Why Asian Americans’ claim of Harvard admissions bias misses the point
Peter Gordon says their complaint that Asian Americans need higher grades to be admitted is right. However, universities do not exist for the sole benefit of those who attend; they need to pay attention to what’s best for society
Harvard University has been named in a complaint by a group of several dozen Asian Americans claiming discrimination in the university admissions process. They make the statistically justified claim that Asians need higher grades and test scores to be admitted.
The US Justice Department is reportedly now going to move the case forward. As an alumnus and the father of two (now post-university) Asian-American children, I admit to not being disinterested.
Yet despite the alleged injustice, more than 20 per cent of the students admitted are Asian American, while Asian Americans make up only about 6 per cent of the US population. Since one can expect ability to be evenly distributed across all ethnic groups, this looks less like injustice than a problematical definition of “better-qualified”.
Harvard is not alone in this. Admissions officers usually emphasise “holistic” evaluation or the desirability of “diversity”, neither of which, whatever their merits, do much to dissuade these students that they were declined admission in favour of others – nominally “lesser-qualified” – from other groups.
Achievements may be correlated with ability, but they are also correlated with opportunity
When I was, long ago, running the alumni admissions interview process in Hong Kong for my alma mater, I was often asked “What does one have to have done to be admitted?”, to which I would reply something along the lines of, “It’s not what you have done, it’s what you will do once you graduate”.
I cannot vouch for what actually goes on behind the closed doors of admissions offices, but universities should be admitting students on the basis of ability or potential. Achievements, both scholastic and extracurricular, may be correlated with ability, but they are also correlated with opportunity. Ability is evenly distributed across the socio-economic and ethnic spectrum, while opportunity quite clearly is not. Admissions procedures which yield results significantly out of sync with the make-up of the community at large would seem to be prima facie problematical.
