<p>In order to show that Berkeley is unable to attract out-of-state talent because of its >40% Asian student body, you need time series data for Berkeley and probably panel data for other institutions to serve as comparisons. You need data from before Proposition 209 and after. The data in the USNWR link is cross-sectional.</p>
<p>As I’ve mentioned earlier in this thread, I am fine with their selling a product. If protecting their brand image is so important and the only way to do that is to constrain Asian enrollment and maintain a modicum of “underrepresented” minority enrollment, fine. All I ask in return is that they forgo federal funding.</p>
<p>I can only hope that when I’m your age, I won’t be so jaded as to think that it’s ever acceptable to justify racial discrimination.</p>
<p>the oos percentages for UCB are atrocious. Face it, top talent doesn’t want to go there</p>
<h1>262 there’s nothing jaded about being in reality. That’s the way it is, you have to go from there. You’re just naive. As for foregoing federal funding, with the political capital the elites have, that’s probably unlikely. Racial discrimination is a way of life in America. Business and political parties have been marketing to that reality for a long time and have found a great deal of success. They’ll find ways to put out the product that the public wants.</h1>
<p>Original meaning means nothing. Our constitution has original meanings and it also has amendments.</p>
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<p>That’s a big logical leap you made there. Let’s take a look.</p>
<p>Minority groups should have and need a critical mass.
Blacks are a minority group.
Blacks need a critical mass to feel comfortable.
Blacks have a critical mass and apparently feel comfortable.
Native Americans are a minority group.
Native American need a critical mass.
Native Americans enrollment cannot reach critical mass.
Native American enrollment is there.
Native Americans get are enrolled without having a critical mass and Native Americans are a minority group, thus blacks do not need a critical mass to feel comfortable.</p>
<p>I don’t see how you managed to make that leap regarding the needs of Native Americans. Maybe Native Americans aren’t comfortable. That throws a pretty big wrench in your whole theory regarding the necessity of critical mass. No one is claiming that blacks need a critical enrollment to be enrolled. They’re making the claim that blacks need critical enrollment to feel comfortable.</p>
<p>It’s not racialist to realize that people feel comfortable around people that are similar to themselves. It’s fact. Native Americans at Berkeley would probably feel a lot more comfortable if Berkeley had greater Native American enrollment.</p>
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<p>You answered my question with a question. Why should they be matched academically? The university already recognizes and tolerates differences between different demographics. There are differences between athletes and general admits, low-income and middle-class students, and in-state and out-of-state students. </p>
<p>You also put up a strawman. At no point did I advocate different treatment instead of ‘equal treatment’ (as if such a thing exists in anything other than open admission schools) and if I did you are free to quote me. I questioned why you’re an opponent of one kind of preferential treatment, in this case Affirmative Action, but tolerate other ones.</p>
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<p>So? Regardless of how you make your class 25% of the class is going to graduate at the bottom quarter of the class.</p>
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<p>I never wrote anything comparing Berkeley to Morehouse and if I did you are free to quote me. I simply said that it’s understandable that minorities might feel uncomfortable at a school that lacked a substantial minority enrollment. I said that you would feel uncomfortable at Morehouse if you were a white male because the majority of Morehouse students are not white. To that end, Morehouse is a great example. I wasn’t making a point about Berkeley.</p>
<p>30% Asian isn’t a big deal; I think that’s the percentage in my college (even more so in science, math, and business majors) and it’s certainly not a turn-off. Berkeley is much more diverse than the average public school (42% Asian, 28% White, 11% Hispanic, 3% black - whereas most colleges seem to be 70% white and everyone else smushed into the other 30%) Yes, the customer wants to buy America, but America is no longer white corn-fed Midwestern girls in gingham dresses. States like NY and California have larger Asian populations anyway, so I guess it’s to be expected at Berkeley - Asians and Indians aren’t evenly dispersed around the country. The fact is, most people want their kids to go to an elite college, and Asians are certainly overrepresented there, whereas colleges where URMs are overrepresented are generally not ranked very high. Seeing 10,000 Asians might be a downer for you, but for many people, it’s a sign they’ve stepped into an elite ivy league campus.</p>
<p>I wonder how much longer race-based AA is going to continue? some colleges (Amherst, I know) have already switched to economic AA.</p>
<p>As a native of the Midwest, I find this statement very inaccurate. ( it would be offensive if I had a thinner skin). The middle region of the country is far more diverse than that. And I have never worn a gingham dress.</p>
<p>This is the step I want elite college to pursue, as it is race blind and helps poor disadvantage white, asain, jewish, hispanic and afro american in inner cities and/or rural america.</p>
<p>whether it’s race based AA or economic based AA it will be manipulated to produce the kind of class that the elites want and currently the elites want around 15 to 20% Asian and around 10% black. I would suspect that we’ll see the Latino percentage go up in the next few years and that an elite 10 years from now might well be 25% Asian, 10% black, 10% Latino around 40% white and the rest foreign students and others. That’s the likely scenario. If I have to pick a cutoff number, the elites will be wary of 30% Asian. Sorry, but that’s America. You have to please the customer.</p>
<p>They may be “atrocious,” but that doesn’t prove that “top [OOS] talent doesn’t want to go there.” You have a percentage from one year, hardly enough information to corroborate such a bold claim. In fact, even if you found that the percentage of out-of-state students was substantially higher before Proposition 209 than after, you’d still have to prove that the increase in the percentage of Asian students caused the decrease in the percentage of out-of-state students. Without a regression model, you’re simply assuming that correlation is causation.</p>
<p>When we peaked in on a biology class at UCB three years ago - the class was 100% Asian. (All kinds of Asians for sure, but I was somewhat taken aback nevertheless.) That wasn’t the reason we eliminated Berkeley though. We just felt it wasn’t good value for someone out of state - many huge classes, impacted majors, no housing guarantee for sophomores and now I would add a bankrupt state.</p>
