IT IS a timeless question, one that invites much debate and sees little agreement.
Asian students here often have the distinction of being academic achievers, so much so that US campuses are reportedly beginning to sport an Oriental look.
There is no end to the dissection on why Asians are scoring top marks.
Is it the Confucian tradition? (Those who do not study are only cattle dressed up in human clothes, according to the philosopher.)
Could it be the immigrant outlook? Or is it the acknowledgement of their parents’ struggle, hence the need for payback time?
The jury is still out. In the meantime, Asian-Americans – who number about 12 million or four per cent of the US population – are clawing their way into universities.
Scores of campuses, including some from the Ivy League, have recorded at least 13% Asian-Americans in their undergraduate student population.
In a free newspaper here, someone remarked rather smugly that if American universities practised meritocracy completely, half of their enrolment would be Asians.
Try telling that to John C. Liu, a New York City councilman who isn’t thrilled at all with such assumptions.
“That is a model minority myth. The fact remains that many Asian-Americans are struggling economically and academically,” said Liu, who became the first Asian-American to sit on the city council when elected in 2001.
To him, the typecasting of an Asian-American as the poster boy of good grades will do more harm than good for the community.
“It sounds great, but it actually hurts us more,” he said in an interview.
He explained that the stereotype, no matter how seemingly positive, could be used as a divisive agent among the minority groups.
And Liu is not way off the mark.
Questions have been raised as to whether Asian-Americans are impinging on the chances of African-Americans and the Hispanics.
A study called “The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities” has been cited to show that if affirmative action were done away with, the admission rate for blacks and Hispanics would be lowered as Asian-Americans would sweep up four out of five seats that would otherwise have gone to the other two groups.
An article in The New York Times entitled “Little Asia on the Hill” said: “In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically under-represented blacks and Hispanics.”
The article picked California because the Golden State, with an estimated 36 million population, has a very diverse face: Asians (12%), African-Americans (6%) and Hispanics (35%).
Others beg to differ, however.
One report pointed out that many black students who got into university under affirmative action failed to complete their courses.
The writer argued that these undergraduates would be better off if they were placed in campuses where their academic qualifications were on par with everybody else’s.
So, would there be an Asian invasion if universities practised meritocracy strictly?
Ng Hock Min, a scientist who previously studied in Boston University, does not think so.
“There tends to be more Asians in fields like science and engineering but fewer in the humanities such as literature and history,” he said.
Based on his experience, Ng found the majority of Asians diligent and serious about their studies, particularly foreign students.
“There was definitely a lot of competition amongst us. When I was an undergraduate, there weren’t scholarships available, so most of them were self-funded.
“There was a lot of pressure to do well,” he said.
To these people, there are no short cuts in universities, so there really is no mystery surrounding the rising Asian enrolment.
