In May, during Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) Heritage Month, the U.S. Department of Education took the much needed step of formally recognizing institutions serving a critical mass of AAPI students. Alongside other institutions serving students of color and low-income populations, Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs) are now eligible to receive federal resources for institutional capacity building and to ensure postsecondary access and degree attainment for a diverse student population.
In conjunction with the Office of Civil Rights and with support from the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, as well as countless community and advocacy organizations such as the Asian & Pacific Islander American Scholarship Fund, the Education Department has sent a much-anticipated signal to the education community; one that celebrates emerging minority-serving institutions (MSIs) for a quickly changing American demographic.
Next to the Hispanic population, the AAPI population is our fastest growing. And like many in the Hispanic community, a growing number of AAPI students have a strong inclination toward pursuing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers, particularly in the health sciences.
According to a recent report by the National Commission on Asian American and Pacific Islander Research in Education, more than 15 percent of the Chinese, Sri Lankan, Malaysian, Filipino and Asian Indian populations are employed in health and STEM occupations.
While this trend is cause for celebration at a time when the nation needs more STEM workers, not all AAPI students are excelling academically or receiving the same opportunity to enter STEM fields—a notion that is still foreign to many educators and policymakers who continue to view AAPI students as unaffected by social, economic and academic barriers.
Even the most culturally sensitive educators can easily fall into the proverbial trap of viewing all AAPI students as high-achieving despite long-standing attempts by advocates to break down the so-called “model minority myth” that all AAPI students are high achievers and thus without the need for academic and social support or research and policy attention.
This myth is in part perpetuated by national statistics that fail to account for the numerous sub-populations that lie within the overarching AAPI racial category. According to U.S. Census data, the AAPI population includes 48 different ethnic groups speaking more than 300 languages; and yet, our most widely used national source of higher education data, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, places all AAPI ethnicities into one “Asian or Pacific Islander” category (much like how the “Hispanic Origin” designation accounts for all Latino subpopulations).
