
Are Canadian Universities 'Too Asian'? - gamble
http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/11/10/too-asian/
======
imack
Being a Waterloo alum working in Vancouver I'm just used to this ratio and I
guess I've just adapted to the fact that its being 'normal' for 30-40% of my
colleagues to be asian. But whenever I wonder if I should worry about the fate
of my entitled WASPish brothers being locked out of certain programs, I just
remember a great line from a recent 30 Rock:

"The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things, the next
generation goes to college, innovates things, the third
generation...snowboards and takes improv classes".

Soon enough, there will be asian students who take improv classes who's
parent's will bitch about their school spots being taken by super-students
from Elbonia

~~~
devinj
I'm a UofT student, and it's the same here. There's nothing particularly
bothersome about having a lot of students from Korea and China. There's not
even really much to get used to. Yeah, there are asians. So what?

The parents in the article _claim_ that the asian students beat them out, but
honestly, it was really easy to get into this university. I had terrible
grades in my first two years of high school, and for the most part I was
rejected by (good) US colleges (probably also because I didn't have my green
card). I was even forced to apply later than students in Canada, because I did
not go to an Ontario high school and had to fill in a different form with a
later submission date. All these things would seem to be disadvantages, and I
didn't figure on getting accepted at all. And yet I got into UofT (and
Waterloo). It's remarkably easy to get into a university like this -- possibly
because you're only allowed to apply to three Ontario universities -- and I
don't buy the parents' arguments at all. More likely their kids got terrible
grades, and that's nobody else's fault.

Honestly I can't believe we're even having this discussion. The last time I
heard about fears of Chinese immigration was in history class.

~~~
Estragon

      The last time I heard about fears of Chinese immigration was in history class.
    

Expect a lot more of it if the economy stays in the toilet.

~~~
bryanlarsen
I'm far more worried about Chinese _emigration_. It used to be that Chinese
students came to Canadian universities and then start companies like ATI. Now
they come to Canadian universities and go back to China or Taiwan and start
companies.

~~~
devinj
This is more of an interesting concern, especially considering how much money
Canada spends getting students in. I don't know the numbers for emigration,
though. Have any figures?

It's possible that they still stay here, but don't start companies like ATI
anymore. Being anonymous employee #5761 at ATI is cool too.

------
goalieca
I spent 6 years at SFU and am now in my 3rd at UBC. The biggest problem I see
is that people form micro-societies everywhere. Mostly people seem to stick to
their own ethnicity too. I figure it's a cultural thing. No one wants to be
somewhere they don't fit in and don't belong. I had a really hard time at SFU
with making friends and having a life. UBC is a big enough school that I've
had a much easier time but I'm still largely a floater. I'm a métis, i fit
everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

~~~
CoreDumpling
I think I share a similar sentiment. I was born in mainland China but moved to
the US at an early age, and I'm a fluent Chinese speaker. But I found that I
fit well with neither the Chinese student associations (mostly recent
immigrants) nor the Chinese-American student associations (mostly ABCs,
American-born Chinese).

Ultimately I rejected the groups that were based on ethnicity and instead
participated in ones centered around an activity. Whether it was programming,
board games, or quiz bowl, there was always a healthy multicultural mix of
people. A shared heritage provides some basic level of camaraderie, which
tends to be very consistent and reliable, but common interests certainly are
better at holding one's attention.

------
apenwarr
I took Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo. My class had lots
of Asians (and other minorities), and to a large degree they beat the pants
off most of us white people for grades.

But that was the point of going there, I thought. I had scholarship offers
from universities where they were going to make it _easy_ on me. The high
immigrant population at Waterloo shifted the bell curve so that all the
courses had to be harder. Why would I spend money and four years of my life on
something that wasn't as challenging as possible?

So thanks, hard-working immigrants, for raising the bar and therefore the
quality of my education :) I hope the best Canadian universities continue to
be smart enough to not try to influence it the other way.

By the way, I lived in London Ontario for a while, and the University of
Western Ontario seems to be exactly as characterized in the article; mind
boggling. But hey, I'm all for diversity. If that's what the majority of white
people want to pay for, then sell it to them.

------
Locke1689
Universities shouldn't be worried about racial quotas or anything like that --
but they should be worried about homogeneity (at least, private universities).
There's a very good point to be made that a university should be a place where
people of different backgrounds and cultures can come together in a collective
environment. If you have 60% 'Asian students who want to major in math or
science and play the violin' that's an issue, just as 60% white business major
lacrosse-players is an issue.

I do have to say, one area where I'm concerned is graduate international
admission. In my experience the TOEFL is clearly not cutting it with some
people and knowing English is not optional as a graduate student -- you NEED
to be able to easily communicate with your fellow grads and, perhaps most
importantly, the undergrads you TA. Similarly, strong accent should definitely
be a factor in choosing who can lecture classes. I don't care how good a
researcher someone is if no one can understand them. This isn't even a
complaint about Asian students and professors, either. The person I'm thinking
of is Brazilian.

