With a low reproduction / declining pop rate, this was the wrong thing to do from a socio-economic perspective, not to mention morality.
But really Japan has to seriously put an effort to positively utilize the other half of their able worker pool. If they engaged and got similar participation rates as men, that could go a long way in expanding their economy.
It is way more expensive for households with two working parents to raise children than it is for households with one working parent, and as a result it is possible that even fewer Japanese people would elect to have children.
Total paid on childcare is higher in a family without a stay at home patent, though the two earner family generally will have more net disposable income (After child-care)
Solution: free day care. It’s a win for taxpayers if those parents go to work and pay taxes instead of staying home with the kids. Also a win for women’s liberation.
Well if they're not paying for the daycare they don't. If they are they are then they do.If you want someone else's money then you're going to get it on their terms or not at all.
Does going to daycare over have a stay at home parent lead to an increase in the money made? And if we were considering just the number of children and how having more children will lead to more tax payers, then cutting funding for education in ways that result in more children being had is even better because you save money now and have more tax payers later.
If you begin to optimize social and political decisions on the basis of having more tax payers, you'll get weird results. For a second example, cutting reproductive education funding in schools will lead to more tax payers (though arguably tax payers who pay less, so then the question becomes are you optimizing for tax payers or for future taxable income in total).
There is a well established correlation between education in girls increasing and child birth rates decreasing. Unless you think that funding could be cut without decreasing education rates, in which case shouldn't we cut funding?
> There is a strongly negative relationship between women's education and fertility.
Actually, it is a correlation between educated women having educated partners that know how to use contraceptive methods. Educate all men and women's education will be less relevant. Or stop any education of men, contraceptive methods will decline and fertility grow.
> Is this, in the long run, also good for the taxpayers?
It all depends. Is it good for "taxpayers" that humanity does not go extinct? Is taxes the only moral compass for our society?
Each time someone mentions a social advance for our society there is a big reaction against it because "costs money". Yes, it costs money, and it is money well spend in the citizens well being.
Is the legal system, schools, the police force, firefighters, etc good for taxpayers? Yes.
Does it costs money? Yes.
And that is why there is taxes. To pay for our needs.
Yup. Let's forbid education for women. It'll definitely result in a better society for everyone.
Quality is more important than quantity. More educated people will produce better product and improve everyone's lives. Not saying that denying 50% of population a chance to live their lives as they want is plainly wrong and immoral.
Because you can now have your own means of survival as opposed to depending on someone other (such as "state" or "husband") and possibly being booted from time to time from that dependence together with children.
In the UK it's very hard to have one parent stay at home - to pay the mortgage you usually need two full time to cover the mortgage.
Child care is subsidised heavily by other taxpayers, but only government childcare - get a grandparent round and there's no tax break. The tax system works hard to discriminate against single parent families too (two people with two kids on total £80k pay a marginal tax of 32%. One person on £55k pays marginal 60%)
If females are denied good job opportunities in Japan, they'd be less inclined to work at all.
So if your first sentence holds true, then this kind of discrimination actually should help Japan's reproduction rate.
maybe my reasoning only applies to big cities?
In manhattan daycare is like $3k/child. To break even, one has to get paid ~$5k, since there are federal tax/city tax etc.
That entirely depends on what the parents do. Certainly doctors generally make more than caregivers so in this specific case the family would net more with a physician mother. There is also evidence that female children of working mothers tend to go on to better education and career outcomes themselves, so this is effectively a heritable advantage for some offspring.
Not all potential graduates affected would have become mothers, so from that standpoint it’s not applicable to a significant portion of the graduating class.
But the real issue is the women were artificially denied an opportunity to decide by themselves.
You're implying that:
- only women will take care of kids
- daycare is as expensive as in your place of origin. (in Tokyo there are public daycare schools, and you have preference for entering if both parents work)
And yet hundreds of families are on waiting lists. If you don't get a spot, you have to go to a private facility which can easily cost more than one parent's monthly salary, or drop out of work until you get a spot, but then you're relegated even further down the waiting list.
Also, once you're in, you'll have to pick the kid before 6pm in most daycares which means you must leave the office at 5pm and since a lot of companies do not have flex time, that single hour will push you to a part-time position. Then the daycare will refuse to take your child if they have a fever of 36.8? and do regular temperature checks during the day and force you to drop your work and come pick the child straight away if they go above 36.8?.
Unless you work close to home and have a very flexible and comprehending employer (or have grand parents close by and ready to help), even with a lucky spot in daycare it is extremely complicated to continue working.
Let's not even talk about elementary school where mandatory partake in time-consuming useless PTA activities basically assumes one of the parent does not work.
Probably a typo for 37.8°C, which is about the usual standard for child fever. Usually not worth calling the doctor until it’s like 39° or above, but sending a kid home with a mild fever might keep the rest of the class from catching a cold.
Not a typo and it's oral or armpit temperature. Japan is weird with their concept of "fever". When I get a flu shot, they ask me to take my temperature and I have to lie every time because they won't give me the shot if I tell them I read 37.4 C
Since when? We were taught that the normal temperature is 36.6. Even thermometers had such markings. and the 37.0 was marked red, because there the range of "something is wrong" started.
In the USA it's 98.6 F. I just converted it to Celsius and it comes to 37.0. It's interesting it's different in different places. (That's probably also why Europeans are so cold and snobbish... I kid, I kid)
Fever is an abnormal elevation of body temperature that occurs as part of a specific biologic response that is mediated and controlled by the central nervous system. (See 'Pathogenesis' below.)
The temperature elevation that is considered "abnormal" depends upon the age of the child and the site of measurement. The temperature elevation that may prompt clinical investigation for infection depends upon the age of the child and the clinical circumstances (eg, immune deficiency, sickle cell disease, ill-appearance, etc); in most scenarios, the height of the fever is less important than other signs of serious illness (eg, irritability, meningismus) [35-38].
?In the otherwise healthy neonate (0 to 28 to 30 days of age) and young infant (one to three months of age), fever of concern generally is defined by rectal temperature ?38.0°C (100.4°F). (See "Febrile infant (younger than 90 days of age): Definition of fever", section on 'Definition of fever'.)
?In children 3 to 36 months, fever generally is defined by rectal temperatures ranging from ?38.0 to 39.0°C (100.4 to 102.2°F) and fever of concern by rectal temperatures ?39.0°C (102.2°F) if there is no focus of infection on examination. (See "Fever without a source in children 3 to 36 months of age", section on 'Fever of concern'.)
?In older children and adults, fever may be defined by oral temperatures ranging from ?37.8 to 39.4°C (100.0 to 103.0°F) and fever of concern by oral temperatures ?39.5°C (103.1°F).
