When it's mostly a minority

By: Colleen Watson and David Zugnoni

Posted: 5/5/08

For at least the last 10 years, no racial group has claimed the ethnic majority of students enrolled at San Jose State University, according to a Spartan Daily analysis of enrollment data provided by the Office of Institution Research.

And every semester since Fall 1999, the Asian student population has surpassed the white population.

This semester, Asians make up 30 percent of the campus population, followed by whites at 28.3, Hispanics at 15.9 and blacks at 4.9.

"Most of the people come from different places," said Jerry Yu, a junior electrical engineering major. "It's nice to see different faces here. Imagine if the campus was just one group of people. I would not have moved here."

Kanan Gujarathi, a graduate computer engineering major, said, "You can find many people here from all over. It's a mixed culture, and you don't feel inferior here."

While most ethnicities are scattered throughout the different colleges, both the College of Business and the College of Engineering have a larger proportion of Asian students compared to their 30 percent representation on campus.

Forty-one percent of the College of Business is made up of Asian students, while 55 percent of engineering majors are Asian.

More than 30 percent of engineering majors are Indian, while they only make up 8 percent of the total campus population, and whites make up 15 percent of engineering majors, according to the analysis.

Yu, 23, who moved to San Jose from China, said, "I'm not sure, but I think Americans are not so good at math or physics. In India and China, I think they need a lot of people in (engineering). So many students want to learn that so they can get a better job when they graduate and go back to their country."

Kaushik Brajapati, a graduate computer engineering major, said that he didn't know the exact reason why so many of the engineering students were Indian, but said he had an idea of why it is so.

"It's fairly cheaper than other universities, and you get better courses as well - and pretty good faculty."

Stephen Bringuel, a freshman electrical engineering major, said his engineering courses have mostly Indian and white students, but that the demographics don't matter to the particular subject.

"It's not like we're talking about political issues," Bringuel, 19, said about his engineering courses. "It's just science."

However, Tamer Abuelata, a senior philosophy major, said the diversity at SJSU benefits debate in politically involved courses.

"If you're taking a political science class, and you learn about making political decisions, it's good to know how it's going to affect different classes of society," said Abuelata, 25. "It helps you consider the consequences of your decisions. Sometimes, we seem to have simplistic ideas, and they seem to work for us, but they don't necessarily work for other people. So, when there's diversity, you notice a lot of the ideas that don't work for everybody."

Lauren Edwards, a senior political science major, said the Israeli-Palenstinian conflict has been an issue of discussion in her War and Peace class.

"We spend a lot of time talking about Israel and Palestine, and we have people from Israel and Palestine in the class," Edwards said. "It's really nice because they grew up there, and they have firsthand knowledge about what it's like."