~~~
alextp
I kind of agree; it annoys me to meet people who emigrated and after years
still speak with a thick accent and make strong grammar mistakes. I'm
brazillian, and I observe this phenomenon both with foreign people in brazil
(who apparently refuse to learn some vowels and gendered nouns) and
brazillians who emigrate to english-speaking countries and still have crappy
english.

I wonder why this is, though. First time I went to london (I was young) I was
shocked that I, just out of movies and internet and some classes, spoke a
better english than most working people I met in the streets who seemed to
have emigrated there years ago.

~~~
nick_dm
It doesn't surprise me that learning from movies and the internet would make
you more proficient than someone who learnt by living in the UK. When people
are forced to speak a language that they do not know well they often end up
reinforcing bad habits. Once someone has developed bad pronunciation or
inadvertently trained themselves to ignore certain grammatical features it
takes a lot of effort to correct the habits. Of course a committed learner can
offset this to some degree, but most immigrants aren't willing to put in the
effort and are only partially aware of the mistakes they are making. After
three years they then speak in much the same way as they did after six months,
but with a larger vocabulary.

------
stretchwithme
Would this look out of place in pre-war Germany if you substitute "Jewish" for
"Asian"?

How about looking at things as if the individual matters?

More smart, hardworking people only makes a country stronger and life better
for the average person.

Need proof? Experiment with the exact opposite. Move to a place where everyone
is dumb as a post. You may be the smartest fish in a mucky little pond, but
you'll never get your order right at the drive-thru again. Break a leg and
wake up with a cast on your arm.

~~~
mynameishere
This kind of comment would be more credible if the same person would admit the
equivalent: More dumb, tax-eating people makes a country weaker and life worse
for the average person.

It's _rare_ , let me tell you, for the same person to hold those two ideas
together.

~~~
devinj
Huh? Why wouldn't someone believe that?

Being an unproductive member of society living on welfare sucks money from the
state, which could otherwise do things like offer more support (healthcare),
improve infrastructure, fund medical research, etc.

------
usaar333
This report reminds me of the WSJ's article on "White Flight" from a few
heavily Asian high schools in the Silicon Valley:
[http://wsjclassroom.com/teen/teencenter/05nov_whiteflight.ht...](http://wsjclassroom.com/teen/teencenter/05nov_whiteflight.htm)

And somewhat of NYT's report on my alma matter (Berkeley):
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/education/edlife/07asian.h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/education/edlife/07asian.html?pagewanted=all)

Personally, as a white person who attended a heavily Asian high school and
college, I never understood this fear of a school being "too Asian". It might
just be the hacker in me, but I felt that the added competition such
demographics supposedly brings only betters everyone.

------
mistermann
It seems most interesting to me how the blatant racial statistics and
stereotypes in this article receive nary a comment.

Yet if the subject was, for example, how a study showed "blacks" underperform
in American high school, people would be lining up to point out how the study
is flawed, etc (since any seeming statistical patterns based on race are all
imagined, or manipulations of data).

Am I the only one that sees a double standard here? Or is it as simple as: you
can be racist when complimenting, but not when criticizing?

~~~
shadowfox
Do you have any concrete arguments as to why the study/statistics in the above
article is flawed?

~~~
mistermann
Not at all.

 _That Asian students work harder is a fact born out by hard data._

But, replace "Asian" with "black", and "harder" with "much less hard" in the
above sentence, and people would be lining up to state in a variety of ways
that any study making such an assertion is inherently flawed, as no measurable
differences in achievement amongst races or cultures has been, or can be,
objectively measured, since no such difference exists, period.

Just an interesting observation.

------
sliverstorm
> One panellist, Rachel Cederberg—an Asian-American then working as an
> admissions official at Colorado College—described fellow admissions officers
> complaining of “yet another Asian student who wants to major in math and
> science and who plays the violin.”

The discrepancy of performance required between asian and white kind of makes
sense taken in context of that quote. If your application looks exactly the
same as a couple hundred other students, you're going to be compared against
them first. A University can't admit only the math/science violinists, they
need at least some variety, so you'll be measured against the people similar
to you rather than all the applicants.

p.s. what is it with violin and piano, anyway? Is it because they are
classical (and thus appear refined) yet can solo?

