Is it? The estimate at https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p... disagrees, but if you have other data I would be interested.
> at least in STEM
This is an important caveat, by the way. The racial breakdown differs quite a bit by major at many of these schools. I doubt Harvard would be 44% Asian even without the discrimination they engage in (and so do the authors of the study linked above, who put it at 37% Asian admittees if all the racial/atheletic/legacy preferences went away).
> not the paltry 15% quota the Ivies have consented to grant them.
15% when? The data I've seen has Harvard at 15% Asian about 10 years ago. Per the chart above the fraction of Asians in the set of people who get _admitted_ is 24%. Per the numbers at https://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/s... Harvard's _enrolled_ undergrads are 21% Asian. Not sure whether the discrepancy has tso do with systematic differences in how often people accept the offer of admission or whether something else is going on.
> The other thing to consider is that “diversity” somehow fails to consider class.
Yes, fully agreed.
Bringing Blacks and Hispanics into the conversation is a red herring used by elite universities to defend the indefensible. If you want to see what a truly meritocratic admissions policy would look like, at least in STEM, just see Caltech, where Asians make up 44% of the student body, not the paltry 15% quota the Ivies have consented to grant them.
https://www.registrar.caltech.edu/records/enrollment-statist...
The other thing to consider is that “diversity” somehow fails to consider class. Have you noticed how universities prattle on about racial statistics but getting stats on socio-economic background is like pulling teeth, if you can get data at all?