The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that parents and groups of Asian descent are upset over the University of California’s (UC) admissions changes. As you may know, these students tend to score higher on standardized tests and achieve higher grades than whites, blacks, Hispanics, and other groups.
Earlier this year, the Board of Regents voted to eliminate two SAT subject test requirements and will consider for admission applicants with a 3.0 or higher who’ve completed at least 11 of 15 required college prep courses by their junior year and taken the ACT with Writing or SAT Reasoning exam.
It’s been widely reported that UC’s admissions changes will negatively impact Asian students. The purpose of the changes is to admit more minorities, but Asian students are not considered preferred minorities. Author Stephan Thernstrom noted that Asians are 12 percent of California’s population but accounted for 37 percent of UC admissions last year. An excerpt from the Chronicle:
The Legislature’s Asian and Pacific Islander caucus sent the board a letter urging it to postpone voting on the policy change. The letter complained that the policy “has not received the proper vetting it deserves,” partly because the university had made no effort to run it by Asian-American lawmakers, civil-rights groups, and higher-education associations. It also said the university’s analysis of the policy’s impact on Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders had failed to break out the data for specific ethnic groups, masking the potential impact on those that are disproportionately from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The board overwhelmingly approved the policy anyway. The university’s administration dismissed its own projections by saying that its analysis was based on outdated data that failed to account for the likelihood that Asian-Americans would adjust their behavior by, for example, putting more effort into the basic SAT test, which remains part of the admissions criteria.
When the changes were first proposed, an analysis estimated that the share of Asian students would drop from 36 percent to between 29 and 32 percent. What accounted for this projection? In order to admit more black, white, and Hispanic students, the share of high-achieving Asians inevitably would drop. But I’m speculating here.
While Americans of Asian descent typically don’t protest and complain the way other minority groups do, I have a feeling they’ll continue venting their displeasure at any admissions scheme that unfairly reduces their numbers, as well they should.
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What I dont understand is how opening the gate for more people to be able to get an education is a bad thing it may drop asian enrollment but probably not by a large degree considering that asian/asian-americans account for 46.75 percent of the total student body of the University of california system and stating that asians score higher on the test is also missleading considering they are equal to or higher than then white students in 2 of the three main subjects
I also agree with sean. Demographically and geographically other minorities have a lower chance of doing well on the sat II subject tests. Also i feel Asians will just adapt to the situation and the enrollment rate will not severely decrease for Asians.
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