~~~
killedbydeath
Violin and piano are indeed the most popular solo instruments in classical
music. I won't stretch it too much if by saying that some of the best
classical pieces are piano and violin concertos. At least 7 years of piano
education were almost unavoidable growing up in former Soviet Union as well.
There were free music lessons for everyone. Most people never touched the
instrument after they were done. However some ended up switching to guitar or
being able to play piano/keyboard for friends' entertainment. So overall I am
glad I grew up in a country where music education was so universal.

------
iamwil
"According to a 2009 UBC report on direct undergraduate entrants, 43 per cent
of its students self-identify as ethnically Chinese, Korean or Japanese, as
compared to 38 per cent who self-identify as white. Although Vancouver is a
richly diverse city, according to data from the 2006 census, just 21.5 per
cent of its residents identify as a Chinese, Korean or Japanese visible
minority."

I don't get why the article compares student body race ratios with the general
population race ratios in the same city. I wouldn't expect them to be the
same, especially given that admissions is meritocratic, and that a school
admits kids from different places.

~~~
pyre
They are also neglecting to point out that that 21.5% number includes people
that are 'too old,' 'too young.' or just plain not interested in university.

Also, whats the difference between identifying as "ethnically X" verses "as a
X visible minority?" Are they using some weird sort of weasel words?

~~~
usaar333
I'm going to venture that the article is simply using the language from the
reprots cited. UBC probably asks about ethnicity. Visible minority is a legal
term in Canada (hence would be on the census):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_minority>

------
VladRussian
"many white students simply believe that competing with Asians—both Asian
Canadians and international students—requires a sacrifice of time and freedom
they’re not willing to make. They complain that they can’t compete for spots
in the best schools and can’t party as much as they’d like"

Time to file for an injunction to suspend Evolution's "survival of the
fittest"

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Partying hard at college seems a relatively good way to propagate your DNA to
the next generation. I would be wary of ascribing any worthiness to the ones
that do so compared with say childless nuclear physicists.

------
arihelgason
The real problem seems to be that people are of too similar a mindset,
regardless of backround.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-
orga...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/04/the-organization-
kid/2164/)

------
bhiggins
no, these people just feel so entitled that they want to be able to party
party party AND _feel_ (not actually be) well-educated. anyone who works
harder than them and learns more is threatening to this feeling.

~~~
groaner
I wholeheartedly agree, but admittedly, partying may in fact be the main
purpose for which some of these people are there, not the education. Ask the
business school students whether they got more from their classes or the
connections they made.

~~~
kmak
I have a few friends who are in business school and the sole reason they went
back (undergrad business in Stern) was to network a little bit and make
connections. In terms of class and learning, they knew going in that there was
not much to offer.

~~~
GFischer
I'm going to business school (enrolled yesterday), and did so because I
noticed that even though I'm much more qualified than some colleagues, they're
getting ahead because of their connections.

And I believe it's a human fact of nature and understandable. (also, qualified
doesn't mean I actually am a better fit or better worker, just that I studied
more).

My reasons for going for Business school are that if I show that I'm
hardworking, qualified and an acquaintance, I can shoot for the jobs above my
current "glass ceiling".

If it fails or I'm so inclined, I'll go the startup/enterpreneur route :)
(I'll probably try both shooting for the CTO position and enterpreneurship on
the side)

------
theoden
Why would you want to go to university with a bunch of completely uncreative
people who only sit around and study? Studying (for actual classes) is only
part of what university is about. Most Asians are so bland that they could
easily be replaced by some sort of advanced work/study-robots and we wouldn't
know the difference.

Of course, since universities have been turned into factories, robots are
perfectly adapted to that environment.

~~~
unexpected
This is one of the most incredibly racist things I've ever read. I beg you to
reconsider - look at the incredibly rich cultural traditions of China (India
could also fit into this mold), and then talk to me about creativity.

~~~
theoden
This is obviously a subjective matter, but I would say that the sum of the
culture of the West is far richer than that of any other culture, even though
ancient China and India are impressive in many ways.

But it really doesn't matter what China was like 2000 years ago. What matters
is what Asians are like _today_.

~~~
shadowfox
So is your contention that most asians are uncreative and most westerners are
creative folks?

~~~
theoden
It is my observation that Asians, on average, are more
uncreative/conformist/careerist/bland than Westerners. But hey, that's OK -- I
just wouldn't want to got to a university with too many Asians.

~~~
shadowfox
I see. An interesting generalization for sure :)

