Law Professor Seeks Data on Admissions at UC System

Wall Street Journal ^ | November 15, 2018 | Douglas Belkin

[reaganaut1]

A law professor and an Asian-American politician are suing the University of California for data they believe would reveal that the state university system is illegally using race in its admissions process.

The suit, filed Thursday in a California state court, asks for the socioeconomic and academic characteristics of applicants who enrolled in the nine undergraduate colleges that make up the University of California over the last 12 years.

The petition follows a high-profile trial this fall over a federal lawsuit alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants.

Richard Sander, an economist and law professor at UCLA who brought the court action, has been researching race-based admissions for years. He says students are better off going to a school where they are close to the average rather than using admissions preferences to get into a more selective school where they are more likely to fail.

“Clearly, if the university cares about what universities say they care about, they wouldn’t do this,” Prof. Sander said. “But any information that raises politically incorrect questions tends to be ignored.”

The co-petitioner is George Shen, who this month ran unsuccessfully as a Republican candidate for state senate and now heads an Asian-American advocacy organization.

Dianne Klein, a spokeswoman for the University of California, said the university system couldn’t comment on the lawsuit, adding it “does not consider race, ethnicity or gender in admissions decisions.”

Harvard acknowledges considering race in its admissions but the University of California does not. In 1996, California voters prohibited state institutions from considering the race or ethnicity of applicants.

Prof. Sander said the UC system moved away from using race immediately after it was prohibited, but then began to backslide.

[reaganaut1]

Sander is co-author of the book "Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It" (2012).

[Fai Mao]

University administrators consider Asians to be white. An administrator at the University of N. Texas told my wife that was so when she asked why she didn’t qualify for a minority scholarship.

[mindburglar]

Just check black and overwhelm the system.

[libertylover]

the UC system have abandoned race neutrality and discriminated against Asian-Americans.

My guess would be that they discriminate for blacks by using their addresses and incomes to make assumptions about race instead of having race explicitly listed on the application.

[I want the USA back]

Race-based preferences are illegal, wrong, and unconstitutional. Any law that “allows” them is invalid, and not binding.

[eyeamok]

If the situation was reversed and they were using this to discriminate against blacks, they would all be in JAIL already and the School would have been SHUT DOWN!