Are Jews considered minorities? My Jewish friend said it helped him..?

[BillyMc]

<p>

It is no coincidence that Vanderbilt faces competition in its efforts to recruit Jews. Similar efforts have also begun on other campuses, such as University of Southern California, and for the same reason. USC worked hard to improve its rating and perceived that cross-town rival UCLA, Northern California’s UC Berkeley, and the Ivy League schools were all better ranked and all had more Jews. As of 2002, USC had a recruiter, Jessica F. Pashkow, to specialize in recruiting Jews and a faculty that is one-third Jewish. USC now has 8.2 percent Jewish enrollment, up from 4.6 percent a decade ago. And in the rankings, they have climbed to thirty-one.

And the big donation they just received; that must have been because of the Jewish population, too. Because correlation totally implies causation.</p>

<p>Honestly, that’s pretty annoying. 4.6% is more than four times the portion of the US population (1.2%). If they had 19.2% Asians, would they not have enough and need to go out and recruit more? If they had 50% Catholics (only 2x US fraction, as 4x would be 100%), would they be worried about not having enough Catholics? They had to recruit Jews (neither underrepresented nor generally disadvantaged) to double the students and make one third of the faculty Jewish? Where does that even come from?</p>

<p>“We only have 19.2% Asians, but we want 34.2%, so let’s make a third of our faculty Asian.”</p>

<p>“We only have 2.3% Muslims, but we want 4.1%, so let’s make a third of our faculty Muslim.”</p>

<p>I just don’t get it.</p>