57% Asian, 17% leadership.

Even Twitter isn't particularly great: 34% Asians in tech, 24% in leadership
from their own report: [https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-
can-be-p...](https://blog.twitter.com/2014/building-a-twitter-we-can-be-proud-
of)

~~~
yummyfajitas
By those numbers, Asians are overrepresented in both tech and leadership. The
real question is why they aren't _more overrepresented_ in leadership. It's a
valid question, but a different one than I was asking.

Apriori I would not expect the demographics of leadership to look like those
of tech. My simple model (with allusions to michaelochurch) is that tech is
generally not the path to leadership. I.e., if 3% of techies go into
leadership vs 5% of non-techies, then leadership demographics will look more
like non-tech demographics than tech demographics.

~~~
potatolicious
The under representation exists even if we include all Asians employed at
these companies - Twitter has for example a 29%/24% difference, Facebook is
24/19 when restricted to _just_ non-tech role headcount. Yahoo comes in at
24/17 when similarly looking at _just_ non-tech employees.

The demographics of leadership actually _get worse_ once you leave tech:
Asians represent 0.8% of C-level roles, and 2.1% of board seats - against 5%
in the general population. Tech is actually a relative bright spot when it
comes to Asians in leadership roles.

> _" The real question is why they aren't more overrepresented in
> leadership."_

This really isn't the question at all. You're conflating two separate
problems: over-representation of Asians in tech _overall_ , vs. under-
representation of Asians in progression of tech leadership. Both can be true
simultaneously.

Accepting the precondition that Asians are over-represented compared to the
general population, their progression to leadership roles (from both tech and
non-tech origins) suggests under-representation. i.e., based on the
precondition we'd expect to see more Asian leaders in these companies.

That the precondition exists is a fairly interesting problem itself, but
largely separate from the argument of leadership.

At the heart of it is the notion of equality - that two equal candidates get a
fair shake at a promotion/role regardless of race. Regardless of whether or
not leadership positions bias towards tech candidates or non-tech candidates,
the gap exists - Asians are promoted/hired into leadership positions at a
lower rate than their participation in the rest of the industry.

This is particularly visible in professions where the advancement track is
less vague and more straightforward - for example in law Asian-Americans
represent 6.7% of associates, but only 1.8% of sr. counsel, and 1.7% of
partners.

This sort of gets at the original problem I brought up - that Asians have a
problem, and are a problem. The over-representation of Asians in white collar
professions is used as a bludgeon with which to attack other minorities, and
used to invalidate real inequities within these professions such as whether or
not they're being treated fairly when it comes to promotions and advancement.
The Model Minority myth is damaging all around - to other races, to Asians
themselves.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_At the heart of it is the notion of equality - that two equal candidates get
a fair shake at a promotion /role regardless of race._

And pointing out that Asians (or whoever) are underrepresented does NOT prove
they don't get a "fair shake". It's also possible they are getting a fair
shake and coming up short, or choosing not to be shaken. More evidence is
needed.

 _The over-representation of Asians in white collar professions is used as a
bludgeon with which to attack other minorities..._

No one is "attacking other minorities". Asians are brought up to refute the
"mirrortocracy" hypothesis: white gatekeepers in the industry will prevent
entry by people different from them.

Describing that as an "attack" is silly.

------
tokenizerrr
To bypass the paywall:
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fharvards-
asian-
problem-1416615041&ei=aWJxVNX7KsWCPenpgcgF&usg=AFQjCNFx4jAu3iXSX2MOITUbgE1rO6gK_A&sig2=38LP7WVfphG3BkJL9pNFYg&bvm=bv.80185997,d.ZWU)

~~~
pickle27
can you explain how this works?

~~~
jacalata
I think that if you want google to be able to index the article text, then the
article has to be accessible from the search result - you can't show different
pages to google's robot than to human visitors or they'll block you. So the
paywall is not allowed to kick in if you are coming directly from google.
(Works for the NYT as well, probably anywhere else that is indexed on google
too).