Oral thermometers average one half of a degree Celsius lower than rectal.
The above is pretty much straight out of UTD, as I am far too lazy to retype it for anyone’s benefit.
Yeah, but it is not acceptable to try to boost natality by denying opportunity to 50% of adults. My response would be "ok, you don't want me to be a productive member of the society in the way I wanted, I won't be in any other way whatsoever".
OTOH I'd guess that low natality in Japan has other factors, as other comments pointed, even for men: long, long hours of work, living in a cage called "apartment", probably no leeway in the work to handle domestic problems (yes, even living under the most conservative marriage arrangement possible, there will be domestic emergencies all the time, where a man needs to step in).
Firstly, this is a small and modestly exclusive institution. So much so that it could hardly be a causal factor in motivating women to decline to have children in preference to their career. Simply declining to let qualified women be doctors to make room for privileged rich sons is a repugnant insult to human intelligence, and should be viewed as the sexist attitude it is.
Secondly, if the "force women to stay at home by disadvantaging them in the workplace" were such a great strategy, Japan wouldn't have a declining birthrate because until very recently (and ongoing, to a marginally lesser degree) this is the case.
Japan would not have the low reproduction rate it has if it made it easier for women to have kids and also stay in the workforce. Amazingly, women don't like giving up their entire societal and intellectual life to have a baby and live, isolated, in a tiny apartment. Japan's low birthrate is in part a symptom of the fact that motherhood is a career death sentence there. To be crude and still discriminatory, even a half-assed, difficult, crippled career limping along after motherhood would be much more motivating than the zero currently allowed in Japan.
(BTW, the previous HN discussion referenced above is definitely worth referencing if a reader wants a more wide-ranging discussion.)
Germany's birth rate is 1.5. Japan's is 1.46. Saudi Arabia's is 2.71. Vietnam's is 1.96. Canada is 1.6.
Making employment easier for women is clearly not related to birth rate. It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything.
> It seems to be inversely correlated with first world living status and education more than anything.
Well, at least for Germany I can provide some anecdata: either you're on welfare and have the state fund your life including kids or you're rich. The middle class and especially the young (20-30y) population in the major cities simply often cannot afford kids, not with the exploded rents and the trend to unpaid (!) internships, year-limited contracts, "gig work" and other things making my generation's life a living hell. I'm 27 and lucky to have landed an unlimited employment contract. The whole situation reminds me more and more of the setting of Idiocracy, and that without the US president in that movie being obviously inspirational for the current real world one.
In addition the young population that fled the rural areas (due to e.g. job availability, the lack of public transport, any form of Internet faster than ISDN, ...) but left their parents/grandparents behind cannot rely on them to help with bringing up a child, further lowering the birth rate.
For Italy, the situation is even worse - depending on the source and demographic target, up to 70-80% of young people still live with their parents because they cannot afford their own home (https://www.thelocal.it/20161024/two-thirds-of-italian-mille...). Hard enough to... uh, get going with your partner when your parents are next room, much less actually wanting to raise a child.
There are many contributing factors to low birth rates.
1. Newer generation's extended adolescence
2. More selfish attitude (selfish with time and more materialistic than previous generations)
3. Lowered sperm count because of WIFI, Cell phones and ingesting large quantities of plastics and other chemicals, both from the goods imported from china and the pollutants in the air soil and water largely also from China.
4. High housing costs which are primarily caused by women now commonly working. A two income household can afford to pay much more for a home than the traditional one. So prices have risen to what people can commonly now afford (a sad affect of women giving up raising their own children, to essentially make nothing monetarily, but achieve a power that commonly splits their family apart from the resulting power struggle combined with the lack of co-dependence which traditionally incentivized parents to work through their problems at home, and consequently grow into better people with a satisfying relationship).
5. Kids used to mean status for women (and for men). Now it means you are a failure because you don't have a college degree and a career (very sad since raising a child to be a great person is actually the most important career that could ever exist. We are seeing the devastating affects in today's kids and young adults when child care programs raise kids).
Germany, like Japan, is infamous for placing very high demands on mothers[1]. It's not just career advancement in Japan, or rather that's a consequence. Japanese mothers are socially expected to cooks their kids' lunches every day and sew them their backpacks for instance.
Really? I don't recall seeing any hand sewn backpacks in Japan- only commercially manufactured ones- but I wasn't looking that closely- so I am wondering if you have a citation for this interesting bit?
It was in an article I read a while ago on Japanese fertility rates in a section talking about government instructions to mothers of children now entering school. IIRC, which I may not, women would get commercial patterns but do the sewing themselves.
I was baffled that the university appeared to get away with just "oops, we'll stop doing it now". Years and years of something this serious should be enough to end an institution.
Where's the benefit in that? End the people responsible for this, not the institution that still provides invaluable services for the country (if run properly).
Fair enough. I meant more the operational tier that oversaw this rather than scrap buildings and general staff. But realistically, you'd hope there are alternative educators that can step in and provide a better, fairer service.
The noble goal of increasing the supply of doctors is, unfortunately, also what motivated the discrimination. They made this policy because they did not want limited doctor spots going to women who may drop out of the workforce after 5-8 years. In Japan, most women who have a child do end up dropping out of the workforce regardless of profession. My Japanese mother once told me that women being expected to or made to work by their family is distasteful, and that women should be "treasured". Her opinion is not the overwhelming majority, but it is a sizable part of the spectrum.
Regarding policy - of course the size of the class should instead be expanded to accommodate all who meet the bar, but unfortunately Japan also has issues with institutional rigidity and artificial licensure restrictions.
Japan is probably more concerned about boosting their declining pop rate, which is inversely correlated with women's education, than expanding their economy in the short term and accelerating the population decline.
It doesn't really work like that. You can't unmince meat back.
Once there is demand for education you can't roll it back by not delivering.
Moreover you can't fix anything by cheating on people and/or making their lives miserable. That's putting oneself in a very bad position indeed.
It sounds more and more of a bad joke. In Russia, you cheat on exams for University, but in Japan, University cheats on exams for you.
I would be interested in seeing the opposite examples where screwing people over fixed their birth rates (and introduced pink unicorns) but I'm pretty confident there will not be any.
Kind of reminds you of the score changing going on at universities here in the US (in the news lately) for the goal of favoring some applicants over others?
Yes. One practice is honest and one is dishonest. Do you really not see a difference?
"We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards."
Biasing entry standards is a thing that may or may not make sense. For public and public-funded institutions, transparency and honesty are absolutely essential.
>We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed
This seems like a generous description of affirmative action given it punishes asian students and examples of demographics that benefit underperforming once accepted.
One of the key criteria for performance today is "grit", which is an evolution over the previous performance indicators such as education/SAT scores (which had poor long term correlation).
