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<p>I say tomatoe, you say tomato … I love coke, you swear by pepsi.</p>
<p>Some love STEM, others want to be a theater major. I think both choices are fine.</p>
<p>^^^
I write that I think you’re stupid for majoring in anthropology, you think I’m dumb not to try to attend Harvard. It’s all fine, and it’s all free speech.</p>
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<p>Spot on. It is the engineering graduates of Hurvey Mudd that move the scale. Given this list, why wouldn’t someone who is interested in a high-earning career prefer some schools over some other small LACs? Unless one is ready to criticize another’s preference for a high-earning career (which in my view would be out of line), insisting that Asians focus on small LACs that provide excellent LA education totally misses the point.</p>
<p>Bovertine - I attached a news article to my statement. Michigan’s attorney General, who was already defending the law as approved overwhelmingly (when was the last time 59% of a State agreed on something?) by the State’s citizens has a standing to appeal.</p>
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<p>The real reason is likely that STEM education is more expensive for the school than most other subjects. Most STEM subjects (except pure math) require labs; some schools do have higher tuition for majors that require a lot of lab courses. STEM faculty may also be more expensive, since the universities have to compete with non-university employers to a greater extent.</p>
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Okay. Then I wonder why mokusatsu is sure he won’t or can’t. Let me go back and read your post.</p>
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<p>I do not think that anyone is stupid for majoring in anthropology (or STEM). I also do not think that anyone is stupid for not trying (or trying) to go to Harvard. I just get surprised when people have such strong feelings about where one wants to go to college, or study a particular major.</p>
<p>To me, it’s very simple. Let everyone do whatever it is they want to do, as long as no law is broken and meritocracy rules.</p>
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<p>Wishful thinking?</p>
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My post was not about you. It was a hypothetical just like your post I referenced. Unless you happen to know which soft drink I prefer.</p>
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<p>I am perfectly OK with higher tuition for STEM majors to offset the cost. However, anecdotally, this is what I have heard from my friends who are tenured professors in some of the Ivies. The Ivies have to justify having a LA faculty. If no one studies LA, then it just looks bad. Also, too many STEM Asian majors cause a white flight from STEM in particular and general LA over time.</p>
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Or maybe there is something technical about the word “appeal” - because I notice in his/her original post about this he/she has that in quotes.</p>
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<p>That’s what I originally thought too. But then his pointing to the U.S. Code seemed to suggest otherwise.</p>
<p>I still vote for wishful thinking.</p>
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When I read the article it said the AG will ask the judge to “reconsider.” Maybe that is the first step and technically different than appealling. It does appear the state plans to challenge the ruling all the way to the high court, if the article is correct.</p>
<p>Maybe moku will come back and clarify. He/she is a bit inscrutable.</p>
<p>The new white flight
Instead of white students fleeing academically weak school districts dominated by disadvantaged blacks and hispanics, in Silicon Valley white students are fleeing overly strong school districts dominated by Asians. Who needs all that math and science anyway?</p>
<p>See related post on Asians and affirmative action here.</p>
<pre><code>WSJ: CUPERTINO, Calif. – By most measures, Monta Vista High here and Lynbrook High, in nearby San Jose, are among the nation’s top public high schools. Both boast stellar test scores, an array of advanced-placement classes and a track record of sending graduates from the affluent suburbs of Silicon Valley to prestigious colleges.
But locally, they’re also known for something else: white flight. Over the past 10 years, the proportion of white students at Lynbrook has fallen by nearly half, to 25% of the student body. At Monta Vista, white students make up less than one-third of the population, down from 45% – this in a town that’s half white. Some white Cupertino parents are instead sending their children to private schools or moving them to other, whiter public schools. More commonly, young white families in Silicon Valley say they are avoiding Cupertino altogether.
Whites aren’t quitting the schools because the schools are failing academically. Quite the contrary: Many white parents say they’re leaving because the schools are too academically driven and too narrowly invested in subjects such as math and science at the expense of liberal arts and extracurriculars like sports and other personal interests.
…In the 1960s, the term “white flight” emerged to describe the rapid exodus of whites from big cities into the suburbs, a process that often resulted in the economic degradation of the remaining community. Back then, the phenomenon was mostly believed to be sparked by the growth in the population of African-Americans, and to a lesser degree Hispanics, in some major cities.
But this modern incarnation is different. Across the country, Asian-Americans have by and large been successful and accepted into middle- and upper-class communities. Silicon Valley has kept Cupertino’s economy stable, and the town is almost indistinguishable from many of the suburbs around it. The shrinking number of white students hasn’t hurt the academic standards of Cupertino’s schools – in fact the opposite is true.
…white students represented 20% of [Monta Vista’s] 29 National Merit Semifinalists this year.
…At Cupertino’s top schools, administrators, parents and students say white students end up in the stereotyped role often applied to other minority groups: the underachievers. In one 9th-grade algebra class, Lynbrook’s lowest-level math class, the students are an eclectic mix of whites, Asians and other racial and ethnic groups.
“Take a good look,” whispered Steve Rowley, superintendent of the Fremont Union High School District, which covers the city of Cupertino as well as portions of other neighboring cities. “This doesn’t look like the other classes we’re going to.”