------
epoxyhockey
_In 1992, 19.1% of Harvard’s admissions offers went to Asian applicants,
compared to 25.2% who were admitted to the California Institute of Technology,
a school that doesn’t use racial preferences. In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its
offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students._

It is an interesting choice to compare Harvard's racial admissions with that
of CalTech. I would think that Harvard vs. MIT or Stanford would create a more
convincing argument. So, here are the numbers:

Stanford class of 2018: 22.6% Asian [1]

MIT class of 2018: 30% Asian [2]

Harvard class of 2018: 20% Asian [3]

It looks like the writer of the article chose the school with the highest
percentage Asian population to make this comparison (excluding Hawaii). [4]

[1] [http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-
profile](http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile)

[2]
[http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile](http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile)

[3] [https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-
statistics](https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics)

[4] [http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-
hi...](http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-highest-
percentage-of-asian-students/2361/)

~~~
tzs
MIT and Stanford both use race as a significant factor in making admission
decisions. They have explicitly stated this [1]. Caltech much less so (I
believe it can be used as a tie breaker). Hence, Caltech is a better control
than Stanford or MIT to compare against when you are trying to see what things
should look like if race were not a factor.

It's not a perfect control, though, because of Caltech's focus on STEM.
Caltech does actually offer non-STEM courses (and majors). In fact, it
requires students to take about 1/4 of their coursework in humanities and
social sciences, which is similar to what a science major at a good liberal
arts school would take. Nevertheless, no one chooses Caltech for the
humanities or social sciences, whereas people DO choose Harvard for them.

Although undergraduates are generally not admitted on a department by
department basis, surely the schools have to try to get some idea from the
application what fields the student is interested in majoring in, and they
have to take that into account in making their decisions. If you have
facilities for 50 new chemistry majors a year and 50 new English Literature
majors a yer, and you get 500 applicants from people whose application
suggests they might go into chemistry and only 60 applicants who appear likely
to go into English Lit, you are going to reject a lot of those potential
chemistry majors, even if their applications look better (grades, tests, and
so on) than those of many of the people you accept from the group that looks
interested in English Lit.

Since many high achieving Asians are driven by pressure from their parents,
and parents push their kids toward STEM a lot more often than they push toward
English Literature, it is possible that Asians could be getting effectively
discriminated against as a side effect of them concentrating in STEM.

[1]
[http://findlawimages.com/efile/supreme/briefs/02-241/02-241....](http://findlawimages.com/efile/supreme/briefs/02-241/02-241.mer.ami.mit.pdf)

~~~
Anechoic
_MIT and Stanford both use race as a significant factor in making admission
decisions._

What language in that brief makes you conclude that MIT and Stanford both use
race as a "significant" factor (at least as compared with Caltech)? All three
schools put race in the "considered" category of their CDS submissions.

~~~
ekm2
The brief does not mention Caltech.But for the other two:

 _MIT considers all aspects of each candidate 's background,including racial
and ethnic factors.._

 _Stanford is strongly of the view that race and national origin should no
more be entirely ignore.._

~~~
Anechoic
Yes, but that is true of Caltech as well.

~~~
ekm2
_For example,the California Institute of Technology(Caltech) is a private
school that selects its students by strict academic standards and chooses not
to consider race._

[http://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014...](http://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-
content/uploads/2014/11/SFFA-v.-Harvard-Complaint.pdf)

~~~
Anechoic
I don't know what to tell you - there is no cite for that claim in the filing,
and Caltech's own CDS filings say that they _do_ consider race. Is there any
statement from Caltech that says they do not consider race in admissions?

~~~
ekm2
The link i have provided you _is_ the filing and it says Caltech _does not_
consider race.

~~~
Anechoic
It's a filing from a plaintiff that is _not Caltech_. That plaintiff
("Students For Fair Admissions, Inc") is making an assertion without a
citation. Given that sentence contradicts a filing _made by Caltech_ (their
annual Common Data Set filings), I'd like to see something more direct _from
Caltech_ before I give any weight to SfFA's statement.

------
tzs
For those complaining about the paywall or for whom the usual paywall bypass
tricks failed, Google "harvard asian lawsuit" or "Students for Fair
Admissions" (that's the group that is suing) and filter to limit the search to
article in the last week.

That will give you a few other sites that have covered the story. Some details
might differ from the WSJ coverage, but it will give you enough to be able to
appreciate the comments here and participate meaningfully in the discussion.