The assumption that they will underperform is unsubstantiated.
Especially considering - all/most Asian American/SE Asian kids go through the ringer to prepare them from the word go, to get into a prestigious school. (Do note - that if they dont get into their first choice college, they will get into their equally good backup schools.)
As the dean of Harvard said - he could fill his class with Valedictorians (and probably have many more to spare).
Academic achievement is not the main criteria for admissions - and at least in an american system it shouldn't be.
----
Living in a world where Academics decide everything, you can easily see the kind of damage it does to daily life.
Societal worth, marriage prospects depend on what is said on that Degree - even if you are terrible at solving real world problems or have 0 motivation to actually work in your field.
The entire thesis is that they're starting from harder place, without necessarily having a superior talent distribution. Therefore, it's not unexpected they'd have a longer mean time to peak performance (which is what studies show).
The same is true, by the way, of folks with extremely religious anti-science backgrounds (like me!).
So you believe that white americans start from a harder place than asian americans?
>which is what studies show
Which studies? Graduation standards have changed for all races, in undergraduate institutions grade inflation is rampant and hard curves or class ranks are relics. The performance of the student body and specific demographics is increasingly muddled. In premier law schools affirmative action demographics continue to underperform, as well as have lower LSAT scores which strongly predicts probability of passing the bar.
> So you believe that white americans start from a harder place than asian americans?
No. And this, "If anything I am an asian supremcist" angle is so dated, so boring, and so tedious I'm not going to entertain you further. Everyone can see what you're doing. Go debate a 6 year old youtube video rather than waste an instant more of 2018's time.
Folks are acutely aware that Asian immigration in the US only allowed extremely rich and overqualified immigrants until relatively recently, and that economic disparity is clearly reflected in many social scales. We're also acutely aware of many eugenicists using "well asian people are just genetically and culturally better" as a blind in America for their racial oppression for years. That history is well-documented.
It's the logical conclusion of your stated thesis and affirmative action as it exists today.
>Folks are acutely aware that Asian immigration in the US only allowed extremely rich and overqualified immigrants until relatively recently
18th century Chinese laborers are rich and overqualified? Why say "no", whites don't have it harder than asians, then 180 and state that asian americans are all drawn from some privileged group. I'm not a eugenicist I'm just surprised by how easily affirmative actions proponents cast aside asian american concerns and commonly stereotype them as soulless grade grinders with "Tiger Moms" etc.
Your argument is wrong and ignores reality. You should feel ashamed of yourself for presenting such a disingenuous and widely debunked argument. This venue demands better.
For folks who don't know (hnaccy almost certainly does because this is the standard rebuttal to this lousy argument): Because the Chinese Exclusion Act was a real thing, the total combined Asian American population between the 8th census and the 1965 Immigration & Naturalization Act never exceeded 500,000 nationally, and that's adding a healthy margin of error. The recruited labor force was minuscule and not a significant contributor to today's booming population of over 20m.
It wasn't until after substantial immigration changes (oh, and federally guaranteeing non-whites could own property) that more folks were allowed in, and so we've had a relatively tiny fraction of US history where immigration was possible and desirable (who's gonna immigrate if you're legally forbidden to own a business or a home because of your skin color?). Folks moving in initially were folks who were rich and capable of going to a country with only minimal resources and support structures. The first year after the I&NA came about, the Asian population in America surged by over 200% and has grown at a healthy clip since then, dramatically skewing the characteristics of the population's wealth distribution.
So yeah, there's a substantial bias in Asian immigration, which has had a lot less time to give people with less means (a reliable predictor of maximum academic performance). We'd expect to see this in the data if economic resources enable academic performance, which we can point to multiple obvious mechanisms of. hnaccy's argument only makes sense if you believe there is some essential quality to Asian and White genetics that, in isolation of every other factor, reliably makes them "smarter" than black or brown people. Even a casual knowledge of genetics and epigenetics suggests that this is at best radically implausible at worst an outright lie dating back to 1930s propaganda trying to co-opt science for political gain.
> Someone can disagree with the concept and/or implementation of race based admission policies without being a racist eugenicist.
I agree. However, you went a step further and started suggesting a biological essentialism and history erasure. If you simply didn't know you were doing that then admit your opinion is ahistorical and go research the subject.
I think you're are now walking this statement back because it was such a weak point. I'm going to take screenshots in case you attempt to abuse editing.
> When it sounds like you do believe asian Americans start in a better place due to historical immigration policies and trends.
Please see Dr. Eugenia Cheng's 2017 talk "Category Theory in the Real World" for a primer in how to interpret this. There are multiple axis of privilege. Interestingly enough, admissions standards often address these axis by also considering family income and other historical details like presence or loss of family members.
The existence of affirmative action for specific groups does not create a zero sum exercise for white Americans, who also have access to a larger number of economic and social criterion for admissions and financial aid.
If the number of applicants exceeds the number of spots and some are assigned a higher value due to their race then applicants of other races are disadvantaged.
Actually: I don't see how either of us could make a meaningful case on if this does or does not happen without access to more data and transparency from orgs on their admissions process and criterion. This article exposing the bias is great because it's a step forward towards transparency there, and we see that in fact qualified women were being actively turned down strictly because men were preferred via bias.
Ultimately we're asking for what proportion of applicants WERE qualified but denied because they didn't have a "spot", the total admissions volumes, and what that intersection is. What's more, most students apply to multiple colleges and only a few have specific environments that are specifically necessary (you might argue, for example Stanford's connection with the startup world makes it especially desirable, but look at what a untalented failure Lucas Duplan is... maybe not...), it simply changes outcomes in a way that isn't particularly disadvantaging.
Personally and in an unsubstantiated musing: I believe that the actual case where a student "doesn't get in to college because of their race" is astonishingly rare. The US has a large enough population that the law of large numbers surely makes a few, and that's one of many reasons I've dedicated my career to providing education for as long as I stay in the field.
But your argument seems to carry this unspoken corollary that there aren't resources for white folks or men, but that's something that seems to follow from what evidence I've found. I've found a few sources that suggest white people get about 60% of the private scholarship funding in the US.
>For example, Dr. Card’s simulations show that if Harvard had not considered race, the proportion of African-American students in the Class of 2019 would have dropped from 14% to 6%, and the proportion of Hispanic or Other students would have dropped from 14% to 9%.
It follows that there was a group of applications numbering 13% of the Class of 2019 who were disadvantaged due to their race.
Yes it's probably quite rare that a student is rejected at say HYP and does not get into any other college but I don't see why that matters? We accept that there is a benefit to attending certain schools over others why should it depend on your race whether or not you "deserve" your first choice or should be happy with second or third choice college?
