Inside Higher Ed
November 13, 2008
Chinese Americans are not as homogeneous as they are sometimes portrayed — this is particularly apparent in their college-going rates and enrollment patterns — according to a new study from the Asian American Studies Program at University of Maryland at College Park and the Organization of Chinese Americans.
“Some of the popular beliefs about Chinese Americans simply don’t withstand our findings, as you might expect with most stereotypes,” Larry H. Shinegawa, director of the Asian American Studies Program at Maryland and co-author of the study, said in a press release.
More than half — 51.7 percent — of Chinese Americans 25 or older have earned some sort of college degree. This is, proportionally, nearly twice as much as the rest of the U.S. population, 27 percent of whom have a college degree. In contrast, 18.5 percent of Chinese Americans have not graduated from high school, compared to 15.9 percent of the general population. Among Asian Americans, they have the second highest proportion of individuals without a high school degree. Only Vietnamese Americans, at 27.8 percent, are less likely to graduate high school.
Shinegawa said there could be any number of reasons for this disparity. He chalks some of these figures up to generational differences among Chinese Americans. Newer immigrants to the United States, he noted, contribute greatly to the number of individuals without high school diplomas. Moreover, he said, as immigrant families reunite, those who are more recent immigrants may not have the educational attainment of their relatives who immigrated earlier. [Full story: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/11/13/chinese]
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