------
jeffreyrogers
I noticed the article compared Harvard's admission percentage to Caltech (19%
to 25%). If you're going to make that comparison it's worth noting that a
significant fraction of Harvard students are athletes and the admissions
criteria for athletes is different. Anecdotally, Asians seem to be under
represented in athletics, so that probably explains part of the difference.

~~~
saretired
That's 1992. "In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech
admitted 42.5% Asian students." "Though the number of Asians applying for
admission [to Harvard] has increased, the percentage of offers has barely
budged."

Funny, what you say about Asians and sports "anecdotally" is exactly what was
said to "explain" discrimination against Jews in the Ivy League.

~~~
jeffreyrogers
Ah okay, thanks for pointing that out. I just skimmed the article. Also, I
don't think that I suggested that explains all of it, and it certainly doesn't
in the case where 42.5% of the students are Asian, however, it is worth noting
that Caltech and Harvard admit students for different reasons, and many of
Harvard's students are admitted for non-academic reasons.

------
fabulist
Non-paywalled link:

[https://archive.today/0a9a6](https://archive.today/0a9a6)

------
Terr_
What's the etiquette for registration-required (or paywalled) links?

~~~
vmarsy
For true pay-wall articles it would be a problem but here you can just search
for the article's title on Google and see it for free

~~~
greglindahl
No, you can't. I opened up Google News and did a search for the article title
in an incognito window and still couldn't view the article. Maybe it worked
for you, but it's a lot higher paywall than the ones at NYT. HN can't continue
to publish stories that people can't read.

Edit: That was using Firefox's incognito mode; in Chrome incognito it worked.
I can't imagine how that could possibly be true. Maybe it's because the first
time I clicked on the wsj link in FF I wasn't incognito and the WSJ recorded
my IP/UA? In any case, no, it's not an easily solved paywall.

~~~
vmarsy
This is strange, I opened it from Firefox, but without bothering going into
incognito mode. I tried multiple times from the direct link I had the paywall,
from Google's _search_ everything was fine.

If it can help anyone access the article, I use the Disconnect, Adblock plus,
and self destructing cookies add-ons.

------
butwhy
I would speculate that this problem is not as big as the paywall problem.

~~~
viggity
Search the title of the article in google, then click the link. They'll let
you through if the referrer is a search engine

~~~
fabulist
This is usually my goto move, but it failed me here.

------
mynameishere
Shrug.

The anti-European ruling class of the Western world is unintentionally hurting
Asians as well. No kidding. But they really didn't want this to happen, and
any Asians hurt by these policies should try to understand: You are just
collateral damage--the real enemy is people of European descent. This has been
going on for a long time.

I'm sure they'll straighten it out. Trial balloons on the topic are always
going up.

------
himynameistimli
Asians are being used as a wedge in the one lawyer's agenda against
affirmative action.

~~~
sremani
That does not exonerate Harvard from its Asian glass ceiling, misdirection
does not explain 20 years of "record".

------
siliconc0w
Diversity in education may be more valuable to Harvard (and, probably, the
rest of us) than a few tenths of a GPA point or handful of SAT points. This
seems perfectly valid. (IMO) Diversity helps creates better solutions to
better problems than you're likely to get with slightly higher performing but
less diverse populations.

~~~
dengnan
I would say that fairness is more important than diversity. Setting different
goals for different races is a racism no matter how diverse you could get in
the end.

About GPA/SAT: According to Goodhart's Law, "When a measure becomes a target,
it ceases to be a good measure." However, a measure is required and should be
consistent.

Asians are not born to be good at GPA, American Asians are good at that
because the universities admission system and immigrant policy are
specifically designed to select students who are good at school. The first
generation of Asians in the US are most grad students from foreign countries.

~~~
glomph
It is interesting that you argue fairness should be the goal. If diversity
results in a universitiy doing better overall (which some studies suggest it
can) then presumably it is akin choosing high GPA students in that it is done
for the purpose of achiving their goals as an institution.

Put another way: If fairness is your goal what about the kids who don't have a
high GPA score? What happened to their fair chance to go to Harvard?