>But your argument seems to carry this unspoken corollary that there aren't resources for white folks or men
> Yes it's probably quite rare that a student is rejected at say HYP and does not get into any other college but I don't see why that matters?
Because the opposite case, where the economic destiny of folks from previously disadvantaged-in-America ethnic minorities is real and more common. If you're looking for a justification, more good than harm.
> Academic achievement is not the main criteria for admissions - and at least in an american system it shouldn't be.
That in itself is reasonable. The fact that the key criteria where Asian students had low performance was on the scores from interviews with admissions officers, but their scores on interviews with Harvard alumni were just fine is a pretty damning indicator that Harvard was specifically excluding them because of race and not because of their non-academic qualifications.
> What bullshit. Accepting someone underqualified means rejecting someone perfectly qualified, by definition.
Ah yes, because college admission caps are not at all arbitrary and never change.
> Publicly funded ones should have fair and non-racist transparent standards.
Careful there with your language. Racism is an institutional proposition, discrimination is an individual one. So long as "white" (whatever that means) Americans hold the majority of political and economic power in America, the conditions for "racism" don't exist except in the most degenerate dictionary sense of the word.
May not sound very nice, but the attitude "you will be treated by not so knowledgeable and skilled doctor — it was difficult for them to become skilled" does not encourage me a bit.
This confuses admission standards (which are arbitrary) with graduation standards (which are also transparent and subject to regulation and practical workforce critique).
> Yes. One practice is honest and one is dishonest. Do you really not see a difference?
Both are equally dishonest.
> "We invited you in with your lower score because we recognize it is more difficult for you to achieve that score, and as such are more likely to succeed" versus "We didn't like how smart we were so we lied to you about passing the exam to hide the fact that we're biasing entry standards."
That's just rationalizations to justify your bias. The japanese made similar rationalizations. Female candidates are likely to get pregnant and society is better off with females getting pregnant because japan has a low birth-rate problem.
Their justification is just as "good" as yours. Both are discriminatory and evil.
Depends what you think the entry criteria is. If you think the absolute mark is an appropriate criteria then yes, that should be it. If you are looking at ability to apply oneself as being the criteria you have to examine a lot more.
An effort is being made to provide opportunity to those with less access to it, but painting affirmative action as a free ride is a malicious category error that needs no debunking, it's simply a garbage argument that involves talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices.
> An effort is being made to provide opportunity to those with less access to it
That's fine, as long as the criteria is the same.
> but painting affirmative action as a free ride is a malicious category error that needs no debunking
That's called straw man. I said it is discrimination. This is called fact.
> simply a garbage argument that involves talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices.
As far as I can tell, you are the one talking as fast as possible and hoping no one notices. This is something called projection.
I'm making fairly straightforward assertions. Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. The japanese shouldn't discriminate against women. We shouldn't discriminate against asians and whites.
> Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. The japanese shouldn't discriminate against women. We shouldn't discriminate against asians and whites.
Then why is it okay to have admisisons standards at all? Don't they inherently discriminate amongst people in such a way as to favor rich people who can afford to give their child the necessary nutrition, time and stability to perform all the rituals that college campuses look for?
> We shouldn't discriminate against asians and whites.
We also have to undo the generation's of economic and social harm principle perpetrated by white people against other ethnic minorities in the US. You can't simply wave away the US's obligations.
I do agree that Asian Americans face a lot of issues in the US and it's unfair how they're treated as a managed ethnic minority that schools like Harvard can keep in a separate managed bucket.
> Then why is it okay to have admisisons standards at all?
Because we want the best and brightest attending these universities? People most capable of actually performing and graduating? Is this a serious question?
> Don't they inherently discriminate amongst people in such a way as to favor rich people who can afford to give their child the necessary nutrition, time and stability to perform all the rituals that college campuses look for?
No. No more than the NBA discriminates.
> We also have to undo the generation's of economic and social harm principle perpetrated by white people against other ethnic minorities in the US.
We have. It's called evening the playing field by ending discrimination. Punishing asians ( who haven't done anything ) or young white students ( who haven't done anything ) is the definition of evil.
> You can't simply wave away the US's obligations.
Once again, we have. It's called ending discrimination.
> I do agree that Asian Americans face a lot of issues in the US and it's unfair how they're treated as a managed ethnic minority that schools like Harvard can keep in a separate managed bucket.
Yes. Discrimination is evil. I'm glad we are agreed. Using your logic, in 20 years, are we going to have to discriminate against blacks to make up for the discrimination against asians/whites today? The neverending cycle of discrimination?
The condescending affirmative action ideology is a new form of "supremacy". The idea that minorities are incapable of overcoming and need "help" is another form of white supremacy. Only this time, it's leftist faction looking down on minorities for social cred.
Discrimination is wrong. Simple as that. You don't achieve equality by removing hurdles from one group of people and putting them in front of another group of people. That's illogical and it's wrong. No amount of rationalization is going to make it right.
> Female candidates are likely to get pregnant and society is better off with females getting pregnant because japan has a low birth-rate problem.
This is a value judgement, and a tedious one at that. You cannot compel women in a free society to have children to meet your expectations. If you want to encourage women to have children, you need to create an environment where it is equitable for them to do so without being unduly penalized.
Again: if your approach worked then Japan would not have a birthrate decline. This is, and has been, already their stance. Women are effectively removed from the workforce upon pregnancy. They are declining that proposition because it's unfair, and society COULD structure to redress that.
> This is a value judgement, and a tedious one at that.
Yes. Discrimination is a value judgment and tedious one at that. We are agreed. Not sure why you support discrimination though.
> If you want to encourage women to have children, you need to create an environment where it is equitable for them to do so without being unduly penalized.
Actually, we already know that "equitable" society leads to lower birth rates. The more equal the society, the lower the birth rates.
> Again: if your approach worked then Japan would not have a birthrate decline.
You missed my point. It's not my approach. It's japan's approach. And I'm against that.
If you had paid attention, you'd realize that I am against discrimination, no matter what the ends. I don't believe the ends justify the means.
I just offered japan's rationale for discriminating against women, just like you offered your rationale against discriminating against people in the US.
What kind of mental contortions do you have to go through to justify this to yourself?
Pray, tell us more about the difference between subtracting points from someone for their identity, versus giving extra points to someone for their identity?
> Pray, tell us more about the difference between subtracting points from someone for their identity, versus giving extra points to someone for their identity?
But that's not what admissions processes do. They say, "Here is the criterion for folks with consideration to their ethnic minority." All the research I've done does not suggest there is a single score folks are adding and subtracting to.
In the case of the article, they didn't say, "Sorry your womb makes you ineligible" they actually graded the tests with a penalty attached. They "changed the results" of the entrance exams.
