Princeton faces bias probe

BY JOHN HECHINGER

Princeton University said the U.S. Education Department broad- ened its investigation of possible discrimination against Asian-Amer ican applicants.

In 2006, federal officials began investigating a claim from a stu dent that Princeton mjected him be- cause of his race and national on- gin. The student, 19-year-old Jian Li, initially enrolled at Yale Univer sity and is now at Harvard. Prince- ton says it didn't discriminate against Mr. Li.

Jim Bradshaw, an Education De partment spokesman, said the agency closed its invest坡ation of Mt Li's complaint in January "after reviewing pmliminary data and sta tistics from the university" and in- stead initiated a broader "compli ance review" to determine whether Princeton discriminates against Asian-Americans. Mr. Bradshaw said the review "covers the original complaint" and "in no way implies" that the agency "has made a deter- mination on the merits of the com plaint."

Princeton said the inquiry would focus on the class of 2010, to which Mr. Li had applied. The uni versity disclosed information about the new inquiry late Tuesday and said it welcomed the chance to explain its admissions process to of- ficials.

The inquiry comes as many Asian-Americans families complain that elite universities in the U.S. set ah坡her bar for their children than for other students, effectively set- ting caps on the number of admis sions granted to a high-achieving minority group.

The treatment of Asian-Ameri can applicants勿top universities has a long and bitter history. In 1992, the law school at the Univer sity of California, Berkeley, agreed under federal pressure to drop a poi icy that limited Asian enrollment by comparing Asian applicants against each other rather than the entire applicant pool.

Mr. Li called the expanded in- quiry "great news for those op posed to the use of racial prefer- ences in college admissions" and said he "had hoped from the start that the scope of the complaint would be much wider than my mdi- vidual case."

Mr. Li, who immigrated to the U.S. from China as a 4-year-old, scored the maximum 2,400 on the SAT college admissions test.

Mr. Li's complaint was covered in a 2006 Page One Wall Street Jour- nal article