I have often criticized Harvey Mudd's President Maria Klawe for her obsession with women in the sciences. I made the case that there was evidence of discrimination in Harvey Mudd. Pomona's The Student Life printed this chart on its front page. The statistic at left is the percentage of men versus the women applicants admitted to Harvey Mudd. Is this statistic not evidence of what I have claimed all along? Does it not mean that a woman is nearly twice as likely to be accepted as a man? (30% for men versus 55% for women)
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Harvey Mudd Accepts 30% of Male Applicants, But Over 55% of Female Ones
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4 comments:
Interesting hypothesis, but let's consider the numbers.
Harvey Mudd's website says it has 756 students, of which 65% are male. Let's assume that the statistic cited in the article - the 30%/55% statistic - is accurate for all years, since it makes the math easier.
This would mean that the school has 491 men, and has admitted them from a pool of 1638 male applicants, versus 265 women from a pool of 481 female applicants (rounding). This means that applications to Harvey Mudd are more than 3-1 men.
Say that the school initiated a gender-blind application policy, as you're suggesting. We'll assume that means 42.5% of applicants are admitted (this obviously is off, but that's a result of the gender imbalance, and the value itself is unimportant for the result). From the values derived above, this means your hypothetical Harvey Mudd would consist of 696 men and 204 women - again, a more than 3 to 1 male to female ratio.
Now, we may chide Harvey Mudd for their abnormally high male population, as it fits the stereotype, but were the school to eliminate gender bias, you'd have a population inevitably skewed toward men. And that's bad all across the board. While it may endanger the meritocracy, ultimately the college as a whole wants more than a proportional number of women. And look at the perspective of the students of the college. The perspective of the average Harvey Mudd student notwithstanding, I can say I wouldn't go to a school that's 77% male - but that's the percentage represented by the "gender blind" Harvey Mudd as modeled above. And I can assume at least some Harvey Mudd men feel the same.
Two more points:
1. You are making the assumption that the female applicants have (on average) the same qualifications as their male counterparts. I would suggest that this may not be the case--that the female applicants might actually be better qualified than the male ones. (There are a number of reasons that this may be true. If for no other reason than there were a supposed 1,000 male applicants and 100 female applicants, my guess would be that the 50th female applicant would likely be quite a bit better qualified than the 500th male applicant. One might also suppose that the women are less qualified, which I doubt, but both suppositions would require some actual proof, just as your assumption about them being equal needs to be proven as well.)
Two potential ways to determine whether or not this is the case would be to (a) examine some comparable information from applications (SAT scores, grades, extra-curricular activities, etc.); or (b) examine grade point averages, info about class / student body officers, etc after they have been at school for a while. I sincerely doubt that Harvey Mudd would make (a) available, although there is a chance that they might be willing / able to track some of (b) and make it available. Certainly it would likely be possible for someone outside of the Harvey Mudd administration to track some of the non-grade-related information, as well as potentially some grade-related information (for example by looking at who has graduated with recognition / honors from the commencement programs). Of course, this would require someone to actually put in some time / effort.
2. The second point is that the although offered admittance, there may be a pretty big differential between who actually accepts the offer. (Please note: this assumes that there are no differences in potential 'qualifications', however they are defined). This could be affected by several factors, including early decision applications. Since Harvey Mudd accepts a number of students early decision, it could be that differential rates between males / females applying early decision (vs normal decision) affects this as well.
Of course, this isn't to say that there is or that there isn't a push to have more women on Harvey Mudd's campus. Instead, it says that one needs quite a bit more data before declaring that a differential acceptance rate by itself means that discrimination is taking place. At least someone should have such data if one wants their conclusions to be taken seriously.
Affirmative action is ubiquitous. Get used to it.
I definitely don't condone racial discrimination in any circumstance, but I think discrimination on the basis of sex is slightly less horrible.
I wouldn't want to go to an 80%+ male school and I'd need to get paid a lot to work at an 80%+ male office.
There are also biological and tangible differences between work habits of men and women, which don't exist on the basis of race.
Tch, that is such a guy thing to say.
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