Stop Achieving, Dammit
Excuse me while I whittle at the sushi-shaped chip on my shoulder.
The New York Times ran an article this past Sunday considering the preponderance of Asian students on elite university campuses. It seems that the bounty of Asian students with strong high school records are posing something of a problem for admission departments.
Asian-Americans make up less than 5 percent of the population but typically make up 10 to 30 percent of students at the nation’s best colleges:in 2005, the last year with across-the-board numbers, Asians made up 24 percent of the undergraduate population at Carnegie Mellon and at Stanford, 27 percent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14 percent at Yale and 13 percent at Princeton.
Troubled, some schools have reaffirmed a commitment to making their campus demographics closely mirror national demographics, a feat apparently achieved through a kind of selective racial preferencing:
A study released in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group opposing race-conscious admissions, showed that in 2005 Asian-Americans were admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at a much lower rate (54 percent) than black applicants (71 percent) and Hispanic applicants (79 percent) — despite median SAT scores that were 140 points higher than Hispanics and 240 points higher than blacks.
Perhaps what distresses me most about this discussion is the unhelpful conflation of race and class for non-whites. Implicit in the irritation over “too many Asians” seems to be a strange concern that they are not acting as a minority should. But don’t those “Asian values” sound familiar?
These are values that used to be called Jewish values or Anglo-Saxon work-ethic values. The bottom line message from the family is the same: work hard, defer gratification, share sacrifice and focus on the big goal. (Eric Liu)
Guess Asians missed the memo on the caveats accompanying the American ideal.
While race and class should always be apprehended in tandem, it is also important to maintain their distinctiveness from each other. Does social achievement act as recompense for a pattern of race-based disenfranchisement? It seems silly to suggest that, once achieving a certain level of education-enabled class, a group suddenly ceases to be a racial minority. While an Asian student may not be a minority on her college campus, she remains a numerical minority in the greater populous. Having graduated from a wonderful but admittedly diversity-challenged school, I believe deeply in the social and even theological value of a vibrant, ethnically mixed campus. I question, however, the efficacy of using the college admissions table as a place to address issues that could arguably be affected by introducing changes in public education and college recruitment strategies.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I do — given my own ethnic heritage — have a half yellow horse in the race, and I have a good, neo-Japanese belief in meritocracy. But let’s be honest. It sure would have been nice to have a dim sum stand on Covenant’s campus.
Julian said:
on January 11, 2007 at 9:00 am
What sort of changes in recruitment policies and public education would you recommend? Thus far the only effective means of achieving “racial balance” at colleges has been a quota, whether explicit or de facto. And public education in its current form is now so deeply entrenched that even trivial changes are immensely controversial; achieving anything approaching substantial reform seems to be a practical impossibility. As someone who is puzzled by the widespread insistence that colleges, in addition to providing an education, give their students “life experience,” something which is available everywhere for free and seems best acquired outside the inevitably artificial environment of a campus, I’m not troubled at all by a pure academic meritocracy. But given that the American academy seems insistent on somehow combining an unfiltered recognition of merit with a proportional representation of the nation’s racial composition, I’m interested in hearing your proposal for squaring the circle.
elissa said:
on January 11, 2007 at 9:53 am
Julian, I’m not sure if I want to square the circle so much as question how committed a college can be to campus “diversity” if their efforts to achieve such begin and end at the admissions table.
That said, I don’t have a comprehensive plan of reform for the public school system, and since I don’t understand the inner machinations of that beast this following suggestion is likely utopian. Still, I wonder if state universities can begin their quest for campus diversity by building relationships with their surrounding public schools. If a “high end” state university sent students to tutor in neighborhood schools, if high school juniors and seniors were encouraged to take university summer courses, if the university began recruiting and mentoring Hispanic and African American students early in their high school careers… perhaps a wider swath of minority students would be interested in and equipped to apply and succeed.
On the other side of recruitment, smaller, no-name, but still academically rigorous colleges need to learn how to recruit strong Asian students by pitching certain virtues (small class sizes, ability to do research with professors and be published earlier, ability to pursue own courses of study, etc.) that would appeal to a student set on fast, rigorous achievement. It’s tricky — we Asians love prestige — but still possible.
And while I do agree that free life experience is best taken off campus, I have to credit that artificial bubble for putting me the situtation to meet folks such as, say, my first Jewish friend, a feat which would have been difficult in Hawaii.
Ryan said:
on January 11, 2007 at 11:42 am
This might be slightly divergent, but I’ll say it anyway.
Having lived for two months with primarily Asian-american private university students in Beijing, I have a hard time conflating the distinctly Asian cultural meritocracy with others. While there are a lot of really good things about encouraging effort and individual achievement, I don’t think that opening up the floodgates of academia to be swamped by what can be a border-line pathological work ethic is particularly helpful.
