Education

Asian Students 250 Percent Underrepresented At Harvard When Compared To School Without Race-Based Admissions

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Asian students proportionately comprise 250 percent less of Harvard University’s student population than they do at the California Institute of Technology, according to a study published Tuesday.

While Asian students make up 43 percent of Caltech’s student body, they comprise only 17 percent of Harvard’s student population, according to the Center for Equal Opportunity.

“Too many Asian Americans applying to elite schools are discriminated against on account of their race,” said Center for Equal Opportunity chairman and founder Linda Chavez in a press release. “That is the message of our new study, and it is past time that schools quit the morally dubious means of using race or ethnicity as ‘a factor’ in selecting their student bodies.”

The Center analyzed the racial demographics of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well, finding that Asian students comprise 26 percent of the student body there. While the percentage of Asian students grew at Harvard, MIT and Caltech throughout the 1980s, it tapered off and began to fall at the former two institutions in the 1990s.

(Althea Nagai, Ph.D., Center for Equal Opportunity)

“It’s disappointing that preferences persist,” Center senior fellow Terry Eastland said. “They were always advertised as a ’temporary’ necessity. The Bakke case that greenlighted racial preferences was rendered in 1978. Today is 2018. That’s 40 years of temporariness. The good news is at Caltech, where admissions are colorblind.”

A nonprofit opposed to racial affirmative action, Students for Fair Admissions, is suing Harvard for discriminating against Asian applicants. (RELATED: Judge: Harvard Can Hide Admissions Data Like Coke Hides Its Recipe)

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