Report details student contrast
Southeast Asians are less ready for college
San Gabriel Valley Tribune, 8/6/2007
By Lisa M. Krieger Staff Writer
Asian-American students are often viewed as brainy, affluent and over-achieving. But a new government report concludes that several Asian groups are not well-prepared - either academically or financially - to succeed in college.
Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Indian students typically do well in school, fulfilling the "model minority" stereotype, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office, the research and investigative arm of Congress. Many of their families have saved money for college and do not depend on their children's help at home.
But others - Pacific Islanders and Southeast Asians of Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai and Burmese descent - do not enroll in the rigorous math and reading classes needed to climb the ladder of collegiate success, the report found.
Moreover, Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders who make it to college are more likely to need outside financial support, often living at home and working to help their families, according to the report.
For instance, 68 percent of Chinese college students reported they could afford college without working, compared with only 36 percent of Vietnamese. Almost half of all Vietnamese college students said they helped their families with tutoring, translating, transportation and household chores.
While 42 percent of Korean families saved $20,000 or more for college, only 8 percent of Southeast-Asian families had.
"The report confirms the need to avoid making national generalizations about Asian-American achievements in education and conflating all Asian-American subgroups as if all Asian Americans are homogeneous," said L. Ling-chi Wang, chairman of the ethnic studies department at UC Berkeley. "We need to look at each subgroup separately."
Deborah Reed of the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California concurred.
"Asians and Pacific Islanders tend to have relatively high levels of education and income and relatively low poverty rates," she said.
"(But) when we look at Southeast Asians from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - the refugee-sending countries - we find lower family income, lower education and higher poverty than for other Asian groups in California."
To be sure, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are, on average, better educated than the average American. Almost half have a four-year college degree, compared with one-third of whites, 17percent of African Americans and 12 percent of Latinos.
And the academic strength of even the most disadvantaged groups grows over time, Reed said.
"When we look at the second generation, we see increasing progress."
The study, conducted from July 2006 through July 2007, used data from the U.S. Census Bureau and two large national education databases. Researchers also visited eight colleges with high numbers of Asian students, and conducted discussion groups on these campuses.
Many of the differences were attributed to the number of years that an ethnic group had been in the United States - or whether immigrants had arrived to escape war and persecution or seek high-tech jobs.
The report, released July 27 before the education committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, found wide differences in:
An estimated 68 percent of Asian-Indian and 64 percent of Chinese adults had at least a college degree, compared with 25 percent of Vietnamese, 17 percent of Pacific Islanders and 13 percent of other Indochinese - Cambodians, Laotians and Hmong.
More than 90 percent of Filipino, Indians and Japanese identified themselves as fluent in English. That compares with 70percent of Koreans, 62 percent of Vietnamese and 60 percent of the other Indochinese groups.
About 80 percent of Vietnamese undergraduates reported their parents paid none of their tuition. High numbers of Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders groups lived at home or attended schools within driving distance of home. In contrast, many Chinese, Indian and Korean undergraduates worked to gain job experience or earn spending money.
Simply put, poverty creates barriers to education, whether one is Asian American, Latino or African American, said Paul Fong, a political science professor at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose.
"There's an achievement gap among Filipino Americans, Cambodian Americans and Vietnamese Americans - the haves and have-nots," Fong said.
Staff Writer Kim Vo contributed to this story.
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