Professor Mike Marder teaches physics at the University of Texas. He followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent hearings on affirmative action.
When Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleague Justice Scalia asked why diversity mattered in a physics class, the question struck home to Professor Marder, and he wrote this commentary.
He pointed out that Texas is now a majority-minority state. Whites are the minority.
Many of the jobs of today and the future, particularly in engineering, require strong grounding in physics. Already, companies complain that they have trouble finding suitable employees, to which one of the main responses of physics is to bring highly skilled future workers in from abroad through our PhD programs.
This is cost effective while it lasts, but it will not last. The rest of the world is building graduate programs to compete with ours, and as this happens we will lose the ability to recruit and retain other countries’ brightest minds. Then the complaint of companies that they cannot find employees for top-level jobs will move from a murmur to a roar, and we will sit staring at institutional practices that leave much more than half the population of the state feeling unprepared for and unwelcome in our classrooms.
We will be unable to prepare either the workers of tomorrow or the teachers to inspire them.
As the Supreme Court decides whether to issue a ruling that could derail even the gentlest attempts to increase participation of underrepresented majorities in our classrooms, they should know that these are the issues we confront, and the challenge diversity poses to the future of our state and country.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s personal story serves as a model for the issue of diversity.
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Diane, that’s an interesting and rather perplexing post coming from a UT professor. Indeed, UT has made great efforts to increase the success of minorities and has some of the most promising solutions around. But a physics professor should know that American universities produce a fixed number of graduates. Whether they are black, brown, white, green or purple doesn’t make them more valuable. The US Supreme Court decision was about who gets to compose those UT graduates, not how many UT produces. I would hope the professor would comment on your blog explaining his last argument. One can honestly suggest that it’s fair to allow all a fair chance, but claiming affirmative action increases the production of physics graduate is a rather irrational argument especially for a STEM major.
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Virginia, you miss Professor Marder’s point. He is making a point about the future of our society, which requires that we encourage excellence in all parts of our population. Texas is now majority-minority. UT has a social obligation.
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A social obligation to discriminate against hard-working Asian Americans who deserve those slots just as much as any other minority student? We are all for programs that increase the success of minority students (see the UT program I cited) or provides those minority students a quality education in K-12 (see Common Core and VAMs). But when we take slots away from the most gifted (does anybody dispute that Asian Americans are discriminated against when race becomes a factor in admissions) to give to less qualified applicants, those competitors that the professors warns about are jumping for joy. Nobody gets affirmative action slots in China or India, that’s for sure.
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So, virginiasgp, will you concede that either option is unfair in some way, to some person?
The trick is finding out what to do from there.
One vision is to expand opportunity for everyone, not just one group or another. The question to ask, to come up with solutions to this problem, would be: How would we go about creating more opportunity for everyone, not just a select group?
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Agreed. The more students successfully studying math, physics and other science fields, the better.
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Virginia often misses the point, Diane. Thank you for being so patient!
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Virginiasgp
“Nobody gets affirmative action slots in China or India, that’s for sure.”
That is not quite correct. Affirmative action has gone berserk in India. Indian caste system kept a large number of people at lower levels in education, jobs etc. The constitution created the first quota system (a form of affirmative action) to help the depressed class in 1951 for a period of 10 years. This has been extended every ten years resulting in a majority of educational opportunities and jobs in the government sector for the disadvantaged. They are what are referred to as scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, backward classes etc. The quota system even extends to elected officials, where a significant portion is allocated to women and lower caste people. Currently the quota system allocates a majority of educational and job slots to the detriment of the smart people in India and the development of India.
This has resulted in generally lowering the standards of higher educational system. Although essentially all higher education is in the English language you will be surprised a vast majority of graduates from Indian universities cannot write a complete sentence.
But India still has a few universities based on meritocracy, which produces graduates who can compete in the world stage. Those are the ones that show up in the United States higher education system.
It is clear that US higher education system (graduate schools) select the best not only from the USA but also from the entire world. At the graduate level the competition is much larger than at the undergraduate level. The foreign students are part of the reason that US universities are some of the best in the world.
The professors obtain research funding from government agencies, private industry and other sources. They need graduate students to help in the research and they will admit any student who qualifies from this country and the world at large. The competition is the same far all and no discrimination is practiced, like India, no quota system.
After 6 decades (3 generations) of constitutionally mandated discrimination in the guise of affirmative action, India has not made much progress in poverty or eradicating the caste system.
A majority of the Indian foreign students end up staying in the US using the H1-B and other legal immigration channels. It must be remembered that US did not spend anything to educate them through K-12 and four years of college. It is their loss and our gain.