Let me clarify the previous statment: I’ve seen people of all races with pathological work ethics, and I don’t generalize successful Asians as mentally unstable or unhealthy. However, in my experience with Asian friends who attend places like Yale, Cornell, Vandy, and USC, the work ethic that was given (forced?) by their parents has in many cases arguably done more bad than good, and a lot of them say so. If we’re going to open the doors, make sure that the way you get in isn’t by competing with everyone else for the 1600 (or I guess 2400, now) on your SAT’s – but rather by being an interesting person who has developed their intellect and interests (this is admittedly wonderfully ambiguous, and I’ll leave it that way). If we do that and Asians still flood in, fine. I just don’t want the upper tier of academia to become meritocratic based on measures that promote such overactive senses of academic responsibility that the only way to get in to such a school is to primarily know your parents as stern taskmasters who express love for you based on what your grades are (that is, until your self image is safely based on your grades, at which point they slack off). I’ve heard too many stories like that, and would prefer that it’s contagion not be encouraged.
elissa said:
on January 11, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Ryan, since I know you know you’re generalizing, I can largely agree. Just to nuance that, though, I think that the intensity of expectations often lessens the more generations that a family is in America. My grandfather, for example, was under far more pressure to succeed than he put on his kids. When I was tutoring, too, I saw significant differences between the demands put on children of immigrant parents and third or fourth generation American Asian kids. There’s still a sense of education-as-priority but the patholgy is more tempered.
Also:
So… at least they’re saying the right thing.
Julian said:
on January 11, 2007 at 5:00 pm
Elissa, those measures would probably make at least some difference in the proportional recruitment levels of different races, though of course the economic efficiency of such a system – esp. given that elite colleges are already overwhelmed with qualified applicants – would be highly questionable. A full discussion of the value of a “diverse” campus is probably too long to be comfortably contained in a series of blog comments. My thesis, however, is that a) economic strata are a far more important determinant of one’s experience and perspectives than the tincture of one’s skin and b) even if race plays an important role in creating one’s personality etc., the racial diversity of America as a whole; and the wealth of opportunities, via travel and art – novels, poetry, film, etc. – by which one can achieve an intimate experience of other cultures make racial quasi-quotas, by whatever means achieved, redundant for inquisitive students. And they’re wasted on non-inquisitive students. Thoughts?
Ryan, I certainly don’t envy the upbringings of many Asian and Indian classmates of mine. But I think you’ll agree that if that type of education achieves the most economically productive results, it’s in America’s interest not to impede these students’ advance: placing obstacles in their way would merely result in us losing market share to foreign-born students with similar motivations/cultures. Also, as you note, if we unmoor admissions decisions from standardized tests, we’re giving free rein to contemporary pieties in re: race, gender, etc., which is potentially catastrophic from an economic viewpoint. The one change I’d propose is weighting high school GPA less heavily for college admissions and college GPA less heavily for graduate admissions: leaning more heavily on standardized test scores alone might serve to advance the American impetuousity and recklessness – in the form of the “brilliant slacker” -which may be our only competitive advantage in the world market against the academic juggernaut represented by Elissa and other overachievers of her kind.
Julian said:
on January 11, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Elissa – the above is a cross-posting. I was referring to your earlier comments, not your response in re: cultural conditioning.
Ryan said:
on January 11, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Julian, I think that it is possible to encourage achievement while not damaging people’s psyches. And while I do want us to retain our competitive edge, I still have a severe distaste for some of the damage caused in its creation. It might be an interesting question to see if unstable overachievers are any more economically productive than normal ones are. Probably, but maybe not. I always have said that the workaholic, driven nature of the American economic culture (often in the extreme) is what makes GDP happen.
However, I share your sentiment that if we do come up with something other than standardized tests that something could be very frightening or ridiculous.
elissa said:
on January 11, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Julian, while I mostly agree that a diverse campus may be wasted on non-inquisitive students, I’m not sold on your corresponding conclusion. This is purely anecdotal, of course, but I’d like to think that I read a good bit in high school, watched a lot of movies, and was generally interested in other cultures. However, due to economic status and geographic location, I never got to travel or be personally exposed to the things I had seen/read. Going to college was a double bird-killing of sorts, a way to get both an education and be put in a place to know and live with people with very different backgrounds. (Of course, this probably says a lot about my cultural values that put saving for an education before world travel.) Still, remote inquisitiveness is not an equal replacement for actual relationships. Also, I suppose I should say that I tend to be sympathetic to the idea that race is largely a social construction, a construction which carries certain economic expectations. But that’s another discussion.
And, finally, Noel and I often joke that it was the preponderance of Asians that thwarted him on his first try at grad school and that my department lucked out with me. An Asian and a white girl all in one try? We’ll take her!
phentermine said:
on April 3, 2007 at 6:38 am
phentermine…
How……
insurance said:
on April 4, 2007 at 1:38 am
insurance…
What……