Artist Susan Chen
“There is out in public discourse this idea that our Asian American community is doing well when it comes to higher education attainment,” said Audrey Dow, senior vice president at the Campaign for College Opportunity. “Even more than that, we also have this belief that so many of our Asian American students are in the top universities in the state. But when you look at the data, that story just doesn’t play out. That is why it was also really important for us to tease out the diversity within the AANHPI community.”
California is home to the largest Asian American population in the country and the second largest Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) community. Californians who identify as Asian American and NHPI have backgrounds from more than 48 ethnicities, noted the report. Yet the AANHPI community can often be lumped together, making subgroups invisible.
Dow pointed out that 59% of Asian Americans between the ages of 25 to 64, not including NHPI Californians, have a bachelor’s degree or higher, according to the report. Within that same age range, however, only 22% of NHPI Californians have a bachelor’s degree, which is one of the lowest rates among all racial or ethnic groups in the state.
The report additionally stated that the majority of AANHPI students in California attend one of the 116 California Community Colleges (CCC’s). But in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, AANHPI enrollment at CCC’s dropped by 20%. There have also been transfer and completion problems.
Only 28% of Asian American community college students in California transfer to a four-year university after six years, and only 15% earn a degree or certificate. For NHPI students, those numbers are even lower. Just 22% of NHPI students transfer and only 11% earn a degree or certificate in six years. Among Samoan students alone, a stark 7% of those who enroll in a California community college graduate in six years.
“Unfortunately, the data that treats AAPIs as an aggregate group is concealing the unique challenges by subgroups,” said Dr. Robert Teranishi, professor of education and the Morgan and Helen Chu Endowed Chair in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who used the term AAPI to refer to Asian American Pacific Islanders. “There are significant disparities in college preparation, degree attainment, even issues of access and utilization of services by different AAPI subgroups. We have a big interest in issues of equity, access, and inclusion, but we’re approaching that on the level of broad racial categories that hide what is happening.”
