Asians make up 41.3% of California St. College Freshmen

[AngryAmish]

"Will Asian-Americans one day make up a majority of students at the University of California?

If the trend of the past decade continues, it just might happen.

The number of Asian-American students at University of California campuses far out paces their population increase in the state. These students attended a physics class at UC San Diego.
This month marks the 10-year anniversary of the passage of Proposition 209, the state initiative that banned using racial preferences in public university admissions and state hiring and contracting.

At the highly competitive University of California, where grades and test scores drive admissions, the enrollment trend is clear: Asian-American student numbers have grown the most, far outpacing their population increase in the state."

It is clear that the one group who has the most negative effect from affirmative action is asian americans. There is no affirmative action in California for the last ten years so the population of the students in California state colleges has increased.

Is this a good thing?

[izzie]

Fine as long as they are Am. and not from over seas.

Better get going on education of Am. with tax payers money. No one pays the full amount and most of these places are using tax payers money.

[Deja Q]

9. Seconded.

Americans. Born here, legally here, here to stay and not be shipped back afterward.

[LeftCoast]

17. Foreign students are a profit-making enterprise for universities

[izzie]

19. Do you mean that they pay full price for their education?

Or do they just charge them what they can get from them? I do think it is good to have them in college from every place but I also feel that the large percent should be Am. or people who plan to stay here. It is a hard one on me as I usually think talent should be the end of it all but with tax payers money the people who pay the tax should have some say and help and generally the education that their tax is paying for.

[Nikki Stone1]

1. I remember in the early 90s a UPenn recruiter saying that 40% of incoming Ivy League students

would be Asian, if the university only went by test scores and SATS. (She was on Oprah). That seems to be accurate. Prop 209 took away affirmative action in California college admissions and these new proportions are based on SATs and grades.

[Ignacio Upton]

3. I'll get flamed for saying this...

But people talk about how affirmative action is needed because of past injustices, when Asians, many of whom came here as working poor, were able to work their way up without any such program. I think the reason why is cultural: Asians (both East Asians and South Asians/Indian subcontinent) have cultures that stress work ethic, while both American whites and American blacks are influenced by crap that we see on tv, and parents that aren't there for them enough. For American blacks, the "culture" of high divorce rates and out of wedlock pregnancies also contributes to the problems of moving up socially and economically more so than race. Black immigrants don't have this problem, as many of them have been able to be more socially mobile than African-Americans.

[jaysunb]

10. Truth tellers don't get flamed.....

You are spot on in your analysis, but you really have to look further beneath the obvious to find the real reasons.

[Igel]

16. It's likely he did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/magazine/26tough.html

It's long, and parts aren't relevant.

It's not the kid. It's not the income level. Race is at least secondary, since other factors account for most of the variance. It's probably partially the school, but controlling for that is hard.

Most of the rest ... the family and the family's culture.

[WI_DEM]

2. They study hard and apply themselves and so why not?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. EEEK!! The Return "Yellow Peril"!!

What a stampede of bogey-men we've had lately. Islamo-fascists, the Brown Invasion, and now Asian scholars. We are DOOMED!!

[HamdenRice]

5. As a former admissions committee member, I'd say it's a terrible thing

but not for the reasons you would think. The real problem that no one is addressing is that scores on standardized tests don't test anything useful.

What is happening in California is not that the best students are getting in; it's that the best test takers are getting in. The dirty secret of the whole admissions scam is that standardized tests were designed to screen out people for reasons of class and ethnicity, and now one racial group that was never intended to be screened in, has mastered the game.

I was once on a bar association task force that examined minorities in major law firms. A big southern law firm came to town a gave us a startling presentation about a huge statistical study they had done concerning the correlation of grades, LSAT scores and success as attorneys, and they came to the very disturbing conclusion that there was no correlation. Good grades and high LSAT scores had basically a random correlation with skill and success as a lawyer.

The highest predictor of success for attorneys -- oddly enough, but intuitively it makes sense -- was participation in extra curricular activities in college and law school!

As a former professor, I would rather have an intellectually curious grade screw up than a perfect test taker, any time. Teaching to a class of "good testers" whatever their ethnicity is a nightmare.

[Nikki Stone1]

7. Wow. I didn't realize there was such a disconnect between test scores and achievement

in a field. That's very disturbing.

What I did know is that all tests can be studied for and I have seen international students (not immigrants or citizens) study hard enough to pass the TOEFL (which substitutes for the SAT for non-native speakers). These kids couldn't hold a conversation at an academic level, but they passed the test at a high enough level to get into college.

[jaysunb]

11. Saturday schools are thriving

here in the San Gabriel Valley, which is home to the largest Asian population outside Asia.
These parents and students have recognized the failure of the public school system and are fighting back by investing in what amounts to a "separate" education.

Thank you Prop 13 and all its worshipers.....:evilfrown:

[Nikki Stone1]

12. Sounds like other communities need to set up Saturday schools or

Fight for better public education.

[Nikki Stone1]

6. Have the number of African American students and Latinos also gone up?

That, in fact, is the larger issue. The last I read, AA and Latinos were actually a reduced presence on college campuses since Prop 209. This creates a big problem for diversity on campuses. If one of the goals of a college education is to learn how to live in a diverse US culture, then the disproportionate number of Asians to the exclusion of other minorities becomes a big problem.

A word about your assumptions on Asians and Asian Americans. Some live in poorer areas (like Koreatown in LA). Others live in the poshest parts of the LA metro area (like South Pasadena). I would like to see figures on this, but my general impression is that there is more wealth in some parts of the Asian community than there is in the African American or Latino communities. Poverty almost always translates into lower educational outcomes, including lower grades and SAT scores.

[Cleita]

15. See my post #14 where I explain why Asians are more affluent

than other minorities. Also, since free tuition was repealed, AA and Hispanics have less access to money for tuition.

[Igel]

18. AA and Latino enrollment at UC schools as a system

are about back to where they were pre-Prop 209.

At UCLA, they're down.

I suspect that graduation stats for Latinos and AA aren't much affected, though.

[Deja Q]

8. As IBM, Sun, and others build more campuses in China, India,

they won't be coming here. :shrug:

[StraightDope]

13. Good on them.

Traditional Asian cultures value education, knowledge and learning.

The American culture does not.

There's your explaination.

[Cleita]

14. Just a few facts from the past. All California state colleges and

universities used to be tuition free to California residents as long as they were eligible for admission as freshmen. That meant certain course requirements had to be met in high school, good SATs and I believe at that time their grade point average in high school had to have an average grade of "B".

When the universities and colleges had to start charging tuition then the admission's bar lowered because they started to have to get students whose parents could afford the tuition. This left many minorities behind, except the Asians whose parents are more able to afford tuition than most minorities because they earn more money.

The reason the parents earn more money is that Asians pool money to help a fellow Asian family get started in business, a kind of informal banking system among their fellow countrymen. This means more Asians are entrepreneurs and are better able to send their kids to college. I believe this is why there are disproportionately more Asians in colleges. I'm not saying that they don't deserve to go to college because they have a strong work ethic and expectation by their parents that they will do well.