New research contradicts claims made in federal case

Drs. Mike Hoa Nguyen, Assistant Professor of Higher Education, and Denis Dumas, Assistant Professor of Research Methods and Statistics, recently saw their work published in Educational Researcher. The pair teamed with Drs. Connie Y. Chang, Victoria Kim, Rose Ann E. Gutierrez, Annie Le, and Robert T. Teranishi at the University of California Los Angeles to test claims in legal complaints to the U.S. Department of Justice arguing that Asian American students face negative consequences while in college as a result of not being admitted to and not attending their first-choice institution. These complaints led to the Trump administration launching formal investigations into the race-conscious admissions practices of Harvard and Yale universities.

Their published research contradicts claims that Asian American students are harmed when they cannot attend their first-choice university.

“Overall, our findings countered the claims made by the two groups that served as the impetus of the Justice Department’s investigation,” said Nguyen. “We found that only small differences, if any, exist between the self-reported outcomes of Asian American students who were admitted to and attending their first-choice university and those students who were not.”

Click to read more from the American Education Research Association