http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/opinion/sunday/professors-are-prejudiced-too.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0OK, since I suck at technical stuff, here’s my contribution to geekhack thought and discussion.
This study finds that professors discriminate. Even professors of a different gender or race are more likely to respond to a white male student/ prospective student for mentoring. Being Asian, for instance, confers no advantages in education despite the popular stereotype.
Bear in mind that it is just one study. Another study with a different methodology might come to a different conclusion. Given the academic backgrounds of the researchers, I believe study should conform with basic accepted standards of methodology. It doesn’t mean they’re ‘right’ of course, but is worth thinking about.
So, what do you guys think?
My personal point of view: totally true. And not going away anytime soon. But that said, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And even with all that extra-willingness of professors to mentor and help and promote or give research opportunities to white male students, I was really surprised at the gap in quality between US-born white male students and non-US born folks.
From experience: Apart from some US-specific fields of study such as American studies or English Literature (meaning, US English; they rarely look at UK or Australia or India), graduate fields are dominated by non-US people. And hiring all the local white research assistants and mentoring them for work-study grants never worked. You can have a bunch of grad students start up a conversation after an interesting talk, the only white people with anything interesting to say are the Eastern Europeans or Jews, and the local-born WASP guy hasn't got anything to contribute because he is there just for the deep dish pizza. (Deep dish pizza draw WASPs like honey draws bees or donuts draw Cops.)