> Pray, tell
Prithee sir, read with care. I hope thy question was answered. Fie, sir, fie! For this craven fear of loss and refusal to harken to the scope of history holds back your potential.
I guess people who are vehemently in support of affirmative action feel the need to downvote my comment, not to point out that it's unproductive or doesn't add to the discussion, but simply to reflect that they disagree.
I'm a moderate liberal, and even I can see that this smacks of what conservatives accuse the left of doing.
"We won't do it again" is incredibly inadequate. I'm not familiar with the Japanese legal system, but punitive fines for the university plus the criminal charges on the individuals involved seem warranted here.
Every society is based on shame and status. Legal systems are based on codified rule of law, social systems are based on culture, and all cultures use shame to varying degrees to control behavior ie slut shaming, jobs loss, deviant behavior, low status jobs.
This forum itself never fails to remind MacDonald and Wallmart workers of their status. Status has always been a central facet of every society. Even a cursory scratch beneath the surface will reveal the rigid class consciousness and status hierarchies in every society.
It's not the same at all. Oxford extended time for both men and women equally and the professor wasn't allowed to bump the grades. Neither was a systematic manipulation of scores to keep men out of a field.
I have long argued that any act of positive discrimination results in an equal amount of negative discrimination. Be it sex, race, social background, income or any other attribute. Some argue that positive discrimination is the most efficient way to right past wrongs or that it has a net positive effect on a society but that does not negate the effect of the negative discrimination on the affected individuals. What does HN think?
University enrollment is a zero sum game, but not everything is. Positive discrimination in a zero sum game will indeed result in negative discrimination, but not by virtue of discrimination being subject to Newton's Third Law.
There is a school of philosophy that newton's laws of motion apply to the political realm - "any action taken to benefit a minority group will result in an equal and opposite counter-reaction".
I wouldn't be terribly far off if I described Sun Zu's "The Art of War" as Newton's laws of motion applied to game theory.
I think the idea of positive discrimination is related to countering inherent bias.
You might think A isn't as qualified as B. But it is known that inherent bias against A is very likely. So you might decide, even though I believe B to be more qualified, I will go with A, knowing that my judgement might be wrong, because of the likelihood of inherent bias.
In a way, yes, the known biases, can create a new bias. I bias against my known biases. This does mean that at an individual level, I favored someone else, when I initially wouldn't have. But does it result in better outcomes? I think this is where it matters. Let me explain.
If one is chosen and given opportunity over another. That choice is always going to be judgemental and opinionated. You're trying to predict who will make better use of the opportunity and contribute back the most for being given it.
But predictions, like in machine learning, show that a biased data set often perform poorly. So I think part of positive discrimination is to say, diversity could actually yield better results. Yet, because we don't have diverse data, we don't know for sure. But its still okay for the person who chooses to be of the opinion that it would. I find that no different then saying, well I felt they were more knowledgeable. All of it are intractable metrics in an attempt to predict outcome.
Edit: Some more thoughts related to fairness. Is it fair to give opportunity only to those who would maximise it? What if it was true, that there was a genetic quality, sex, or race, or a more specific one, like height, IQ, EQ, etc., which was the key variable to maximize the opportunity? Is it fair to say only they shall be given such opportunity, always? Or should we pick at random? Would that be more fair? Are there other scheme? What does it even mean to be fair? Your genetics aren't fair, should society be fairer then them? Clearly in the modern western world, we seem to define fairness as, whoever can maximize the opportunity the most, shall be given it. Aka, meritocracy. Is this best for our society though? If so, are we doing a good job at it? What if we try to do that, but instead have been giving opportunity to those who most resemble us? Not to those who can most maximise it? What then? Is that unfair?
What if positive discrimination triggers retaliatory bias? Have you really done more good than harm?
Positive discrimination is like bombing a village known to harbor terrorists. Sure, you may kill some terrorists and drive the rest underground. You'll also radicalize a bunch of villagers. Suddenly ideas that used to be relegated to the lunatic fringe are going mainstream.
Sound anything like the US political situation in 2018?
Evidence and facts dont support the retaliatory bias position - retaliatory bias is currently too insignificant a force in comparison to previous systemic or societal biases.
Maybe if we lived in a highly equitable society in the first place, the position would make sense - the forces would be more relatively matched.
Currently, all things being equal - the systemic biases are far more significant and harmful to society as a whole.
You talk about a bias and judgment, that may apply to a job interview but how would it apply to written school admission exams?
Judging fairness by maximizing opportunity sounds a lot like the hypothetical counter-utilitarianism argument about harvesting YOU for organs thus saving more lives. Maximizing fairness to society instead of the individual is the basis of ideologies like communism and fascism.
> how would it apply to written school admission exams?
There are numerous examples of how written exams are often biased against minorities due to either using cultural references/vocabulary or to frame problems using metaphors that more apply to an average white person than an average non-white person, so there’s that.
I'd recommend reading "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy" - it covers the long history of this pervasive issue in the American education system in great detail.
I am strongly against affirmative action and similar techniques since they are almost never applied universal based on anything measurable, but rather political.
For example we had here in Sweden for a short time a program which gave bonus points for university student applications if the student would end being a minority in their class based on gender. The problem was that rather then seeing more women entering male dominated fields, it was more men who applied for seats in female dominated fields and thus ended up gaining the benefit of this program. It was then challenged by feminist groups as being discriminative which they won which then resulted in the program being scraped. A major issue is that on average the higher education here in Sweden in female dominated so any positive discrimination that is intended to countering inherent bias would primarily benefit men, unless those actions are applied explicitly to the minority of programs which is male dominated such as abstract math, IT, engineering and a few more. As such modern affirmative actions programs are much more selective in where it get applied.
Same issue applies to using affirmative action to counter gender segregation in the work sector. Both men and women have the same employment rate here in Sweden, and about 90% of men and women work in a profession which is gender segregated. Neither gender is more likely or less likely to be a minority or majority, which means that affirmative action in the hiring process would apply equally to both men and women. The only way to break the symmetry is to only apply affirmative action in places which the intended group is the minority and thus get the benefit, such as two current political initiative to get more women into sport management and management boards. By limit to only gender segregation in those areas they can be sure that only women will benefit from the initiative and political this seems to be a major success.
If we use data sets and machine learning to counter bias then it would likely work but it would also benefit both men and women. Political this is not acceptable. People claim that positive discrimination is to be used to countering inherent bias but the way it is actually used is all about political power and who can benefit from it.
> effect of the negative discrimination on the affected individuals
It's worse than that.
What doctor would you go to, a white man, a black man, or a woman, if you knew that there's affirmative action for blacks/women, and you wanted (and could afford) the best doctor?
