Qi Chen ASA 002 A04 Week2

Thursday, April 9, 2020

Qi Chen,

ASA 002 A04 

Week 2 Blog

Asian Students and College Education

While reading the Fight the Tower (2020), I was touched the paragraph around how Asian American students are devalued. When the author investigated people's opinions, one respondent pointed out that “I was told by my chair [in a non-Asian American studies department] to stop spending so much time with my ‘little Asian students’ and focus on our department majors.” As an Asian student, this is definitely a disappointing conversation for me. I can even imagine my friend's parents and professors at school telling him that it's a waste of time to play and study with me just because I'm a “little Asian student.” In fact, Asian students are always discriminated against in education. Although many Asian American parents have been paying taxes in the United States, their children do not have access to the same educational resources as local students. Since I decided to study in the United States, I have been focusing on the data of international students / non-U.S. natives applying for universities. A year ago, there was a rumor among Asian students that "Native Americans are easier at applying to good universities than Chinese students in American high schools, and Chinese students in American high schools are easier at applying to good universities than Chinese students in Chinese high schools." Although it's just a joke for us, my experience with my classmates proves this: we constantly did all kinds of extracurricular activities, and the standardized test scores nearly full. We even flew to the United States every year to debate with local students, do scientific research and participate in sports competitions, but Asian students will not be treated the same when applied. 

Email from the Department of justice to Harvard lawyers (source: CNN)

 

On June 15, SFFA (students for fair admissions) filed a report with the federal court of Boston, accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian students. The reason: when evaluating applicants, the Admissions Committee of Harvard University generally rated Asian Americans lower than other ethnic groups in the column of "personal characteristics". Many Asian applicants with excellent grades have lost out on top schools. I can conjecture that American universities require Asian students to submit higher standardized scores, because Asian students have higher average scores, and if they are unified, the college will hold too many Asian students. But I can't comprehend why universities can't allow Asian students with the same or higher abilities to enter universities, such as Harvard University, which I mentioned earlier. In China, hundreds of thousands of students apply to American universities each year. But only 10-15 Chinese students can enter Harvard University finally. The admissions offices of the U.S universities can't deny that the top Chinese students have outstanding resumes. They have a strong family background, participated in various activities around the world, and obtained nearly full marks. Such unfairness also makes Asian Americans quite annoyed. The unfairness of American universities to Asian makes many Asian students doubt whether their efforts are worth it.

 

Question: what should we do to reduce the discrimination of Asian student in academia?

Reference

Valverde, K.-L. C., & Dariotis, W. M. (2020). Fight the tower: Asian American women scholars resistance and renewal in the academy. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.