<p>Contrary to fab’s argument, the “critical mass” goal which was affirmed as permissible by the U.S. Supreme Court has nothing to do with making minority students “feel comfortable.” Its purpose is to help ensure that there is a sufficient number of minority viewpoints to have an impact on the educational environment to benefit all students.</p>
<p>Opponents of AA need to get away from the idea that AA exists to benefit the recipients of AA. It does not. Its purpose is to benefit <em>you</em> the student, and every student at a college by providing them with the opportunity to learn/live among students of a variety of races, because colleges have determined (and researchers and SCOTUS agree), that this will make you a better person and citizen of the country/world.</p>
<p>^ which gets back to the basic philosophy of higher education in the U.S. – not China, not Europe, but the U.S. </p>
<p>…Which is that these institutions are more than just academies, and that their purpose converges with the goals of a participatory, representative democracy. </p>
<p>As to correlation not equalling causation (three posts above), it doesn’t matter to the entering student. They are there for a brief interim, in four watershed, formative years of their lives, in which they want to take full advantage of academic, social, and various other opportunities. Often that means full exposure to people with a variety of backgrounds – without having to hunt for a specialized club in order to meet that. Colleges are very aware of this, and in that respect speedo is correct in that privates market to that to appeal to this essential attractive feature.</p>
<p>Try telling Justice Scalia that “original meaning means nothing.” There’s an entire school of jurisprudence that holds “original meaning means everything.” But, I digress; you disagreed that EO 10925 contained the original meaning, and now you don’t. Our disagreement on that point is over.</p>
<p>Are you questioning my argument that the “critical mass” for Native Americans should be equal or greater than that for blacks? Or are you questioning my argument that “critical mass” is unnecessary in the first place? If it’s the former, then what you said does not refute it in any way. If it’s the latter, then I accept.</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, you do not recognize that racial classification is not the same as athlete status, socioeconomic status, or geographic status. Racial classification is a suspect class; any discrimination based on racial classification must be subject to strict scrutiny. By comparison, at best the other classifications you mentioned would be analyzed under intermediate scrutiny, with rational basis being even more likely. In other words, to treat students differently based on their racial classification is not the same as treating students differently based on athlete status. I did not straw man you; for you to argue that black students do not have to be matched academically supposes that there is something special about them that allows different treatment. You will always have a bottom quarter, yes. The question then becomes, how good was their performance relative to the other quarters? You argued that “[Since] Detroit is no more than an hour from Ann Arbor, a substantial black enrollment isn’t that tough with the right institutional policies.” I’m pointing out that while you might be right, don’t be surprised if that kind of mindset leads to a bottom quarter almost completely dominated by students of one racial classification.</p>
<p>You say you were not comparing Berkeley to Morehouse. Then why write, “I don’t see how it’s impossible to see how black students might feel uncomfortable in a majority white and Asian institution. I’m sure you’d feel uncomfortable at a school like Morehouse - and Morehouse is more welcoming to whites than Berkeley is to blacks.” You’re trying to prove to me that “critical mass” isn’t stupid by arguing that I could feel uncomfortable at Morehouse and that my potential uncomfort is analogous to black students’ supposed uncomfort at Berkeley. Sounds like a comparison to me, and not a particularly apt one at that. As I said, Berkeley is 58% non-white, whereas Morehouse is only 7% non-black. 58 != 7.</p>
<p>AA is largely a marketing tool that has been, in some form, given the stamp of approval by the courts. The rationale, “this will make you a better person” is largely nonsense but provides social/moral cover for business practices of the elite institutions. The current product goal at most of the top institutions is around 20% Asian, 50% white 10% black.
As demand changes the colleges will adjust those ratios to meet the needs of their customers. At the elites (and UCB is not an elite) it has nothing to do with values, social responsibility or even the law. With the incredible financial and political power they posess, the elites are a law unto themselves.</p>
<p>Alright Bay, let’s take a look at the Court’s opinion in Grutter, shall we?</p>
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<p>Let’s compare this with my understanding, which I acknowledged was my understanding and not a direct quotation:</p>
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<p>Justice O’Connor wrote, “…a number that encourages underrepresented minority students to participate in the classroom and not feel isolated.” I wrote, “…blacks need a certain level (ie. a “critical mass”) of other blacks on campus in order to feel welcome.”</p>
<p>What’s the difference between “not feel[ing] isolated” and “feel[ing] welcome”? I don’t see any substantive differences.</p>
<p>Wait, because something may not matter to an entering student, we can just set aside basic principles of statistics like <em>that</em>? speedo made a very strong claim and provided extremely weak “evidence” to support it. One number from one year does not prove that the percentage of Asian students at Berkeley has a negative impact on the percentage of out-of-state students at Berkeley. speedo has to prove causality, and he doesn’t have enough information to prove it. He’s got hubris but not much else to back his assertion.</p>
<p>Lest I be misunderstood, I am not against the right of private universities to package a product and sell it. I am not against their right to protect their brand name and image. I’m simply suggesting that if they want to racially discriminate, they ought to distance themselves from federal funding.</p>
<p>How is Berkeley not elite? It is highly selective; it rejects three out of every four applicants. Moreover, it’s ranked as the top public university by USNWR, the same publication that ranks as elite the other universities you doubtless consider elite. Just because you think that it’s as homogeneous as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region doesn’t make it un-elite.</p>