Mind you, picking white man isn't even racist, it's rational in the Bayesian framework (the white/male had to have better exam scores to be admitted to the school than blacks/women).
> picking white man isn't even racist, it's rational in the Bayesian framework
Only if you assume no inherent counter-bias, which is of course ridiculous. Without affirmative action, blacks/women would have to have equal exam scores coupled with adverse conditions (statistically, on average) to the white/male candidate. By that logic, they would need to perform much better on aggregate.
Do you assume the adverse conditions that affect black women (BW) will disappear once they are admitted to the school? If not, then it is still more rational to choose a white man (WM), who performed better in the exams and is not affected by adverse conditions during his study.
Anyway, my original question was about fairness :).
> Do you assume the adverse conditions that affect black women (BW) will disappear once they are admitted to the school?
I guess the hope is that increased participation will slowly reduce the severity of adversity, but whether that is effective I'm less sure of (I don't really believe it will ever disappear completely tbh).
As for it being more rational to choose the person who contends with adversity on the assumption that the adversity never disappears (and therefore continues to impair), this only works on the assumption that affirmative action is a complete, perfect remedy to adversity: otherwise those contending with adversity must still overachieve to a certain degree to get the same positions (and therefore represent a potentially better rational choice).
I'd go for the black woman, as she had far more adversity to overcome to get into that position and is therefore better (harder working, less likely to have got in via the old boys network)
Of course I wouldn't really, I'm just using your logic.
A research done in Brazil (where racial quotas for universities were implemented) showed that students that got in through quotas performed better, on average, than "normal" students.
So I guess you are right.
Can you cite your sources? Br has been in the whole trend of positive discrimination for a long time and I doubt this study isn't biased as most of their society when it comes to everyone that isn't "white".
In india the opposite is true. A significant fraction of student admitted through race quota fail and drop out. Now they want to reduce the exam difficulty for them!
Although technically that's a different effect. Affirmative action is, AFAIK, meant to counter negative bias before (i.e. positive discrimination at university entry is meant to counter worse education and poverty at a primary- and high-school level), whereas you're talking about overcoming biases after graduation ("old boys network" etc).
If she did not overcome the adversity after her admission there is no reason to choose her, her outcome as a doctor is still affected by the adversity. If she did overcome the adversity after admission, we must ask what prevented her from overcoming it before admission.
That's an oversimplification, as adversity is not a binary, and is highly qualitative.
However, to take the bait and make an attempt at analysing it:
- (race/gender-based) adversity in education usually has the effect of reducing your chances of succeeding in exams, admissions, etc.
- (race/gender-based) adversity in professional practice usually has the effect of reducing your chances of acquiring customers, partners, progression within an organisation.
So while she may still face after admission, that adversity should have a much more significant affect on her paycheck than on her medical performance.
> (race/gender-based) adversity in education usually has the effect of reducing your chances of succeeding in exams, admissions, etc.
How would that work? If we talked about oral exams or job interview then surely there can be a bias. But written exams? I can't imagine how it would be affected by your race.
What can be however affected is your access to quality education prior to the admission, which will affect your admission changes, which should not be an issue after the admission because now you are getting the same quality education as others.
While I can imagine that socio-economic issues (like being black=poor) may affect your access to quality education prior to the admission, I can not imagine how being a woman would affect your access to quality education. Maybe stereotypes in case of STEM?
> What doctor would you go to, a white man, a black man, or a woman, if you knew that there's affirmative action for blacks/women, and you wanted (and could afford) the best doctor?
What is it with this obsession that every requires the best doctor? I don't want the best doctor, I want a good enough doctor who is close to my house location or I will stick to my current doctor because I had good experience with them. Once I stumble upon problems with that doctor I might reevaluate. Sometimes good is good enough, you don't always need the best of the best. My dentist is a woman, and not white. She's great. My doctor is a white male, he is also great. Skin or gender mean nothing to me in this context.
> What is it with this obsession that every requires the best doctor?
Being only willing to settle for the absolute best doctor in the world is ridiculous, but it is perfectly rational to want to choose the best one out of a small group of candidates. I can't imagine approaching it any other way when my personal health is on the line.
(Not agreeing with OP's strategy whatsoever) -- because the wrong doctor can cost you time, health and your _life_. Particularly with surgeon's, the best surgeon's (and practice's) may have substantially lower complication rates. Its not a small difference.
And most people will optimize for all those factors as well. We aren't saying that you have to pick the doctor with the absolute highest scores, only that there is another factor to rationally consider which shouldn't be there.
Well generally, if they're employed they're not terrible else word of mouth (if not lawsuits) would've made them unemployed [1] (Don't have English source). I live in a small country where that works. Also, by talking to them during your intake. When I recently needed oral surgery, the specialist recommend I'd use oxazepam and reassured me it'd work (I have fear for needles). The 2 procedures went great (one was common, one was a tad more complex). You can have a second opinion as well, if you're in doubt. If I'd have cancer I'd go to Antoni van Leeuwenhoek hospital [2]. It has a good name.
For 1. - that's not how it works. When you adjust a parameter to "give a better chance" to one group you are inadvertently negating the advantage of the other. As said before, admissions are a 0 sum game. Any advantage you give to one group it can only turn into a disadvantage for another. And testing the ability to work under pressure in an exam is as reasonable as you can expect.
In this case extending the time because "female candidates might be more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure" negates the advantage people that can work under pressure have.
I'm curious how they're going to do this in real life when (unsurprisingly) they will be expected to work under pressure and it will highlight a big mismatch between academic and professional performance levels.
Exams are testing the ability to work under pressure. Giving students 15 minutes extra only changes the degree of pressure. The previous time given isn't a "neutral" point. How much of an advantage in terms of exam results _should_ people who can work under high pressure have?
The pressures STEM employees face at work are usually very different from exam pressure, so I would lean towards "very little" as the answer to that question.
The pressure is to finish in a tight deadline. Whether an exam or a delivery date. I'm sorry, as a STEM graduate working in the field for a long time, saying that being able to work under pressure is not important strikes me as very odd. Working under pressure is a skill that cannot be replaced or compensated. You can't borrow it, you can't google it, and it's pretty damn hard to acquire. So the 15 extra minutes one receives for an exam today might turn into 15 extra hours for a project task tomorrow.
Everything about academic studies is an arbitrary "neutral point". The quantity of information for one topic, the difficultly of the exam, the time allotted.
It's exactly like saying that you don't actually need to show all that knowledge during the exam since Wolfram Alpha can do that for you. And in real life deadlines are no longer like an arbitrary exam time or even a standardized interview test. They're usually as tight as the best people on your team can afford. That becomes the "neutral point". And that's when it will matter that two people that previously looked equal start performing differently.
