Chinese American: Model Minority?

Discrediting the "Model Minority" Stereotype
Study finds that while Chinese American adults are twice as likely as U.S.average to hold college degrees, Chinese Americans graduate from high schoolat lower rate than other youth.

November 13, 2008

Discrediting the "Model Minority" Stereotype

Chinese Americans are not as homogeneous as they are sometimes portrayed ?br> this is particularly apparent in their college-going rates and enrollmentpatterns
?according to a new study from the Asian American Studies Programat University of Maryland at College Park and the Organization of ChineseAmericans.

"Some of the popular beliefs about Chinese Americans simply don't withstandour findings, as you might expect with most stereotypes," Larry H.Shinegawa, director of the Asian American Studies Program at Maryland andco-author of the study, said in a press release.More than half ?51.7 percent ?of Chinese Americans 25 or older have earnedsome sort of college degree. This is, proportionally, nearly twice as muchas the rest of the U.S. population, 27 percent of whom have a collegedegree. In contrast, 18.5 percent of Chinese Americans have not graduatedfrom high school, compared to 15.9 percent of the general population. AmongAsian Americans, they have the second highest proportion of individualswithout 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. Hechalks some of these figures up to generational differences among ChineseAmericans. Newer immigrants to the United States, he noted, contributegreatly to the number of individuals without high school diplomas. Moreover,he said, as immigrant families reunite, those who are more recent immigrantsmay not have the educational attainment of their relatives who immigratedearlier.Shinegawa said he expects the number of Chinese Americans with a collegedegree to decline in the future, considering the high percentage of thosewithout a high school diploma currently. Additionally, he said the collegegraduation rates for those beyond the first generation will also probablyfall as the percentages regress toward the mean of the rest of the U.S.population.

The study also finds that Chinese Americans cluster at a small number ofcolleges and universities in the United States.
Shinegawa said about 85percent of all Chinese Americans attend only three percent of all the highereducation institutions in the United States. While data are not availablenow on the specific institutions Chinese Americans are most likely to attend?Maryland's Asian Studies Program plans to release a follow-up study onthis phenomenon next year ?Shinegawa said a map pinpointing theseinstitutions would have institutions almost entirely marked along thecoasts, with a few scattered throughout the rest of the country.He added that ?contributing to this phenomenon ?the children ofworking-class parents tend to attend public institutions near their homes,while children of middle-class parents tend to attend more prestigiousinstitutions that might not necessarily be near their homes.Socioeconomic status further diversifies the quality of educationalattainment. Working-class and middle-class Chinese Americans, the studyfinds, not only live in different places but send their children todifferent types of postsecondary institutions, if they do at all.Working-class Chinese Americans typically live in "ethnic enclaves" in urbanareas and are more likely to send their children to "lower-tier publiccolleges and universities." By contrast, middle-class Chinese Americans livein "suburbs and ethnoburbs" ?suburban areas with a high concentration of acertain ethnic minority ?and are more likely to send their children to"top-tier public universities and select Ivy League institutions."Lin said when looking at more prestigious institutions, first-generationChinese American are overrepresented and those within U.S.-born generationstend to be either slightly underrepresented or proportionally represented.This, he said, is probably because of "selective migration" ?the notionthat many first-generation immigrants, who have the means to immigrate, arelikely to achieve greater educational success.After Chinese Americans graduate from college, the study finds that theyearn less than non-Hispanic whites in every group of educational attainment?those who did not graduate from high school, high school graduates, thosewith some college, college graduates and advanced-degree graduates. Forexample, Chinese Americans with bachelors degrees have an average income of$55,571, while non-Hispanic Whites with the same credentials earn $62,285.The average income for those with a bachelors degree in the generalpopulation is $59,344.Additionally, Lin noted overall disparities and inequities exist for ChineseAmerican faculty members in higher education. He said Chinese Americans areoverrepresented in entry-level and pre-tenure positions ?especially whenconsidering the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics?but underrepresented in tenured and administrative positions. He said thelack of Chinese American leaders and mentors in the professional world islikely to blame for the both the ethnic group's lower average income thannon-Hispanic whites and underrepresentation in upper-level positions inhigher education?David Moltz