Do Asian-Americans Have an Equal Right to Go to College in the United States?

Admissions programs frustrate accountability because schools wield “holistic review” as a shield to frustrate scrutiny, judicial or otherwise. Holistic review can serve as a cover for the illegitimate use of race.

For example, Princeton professor Thomas Espenshade found that Asian students applying to selective private colleges are six times less likely to be admitted than Hispanic students with the same academic qualifications and 16 times less likely than black students. And despite being the fastest-growing population in America, Asians are admitted at Ivy League schools in remarkably similar numbers and percentages year-to-year.

That’s strong evidence that schools are discriminating based on race. It all hearkens to the less-than-illustrious history of the so-called Harvard Plan, which began as an alternative to explicitly capping the number of Jewish students

Those are the sorts of things that the Justice Department should look into. Government lawyers must open the “holistic” black box and hold administrators’ feet to the constitutional fire. And that’s before we even get into the harm to the beneficiaries of racial preferences!

USA Today Opinion