An exam tests you for a lot of things and they just lessened one. Which isn't in itself a necessarily bad thing if it didn't give ammo to every person claiming that men are better at STEM. Now their bias is backed by universities so good luck fighting it.
*Just highlighting again that this is discussing the "increased exam time" topic, not the "let's change results to exclude women" topic.
I've also been working in the STEM field for a long time, and from my own experience deadlines of hours are rare. Deadlines of days and longer are both psychologically and logistically very different. It is not at all given that someone who can sprint well is a good mid-distance or long-distance runner.
> It's exactly like saying that you don't actually need to show all that knowledge during the exam since Wolfram Alpha can do that for you.
I don't get how this is at all equivalent. Could you please clarify?
I wasn't really thinking of deadline in hours, more like how many extra man-hours/days one would need. If you need more time than the next guy to finish your exam because pressure affects you, when you start working you may end up needing 2 more man-days (15 extra hours) for a task that the other guy can finish on time. Almost all deadlines are set around what your best people can achieve. Not being able to work under pressure will be obvious sooner or later unless you pick a job with very soft and flexible deadlines.
And I'm not even touching the situations where it could be a matter of life and death and you have to fix it now.
> I don't get how this is at all equivalent. Could you please clarify?
I was referring to this:
> The pressures STEM employees face at work are usually very different from exam pressure, so I would lean towards "very little" as the answer to that question.
Exams rely on a lot of memorizing which can easily be replaced by Google and WA and is not a reflection of how you will do real work so why test that "knowledge"? The pressure to properly allot time to every question and finish in the exam in time after providing all or most of the solutions is an ability to work under pressure perfectly equivalent to the one you feel doing a task at work. You can't replace the working under pressure skill with almost anything else.
You have to know if those future engineers can do it fast and well even under pressure. Lessening one burden is no different from lessening the other. And when you do it for the benefit of a single group it can't not feel like it's strengthening arguments that some people need help to get through STEM. That's the last thing women in STEM need, having to fight yet another prejudice.
"Being able to work under pressure" is not a binary skill that you either have or don't have. Pressure comes in various forms and your ability to cope depends on many environmental factors. I have some experience with working to tight deadlines, and it never felt particularly similar to taking an exam. So I would challenge the idea that they're equivalent.
A being a better sprinter than B neither means B can't work under pressure nor that B is the worse mid-distance runner. The same is true for mental tasks.
By cutting exams short, we are losing information about the student's knowledge in return for information about how well students work under pressure.
As an employer, "working under pressure" is not very high on my list of
considerations. I would much rather have a complete picture of the candidate's ability to learn and retain information. Well-designed systems take months and months to build, I would prefer information about the candidate's general aptitude than their ability to work in crunch time.
If I was looking for employees for a job in which "working under pressure" was a central component, I would rather test for that in the interview process and have their university scores be uncompromised by pressure.
As an employer you can easily test anything you want during the interview, tailored to the job's needs and expectation: technical knowledge, working under pressure, soft skills, etc. Then why would you care about school marks when the candidate proves able on the interview?
It's because academic performance is by design an average of skills displayed over multiple years. You can't fulfill the expectations of all employers at once with a standardized test. The degree (and the marks attached to it) just show the average performance per topic over the years. How fast you can finish your assignment is an integral part of any academic program. That's why you get tight(ish) deadlines for any assignment, and exam times.
By extending that time you can no longer make the difference between 2 people with good knowledge but different working under pressure skills. That's the difference between good and best.
I'm not saying the exams become irrelevant, just that this kind of thing does more to discredit the image of women in STEM than a slightly lower exam mark. This just strengthens preconceptions that some groups need help to be equal. And it's backed up by universities and whatever science they used to reach this conclusion.
Knowledge tests that introduce time pressure become lossy. An employer can test performance under pressure and extrapolate that against historical data, but they cannot do it in the reverse order as the information is lost.
> By extending that time you can no longer make the difference between 2 people with good knowledge but different working under pressure skills. That's the difference between good and best.
This is true, but if two students have the same score from elongated tests and one does not test well under pressure, it's straightforward to understand that one of the students would have performed better on a time pressure exam. However, consider:
Student A achieves 92% on a 1.75 hour exam but would have achieved 90% on a 1.5 hour exam. Student B achieves 94% on a 1.75 hour exam but would have achieved 88% on a 1.5 hour exam.
In a 1.5 hour exam, the clear conclusion is that student A is the better student. But is student A truly the better student in this scenario? The exam length is a rough estimate made by a university, and it seems like an arbitrary line to draw.
Allowing every student to have enough time to show the breadth of their knowledge on the subject material is not "helping" women. The same principle is applied to both men and women. It is an attempt to provide a level playing field and work towards meritocracy.[1]
Consider an exam on a technical subject that contains questions that are difficult to parse in English. Non-native English speakers have trouble parsing the questions which results in lower test scores. If I suggest that we simplify the language in order to accurately gauge the students knowledge of the subject, you may suggest that this is discrimination against native English speakers. This is undoubtedly true in the context, but it is an attempt to move towards a level playing field which tests knowledge of the subject, which is the entire point of the exercise. You can test for English proficiency separately, that is not the point of the exam.
[1] Contrast this with link 2 in the GP which is straightforward discrimination against men and was roundly rejected for that reason.
If they decided to lengthen times to better fit real world conditions, it is fair. If they went searching for 'fair' changes that could be made that would statistically boost one group over another, it isn't a fair change.
Yes, #1 "is different" than the OP. It would only be equivalent if women were allowed more time than men to complete the exam.*
#2 is a completely misleading headline. It ... never happened. An article in which the 2nd paragraph contradicts the headline isn't written in good faith.
[*] I would also argue that extending exams so that each student has a reasonable amount of time to finish is not a bad practice. A student that gives a correct answer in the extra 15 minutes is no less knowledgeable than a student that gives the correct answer in the original allocated time. We are selecting for breadth and depth of knowledge, not speed of recitation or ability to perform under pressure. In a CS exam, you either know the answer or you do not. Extra time is not going to allow you to falsify your level of knowledge. It will, however, give slower workers the ability to fully complete the exam.
Students that work quickly but are less knowledgeable than their peers are the only ones that would be penalized by this change. Those students have inflated scores relative to their knowledge, therefore this penalization should be encouraged. In an untimed test, the most knowledgeable student will always get the highest test score, therefore knowledgeable students should not be opposed to increasing test times, they should encourage them.
You believe that a student that derives a proof from scratch is less knowledgeable than a student that rote memorizes it out of a textbook?
My argument comes from the perspective of the real world. It is, in effect, the same type of argument that drives the "interview questions on a whiteboard" discussion -- which qualities are actually important in an employee? As someone involved with hiring for a company that consistently produces high quality, critical code used in important systems, my experience is that "working under pressure" is pretty far down the list of important qualities.
