Because of California’s Proposition 209, public universities such as UCLA cannot use race as a factor in admissions. However, as this book shows, UCLA gives significant preferences to African Americans, while it discriminates against Asians. The author, a professor of political science and economics at UCLA, documents what he witnessed as a member of UCLA’s faculty oversight committee for admissions. He also describes findings from a UCLA internal report as well as statistics from a large data set that he has posted online. All show that UCLA is breaking the law. The discrimination is not simply a byproduct of class-based preferences. For instance, for one aspect of the admissions process, a rich African American’s chance of admission is almost double that of a poor Asian, even when the two applicants have identical grades, SAT scores, and other factors.
Data Used in the Book
For details of the data, you will need to read Cheating, especially Chapter 7. For additional details, click here to read: The Data Explained.