On the second floor, in advanced-placement chemistry, only a couple of the 32 students are white and the rest are Asian. Some white parents, and even some students, say they suspect teachers don’t take white kids as seriously as Asians.
</code></pre>
<p>[Information</a> Processing: The new white flight](<a href=“http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2005/11/new-white-flight.html]Information”>Information Processing: The new white flight)</p>
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<p>No, it is not. You don’t know the law on this. It’s bad luck on the part of whoever chose that major; there is no constitutional guarantee that the candidate’s choices will not be a negative in their opportunities in life. </p>
<p>This continues to boil down to the core skepticism that many of you have, that there is no such thing as two (or more) equally qualified people. It happens all the time in hiring. Let’s go back to gender for a moment (uncontrollable factor). For example, a public elementary school sees a value in hiring a male teacher, given that they already have lots of female teachers (“too many,” in fact). They want some slightly more balanced gender distribution – not only for the students, but for the working relationships within the staff. I am telling you that if a male shows up equally qualified to a female, the administration gets to hire that male, and you and I don’t get to say that females are being discriminated against, because no many how many females apply, the male will be “preferred” because the school has a discretionary right to hire a male. The highly qualified, equally experienced female that shows up on the same day as the male, has the bad luck to be a female and the bad luck to find that her choice to be a teacher will make it hard for her to find job placement. </p>
<p>The key thing here is that it’s not just one female they’re rejecting, but dozens. Further, dozens of females have been accepted (hired) already. </p>
<p>Let’s pretend for a moment (this is not the way public education works, but projecting the model…), let’s pretend that working in that particular school gave any teacher working there a better shot at becoming school superintendent for the district. Still too bad. That woman who came in on the same day as the male candidate made her choice, just like the male, for the field of education, and this location. Since we have mobility in this country, she could have chosen another school, district, even region of the country, no matter how inconvenient. The Constitution does not guarantee convenience, ease when it comes to competition for the same college or job, or career trajectory. </p>
<p>I chose this example, ironically, because I remember when it happened to me, and I approved. He and I were equally qualified for the job. The man’s origin? Japanese. I was thrilled that he was hired, because I saw the value to the school, to include a male. So all us white females, regardless of how qualified we were, were being “discriminated” against? No. (I can assure you that if an additional man had also come along, he also would have been “preferred.”) And as a matter of fact, some of my female colleagues chose other lines of work where they would be looked upon also as providing balance to a too-male work environment.</p>
<p>An educational environment is an interactive community; it is not just, or necessarily mostly, a career opportunity. That is an important secondary result or product of it; but unless it is explicitly a for-profit vocational type of school, and advertises itself as a place to provide training and opportunity for jobs, its primary mission is educational, and as a part of that education, its community dynamics are fundamental. The college does not exist to provide merely individual, discrete opportunities for the economic goals of each student as a separate cell.</p>
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<p>I do know the law on this and if you sued the school district would have been in great trouble. That you didn’t sue is your prerogative.</p>
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<p>This could be because decisions by the Circuit Courts of Appeals are normally considered final. It also seems that challenging a decision from this court does not constitute an appeal per se. </p>
<p>Despite that the Supreme Court does have final judiciary authority, it would have to be convinced to review the decisions of the Courts of Appeals, and this is done in its sole discretion. Considering the USSC only reviews 100 out 10,000 cases filed through a writ of certiorari, the chances that a procedure to review the case are slim to none. It is also extremely doubtful that the USSC possesses much appetite to revisit this issue so soon.</p>
<p>UK Schools use a two tiered fee structure, one for liberal arts and one for other areas where they believe labs are required. So usually STEM fields cost 20-30% more.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.57842!fileManager/V10Table%20of%20Fees%20-%20UG.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ed.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.57842!fileManager/V10Table%20of%20Fees%20-%20UG.pdf</a></p>
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<p>No need.</p>
<p>*Not so fast, countered state Attorney General Bill Schuette, who said he plans to ask the entire U.S. 6th Circuit to reconsider the ruling. In the meantime, Proposal 2 will remain the law, Schuette said.</p>
<p>Proposal 2 – which Michigan voters approved 58%-42% – “embodies the fundamental premise of what America is all about: equal opportunity under the law. … Entrance to our great universities must be based upon merit, and I will continue the fight for equality, fairness and rule of law,” Schuette said.</p>
<p>The ballot proposal was prompted by a long legal fight brought by three white students who claimed to have been denied admission because of racial preferences in U-M admissions. The Supreme Court ruled narrowly in favor of the universities in 2003.</p>
<p>Legal experts said a final decision by the 6th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court, if the case gets that far, could go either way.*</p>
<p>[Appeals</a> court panel strikes down Michigan’s affirmative action ban | Detroit Free Press | freep.com](<a href=“http://www.freep.com/article/20110702/NEWS06/107020403/Appeals-court-panel-strikes-down-Michigan-s-affirmative-action-ban]Appeals”>http://www.freep.com/article/20110702/NEWS06/107020403/Appeals-court-panel-strikes-down-Michigan-s-affirmative-action-ban)</p>