I'm not saying the person that came to the proof with 30 mins extra is not smart, but they were not able to meet the same expectation as the other students.
If everyone gets a 50, the grades will scale, and your final grade will depend on how you performed compared to the rest
I've brute forced a few proofs, and if i had done so in overtime, i would 100% stand by my viewpoint that i deserve less points than the student next to me who met the expectation.
In an interview it's different too, because you have not been preparing for a clearly defined expectation for 3 months.
Now on the other hand, if you were to argue for completely untimed exams, i can get behind that. I really enjoyed some of my take home CS finals, and it really let me perfect my solution to the best of my ability.
It really depends on what expectation is set (imo)
What does it matter if students meet the expectation that is set if the expectation has no bearing on anything useful? Surely the university's goal should be to produce capable graduates, not to simply have a contest of who is better at taking pointless exams. If they want to adjust the expectations set for students to put less emphasis on rapid recitation of rote memorization, that is a good thing.
So first: most jobs require you to do a lot of stuff that you may not agree with or feel is useful. I don't want to work with the person who is going to only do what they want when they want. At the end of the day the work needs to get done.
Secondly: any school that has GPA is essentially holding a contest. Many job postings consider GPA and may use it as a tiebreaker between 2 canidates from school X. It's not a perfect metric by any means, but it is relevant in the world today for new hires.
Work in the real world is largely the ability to deliver on expectations.
Okay, but why that particular set of hoops to jump through rather than some other set of hoops to jump through? Why should the university have to stick with one set of hoops to jump through just because it's the one they happened to pick decades ago?
In college, I did well on math exams precisely because I had a strong understanding of what I was doing. I did not mechanically follow a recipe for a solution like some other students did.
The result was that I usually took the entire exam period (right up to the last minute) to finish, but I usually had a perfect score or close to it. I outperformed high scorers who had completed the exam 30 mins before me by almost 10 points.
The only exam that got the best of me was the first linear algebra exam, which was a lot of mechanical matrix multiplying. I only completed 3/4 questions before the time was up.
The reality is that you should be learning how to prove, not memorizing proofs.
The student who was most prepared would be able to derive proofs (by the process that was taught, like knowing to apply a theorom, or being comforatable with induction, etc) in a timely manner.
The exam is there to see how well you grasp the material taught, not how good at winging it you are (which is a very useful skill of course, but not the one being tested)
I had an CS exam where I was familiar with all the topics asked and knew all the answers and even how to apply them, well despite some quirks surely ;P
But some questions in the exam required us to apply some algorithms by hand. I knew how they worked and I could also do them by hand. Did it on whiteboard with toy problems while studying for it. But what I didn't really expected was how fast the time run with manual execution on paper.. Even for modest data sizes.
I thought that the algos really could be improved to be much faster by hand, refactor to optimize for different operation costs when doing by hand given the available tools in the exam, reducing operation costs by speeding up hotspot manual steps by training right into muscle memory and better memory alignment on paper for faster data lookups in the first place.
I probably could have finished that exam in time, but with a baaad score. So I just quit and gave them a blank paper with my name to try again next time.
I knew what the real problem was: time, and I had a plan how to prepare for it.
It worked =)
An exam where you can hand in a blank paper to try again later and not just get a 0 seems like it would be uncommon. I certainly never had that experience.
Interesting. My experience was in the US, and I would have kept that 0 unless my professor was feeling _very_ generous. I don't think it would be completely unheard of to have a professor with a policy like you described, but I never ran into it.
We wouldn't have been forced to drop out (at least not due to that exam in isolation), but the 0 would have been considered as part of our final grade for the course.
My experience is that the exam is at the end of the course, so the 0 would be your grade for the course. And you can't finish your degree without passing grades on every course in the degree, so if there were no second chances then that would mean the end of your study.
At my university the year was divided into three trimesters with exam periods at the end, and a fourth exam period at the end of summer holiday. Each exam period would have the exams of all the courses of the previous trimester and also exams of courses of the trimester before for people who still needed to pass that course. If you fail the exam twice, you have to try again when the exam is given again next year (or try to argue with the prof to get special arrangements, say if it's the only one you still need for your degree).
> Not saying this is right, but the opposite is also more common than you'd think.
You don't know how common the reader thinks this is occurring, but you're implying its common. Given your sources are both debunked by another reader I'd appreciate a plethora of other sources.
Funny how when confronted with an article that gives a clear, unambiguous demonstration of how patriarchy negatively affects women, you come up with two weak articles that supposedly demonstrate cases where women were advantaged (they weren't). From that, I'm led to believe that maybe the opposite actually isn't more common than I think.
Maybe you don't actually think that the issue in the Tokyo medical school was such a big deal after all?
I'm still waiting for a "smoking gun" such as this to come out of hiring or admission practices for tech firms and STEM courses. In much of the Western world the majority of people starting their careers in medicine and law are women (this is the case in my own country), but these fields are not, as far as I can tell, any less prejudiced or discriminatory against women than fields which men have a large male majority. Even with actual systematic discrimination in place in Japan, the rate of female doctors (30% according to the article) is still higher than the percentage of women studying CS in the UK (19%, according to [0]).
I said this here before, but this is exactly what is going all over the world whenever "affirmative actions" are used.
The only difference is that in this specific case, they decided to use a clear different required test score in order to apply the unfair advantage at selection.
In most other places, specifically in the US they use soft, improvable information (such as an "essay") to cover their base and make it non-obvious that the selection process is unfair. The most famous case would be the Asian discrimination case at Harvard, weirdly everyone is mostly ok with that one
A more important difference is that affirmative action is generally used to favor under-represented demographics (or equivalently, to disfavor over-represented demographics). In this case it looks like they disfavored women while they were already under-represented! I'm not quite sure of this but that's what another article [1] suggests:
In 2010, before the measure was allegedly introduced, female student participation was about 40%.
The newspaper reported that after the two-round application process earlier this year, only 30 female applicants were accepted to study, versus 141 men.
>A more important difference is that affirmative action is generally used to favor under-represented demographics
That may be the intent, but in practice it also hurts certain underrepresented groups. For example, among all Asians, if you break down the demographic further by nationality, you'll find some groups strongly over represented and other groups strongly underrepresented. Affirmative actions applied to Asians as a whole hurts the groups which are already underrepresented, and while it hurts Asians in general compared to all other demographics, it helps over represented Asians compared to underrepresented Asians.
But really Japan has to seriously put an effort to positively utilize the other half of their able worker pool. If they engaged and got similar participation rates as men, that could go a long way in expanding their economy.
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