Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Asians and Education

Way back in 1998, before Rod Liddle turned into a right wing death beast, the Today programme featured the hideous revelation that "while one third of all applications for medical school places are from Asians, they represent only one fifth of those accepted".

Given that Asians were approximately 4% of the population at the time, the real story might have been that they were applying at 8 times the rate of the natives, rather than that they were "only" being accepted at 5 times the rate.

(Rod's successor Kevin Marsh ignored later research showing that by 2001 white males, still 44% of the population, made up only 26% of new medical students).

Way over in California, 'affirmative action' (aka 'positive discrimination' aka 'discrimination against whites') was made illegal when Proposition 209 was passed. As Face Right reports, the consequences have been appalling.

"Instead of ensuring nondiscrimination, Proposition 209 has created an environment that many students of color view as discriminatory. That's because minority representation has dropped appallingly." says the Chancellor of Berkeley.

How does this appalling drop in minority representation manifest itself ?

"Asian Americans constitute about 48 percent of the class that entered Berkeley in August 2005. With about 9 percent of California's population, Asian Americans are overrepresented here by well over 400 percent, or by about 1,500 percent if viewed in a national context."




Call me a gullible fool, but I can't help thinking those figures might just have as much to do with culture as with than racism. See also this post.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Remember at UC berkelwey you are talking about a State School - be interesting to look at Stanford, CalTech, etc.

I once had a female asian roommate from UC-B - she was really dim.

You cannot compare in the Us because private universities take a different tranche and tuition in State Schools is much much lower

Martin said...

Laban,

Surely the crux would be not in how many start, but finish?

Does anyone know what the comparative white-Asian final qualification rates are?

Anonymous said...

The reason there is such a vast over-representation of applicants from people with Indian backgrounds is that they are pushed very hard by their parents to become professionals. It is nothing to do with universities wanting such an over-representation.