Secretary of Education Raises Quota Issue : Bias in Admitting Asian-Americans to Colleges Cited

U. S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett told the Vietnamese League of Orange County on Tuesday night that some colleges and universities may be discriminating against Asian-American students by using “unofficial quotas.”

Such discrimination, Bennett said, comes in spite of the “remarkable” educational achievements of Asian-Americans throughout the United States.

Bennett said his department would take “appropriate action to remedy the situation” if the suspected discrimination is proved true. He cautioned, however, that “the evidence is less than conclusive.”

No Specific University Named

Bennett, speaking at the Ngon Restaurant in Garden Grove, mentioned no specific university. He said Asian student associations at Ivy League universities “have cited admissions figures showing that a smaller percentage of Asian-American students than other applicants are being accepted.”

The Ivy League universities are Harvard, Yale, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania.

Most of the secretary’s speech was devoted to praise for the educational achievements of Asian immigrants, despite language and other cultural barriers.

Referring to the language problem, Bennett made another pitch for the Reagan Administration’s proposal to allow school districts more flexibility in implementing bilingual education. That proposal has drawn the wrath of some Latino groups.

“For school districts serving recent Asian immigrants who speak a wide variety of languages, giving local school districts greater flexibility in designing their programs should enable Asian-American students to get more and better English language instruction,” Bennett said.

“We are not retreating in our commitment to non-English speaking students. Rather, we are acting to fulfill that commitment by giving local school authorities and parents the opportunity to do what works best for their children.”

In citing suspicions of “unofficial quotas” aimed at Asian-Americans by some universities, Bennett said: “It is possible that factors other than anti-Asian discrimination are at work here.”

He added: “If, however, concrete evidence of quotas and anti-Asian discrimination does come to light, we will take the appropriate action to remedy the situation.

“Discrimination against Asian-Americans is unacceptable as are all other forms of racial or religious discrimination.”

Double the Proportion

Bennett said that fully 35% of the Asian-Americans age 25 and older have graduated from college, “more than twice the proportion of other Americans.”

At highly competitive and selective universities, he said, including the nine-campus University of California system, “the proportion of Asian-Americans is extraordinarily high.”

“Asian-Americans comprise 8% of the student body at Harvard, and 10% of its freshman class, up from 3% a decade ago,” Bennett said. “Here in California, Asian-Americans constitute 22% of all students at (UC) Berkeley and 21% at UCLA.”

Although Bennett did not mention UC Irvine, that campus has one of the highest proportions of Asian-American enrollment in the nation. About 24% of UCI’s 12,000-student enrollment last school year was Asian-American, and this September Asian-Americans accounted for 34% of the incoming freshmen. This is despite the fact that less than 10% of the Orange County population is Asian-American.

UCI Chancellor Jack Peltason last year said that some Orange County residents became angry when they read news reports of the large Asian-American enrollment on the campus. Peltason said the critics erroneously believed the university was using “affirmative action” and relaxed admission standards to enable so many Asian-Americans to enroll.

Peltason noted, however, that Asian-Americans compete like other Californians for the limited number of slots in the University of California system. UC, by state law, can admit only the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates. Asian-Americans tend to do so well in high school academics that they readily qualify for UC admission, Peltason said.

Bennett said he believes that Asian-Americans’ “close ties between parents and children and the willingness of parents to sacrifice for the sake of their children’s education” are major reasons that Asian-American children do so well in U.S. schools.