The Truth Behind Jewish Quotas in College Admissions
Today the University of Southern California is a diverse, elitist institution. However, decades ago, student body diversity was incredibly lacking. In fact, there were even quotas in place as to how many Jewish students could be admitted to the school.
As of 2023, USC’s student population encompasses nearly twenty-five hundred Jews. Not to mention one third of the faculty has Jewish heritage. On campus, Jewish students can connect with the Jewish Trojan Family through Chabad, Hillel, and a multitude of Jewish studies courses. Though opportunities for Jewish engagement are widespread today, that was not always the case.
Many do not know that before World War II, the school had a quota system for how many Jewish admits were allowed each academic year.
USC is not the only private institution to put such discriminatory policies into place. Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Upenn, and Yale also had rigid policies barring Jewish students from entry.
According to a 2022 article in the LA Times, “ Stanford intentionally limited Jewish student admissions in the 1950s is old news. This was, unfortunately, a common practice among all the elite private universities in the Los Angeles area, including USC and Caltech.”
Many intelligent and competent Jewish students were denied access to higher education and had their pre-professional aspirations of higher education thwarted.
Due to anti-semitic sentiment, Jews struggled to acquire jobs that required college degrees and were left to fend for themselves.
Consequently, many Jewish people were unable to attain high-paying jobs. They succumbed to working low-wage or service industry jobs that did not require higher education. Subsequently, Jewish people in the workforce often struggled to earn an adequate living for their families. Without access to well-paying jobs, Jewish communities trailed behind others in terms of economic progress and social mobility. Anti-semitism is not simply face-to-face discrimination, it is also covert and revealed through the lack of job and education opportunities.
Despite widespread discrimination in the 50s many today are unaware of the existence of Jewish Quotas. As a Jewish student at USC in my junior year, I had no knowledge of the discriminatory policies that once policed my people’s entry. Only this past semester in my world religion class was uninformed that decades ago, I most likely would not have been allowed to study at my current university. Despite my rigorous academic record, a myriad of extracurricular involvements, and passion for giving back to the community – my faith would have superseded all of my achievements.
While I am a proud Trojan, the fact that USC hides this information from its students is baffling to me. If one were to google “Jewish Quota at USC”, barely any results show up. The institution’s problematic past has been scrubbed from the internet. There isn’t much information available on the policy because it was discontinued more than eighty years ago. Plus, it seems the administration has worked to cover its prejudiced past. It is crucial for colleges to acknowledge and talk about old policies – the good and the bad- in order to ensure openness and accountability in the school’s treatment of minority populations.
