Below is a meme making its rounds around facebook.
As many of you may have noticed,
a number of Australian universities tend to have a disproportionate amount of
students of Asian descent relative to the societal demographic. UNSW being one
of them.
This phenomena is not exclusive
to Australia.
In fact, certain universities in
America have seen it as a big enough problem that they have taken measures to
address it. There is a growing number of Asian Americans claiming the ever
present enforcement of an “Asian ceiling” by admission officers at the most
elite American universities. (Nittle, 2011)
One student after receiving
perfect marks was denied admission to Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, the
University of Pennsylvania, and MIT. The student filed a lawsuit against Yale
in 2006 alleging that the prestigious university rejected him because of his
race. (Nittle, 2011)
The logic behind this is to
balance out university demographics to reflect society. This is an attempt at a
distributional dimension of justice in its aspirations for “equality of
outcome”. This ideology emerged with the goal of ensuring equal rates of success
for different groups in society. Disadvantage is stopped through direct
intervention. (Gewirtz, 1998) For examples involve situations where
a child that was born in a poor remote neighbourhood to a single parent, and
with little access to healthcare may be significantly disadvantaged in their
attempts no matter their work ethic. Thus their grades get boosted in order to
subvert this. This is commonly referred to as positive discrimination
or affirmative action.
The “Asian cap” is the flip side
of social justice in the form of “equality of outcome”. In this context instead
of placing disadvantaged students up, it directly pulls “advantaged” students
down. In order to make room for “disadvantaged” African-american students it
needs to get rid of some of the Asians. Unfortunately, the fact is that not all
Asian students are advantaged and not all African American students were
disadvantaged as argued here.
There are also apparently racist
undertones behind the practice with articles like this one drawing
on stereotypes of Asian students as over-studious, mechanical, lacking in social
skills and extra-curricular activities to the point that it endangers
“university culture”. In short, universities don’t want to be full of Asian
nerds in the fear that it will marginalise the other kids.
While Australia has yet to
legitimise such discrimination to the same degree as America in their admission
process, parallels can still be drawn. UNSW has a stigma as an “Asian
university”. There has also been much controversy over affluent Aboriginal
students using affirmative action policies. Some Aboriginal activists like
Jackie Huggins claim “even though people might have some Aboriginal
ancestors, they could not be genuine Aborigines if they had been brought up in
white suburbs without any engagement with an Aboriginal community.”
(Windschuttle, 2011)
By making race a part of the
admission process it turns groups of diverse people into homogenous identities.
Identity in a post-modern world is a fluid and contested notion and making
policies based around racial assumptions can often lead to injustice. This
hurts the idea of the education system as a meritocratic institution.
Gewirtz, S. (1998). Conceptualizing social justice
in education: mapping the territory. Journal of Education Policy, 13(4),
469-484.
Nittle, N. 2011, Are US Universities Discriminating Against Asian Students? from About.com http://racerelations.about.com/b/2011/04/25/are-u-s-universities-discriminating-against-asian-students.htm
Windschuttle, K. 2011, Questioning Credentials of an Aboriginal Elite, from The Australian http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/questioning-credentials-of-an-aboriginal-elite/story-e6frgd0x-1226042440861
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