India is the greatest example of affirmative action gone wrong. It has created what is called a brain drain.
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Raj, I did not know that. Can anybody speak to whether there are similar systems in China. I am not aware of any but could be missing them.
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It’s funny.
Graduate physics programs have been slanted so heavily toward foreign candidates (while doing little to nothing to encourage Americans) that increasing “diversity” in this case would simply mean increasing the number of Americans (of any ethnic background)
It is no exaggeration to say that physics graduate schools in the US played a major role in CREATING the current situation through their own negligence — heavy reliance on foreign applicants (because it was easy) and failure to encourage Americans (both at the high school and freshman college level) to major in physics.
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You are quite the detective, SomeDAM Poet…
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I also wonder how many of the foreign students are paying full fare. Being able to do so is very attractive with the costs of college so high.
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2old2teach, your comment implies that less qualified, but affluent foreigners who can pay full fare are getting admitted over more qualified but less affluent US citizens. That is 180 degrees from my experience. Please cite any statistics you have that bear this out. This article implies it’s much harder for international students to be admitted.
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“your comment implies that less qualified, but affluent foreigners who can pay full fare are getting admitted over more qualified but less affluent US citizens. ”
No, it doesn’t imply that.
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You state “how many of the foreign students are paying full fare. Being able to do so is very attractive with the costs of college so high”. That was in response to SomeDAM Poet saying “physics programs have been slanted so heavily toward foreign candidates”.
So tell me. If all candidates are considered equally with no discrimination based on US residency, are more or less foreign students admitted? Are you seriously suggesting fewer foreign candidates would be admitted?
If the answer is more foreign students would be admitted in blind admissions, then there must be discrimination against these foreign applicants. Thus, your comment absolutely implies that foreign students are finding admission easier based solely on their ability to pay.
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Sheesh, V, give it a rest! I WONDERED how many of the foreign students were full fare. There has been more than one comment/discussion (no, I won’t look them up) suggesting that colleges choose a certain percentage of their student population based on their ability to pay full freight, which makes sense if they want to stay in business.
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Colleges have a quota on foreign students and they practically never give out financial aid to foreigners. If they lifted that quota, many more foreigners would be admitted with higher qualifications that US students. Those are the facts.
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It’s hard to reply in order, here, but I was a physics graduate student mid level public university) almost 40 years ago, and there were TWO American graduate students in the department, me and a guy from Indiana (who became a radiologist). The other dozen or so were from India, Pakistan or China.
American students have been taught, largely, to value money. Since one can make far more money in Engineering or management, they cannot see the value in pursuing a difficult degree only to gain intellectual satisfaction and insight.
The ancient Athenians were awed by science and philosophy, the Romans only wanted power and practical applications. Americans are the ‘New Romans’.
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I’d have to agree with SomeDam Poet. Many high schools don’t offer physics, simply because they can’t find teachers to teach it. The physics teachers I have met are foreign and usually leave for better paying and better working conditions in the private sector. I do know a few physics teachers that are ATRs. ATRs are teachers with decades of experience who are forced to substitute in different schools every month because the previous mayor closed the largest schools. They aren’t hired by any school because each school has an individual budget and their salaries are too high. Occasionally some schools will hire an ATR provisionally (for a year or less) and then put him back into the ATR pool. (I’ve never met a female physics teacher.) The new push for STEM teachers should be addressing these issues.
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Wow, I had no idea, Bronx ATR.
The cynical side of me, which grows as I get older, says this lack of education is on purpose. I have seen companies hire foreign nationals because they “can’t find” Americans with the skills. Meanwhile, they completely intimidate their foreign hires because the company has control over their visa status. I know one STEM professional who wasn’t even allowed off a day when his wife had a baby. In the capitalist system, wouldn’t you raise salaries if you can’t find qualified people? But you don’t have to do that if you can import talent at cheaper wages. Basically the companies are the main winners here. OK, maybe the companies don’t have that much say in K12 education, but if it was REALLY a problem, wouldn’t they be pressuring the schools more to make sure there are physics teachers?
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Ok, Z. Let me make sure I understand what you are saying. Are you suggesting that certain teacher specialties like Physics receive a higher salary than more generic classes like grades 1-5 or even staples like History? In essence, we pay bonuses/stipends to the hard-to-fill areas?
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This open letter to the SCOTUS was signed by over 2400 Professional Physicists about the importance of diversity to Physics and science.
http://eblur.github.io/scotus/
Sarah
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Physics is most important. Why? KARMA = Laws of Physics applied to human beings … US!
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