20 Amazing Stats About Asian American Achievement

For decades now, Asian Americans have been regarded as a "model minority," with high achievement in school and doing well overall, particularly at the top of the curve. But there's much more to the achievement of Asian Americans than that, and we've set out to share some truths about just how well Asian Americans are doing today. We've discovered that although Asian Americans do live up to their reputation, there are disparities, including failures to make it to top positions like CEOs, as well as significant difficulties for certain Asian groups. Read on, and we'll discuss 20 amazing and surprising statistics concerning Asian-American achievement.

1. Asian-Americans are not making it to the Fortune 500

   Asian-Americans are excelling in academics. In fact, they represent 15-25% of Ivy League enrollment. However, Asian-Americans make up less than 2% of Fortune 500 CEOs and corporate officers. It's not clear how exactly this works out, as Asians are more likely to value power and compensation, aspire to top jobs, and speak up for a raise. Asians are simple less likely to get a raise or a promotion, and often, feel stalled professionally with less job satisfaction.

2. Asian-Americans are reaching higher levels of employment, however

   Asian-Americans enjoy good representation in entry-level and middle management positions, but somehow don't make it to the top. Despite not filling out the Fortune 500, Asian-Americans still enjoy high achievement in employment, with 45% of Asian-Americans in management, professional, and related occupations, a figure that is higher than the total population, which comes in at 34%.

3. Nearly all Asian-Americans have at least a high school diploma

   Although certain groups still struggle with educational attainment, overall, Asians are completing high school in large numbers. About 86% of Asians in the U.S. 25 years and older have at least a high school diploma, and 50% of Asian-Americans have at least a bachelor's degree. This is huge compared to the 28% of the total U.S. population with a bachelor's degree.

4. Asian kids just spend more time studying

   In an exploration of Tiger Mother parenting, the New York Daily News discovered that the typically high achievement of Asian-Americans may not be due to harsh parenting, but rather, because they spend more time studying than other kids, and not necessarily because their parents force them to. In one study cited by the article, it was found that Asian-American 11th graders spent six more hours per week studying than white students of the same age. The article points out the extra study time can improve feelings of competence, self worth, and joy from completing a monumental task.

5. Asian-American kids aren't more stressed than their peers

   Although high achievement and hard work are stressed by both parents and students in the Asian-American culture, studies have found that they typically don't experience more stress than other groups. University of California, Irvine, psychology professor Chuansheng Chen studies almost 5,000 11th-grade math students and found that Asian-Americans and white Americans typically reported the same high level of stress. Asian-American students are, however, slightly more academically anxious. Still, Chen concluded that high parental standards and intense studying didn't seem to cause noteworthy psychological stress.

6. Asian-American families simply earn more

   Asian-American families earn $15,600 more than the national median income for all households. But while Asian-Americans are doing well overall, there are larger numbers at the bottom of the scale as well. 10% of Asian-Americans live at the poverty level, and 2.2% of Asian-Americans live on public assistance, compared with 8.2% of Caucasians at the poverty level, and 1.3% of Caucasians on public assistance.

7. Asian-Americans take up a disproportionate share of the nation's most prestigious universities

   At some of the best universities in the United States, Asians are the biggest or one of the largest groups on campus. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the student body is 28% Asian-American, and the University of California at Berkeley is 39% Asian-American.

8. Asians with a bachelor's degree will earn $400K less over their lifetime than Caucasians

   Asian-American men are more likely to ask for a raise, but less likely to actually get one. Even with a bachelor's degree, Asian-Americans will earn less than their Caucasian counterparts. In fact, according to Forbes, it adds up to a lot: $400k less over the course of a lifetime.

9. Asian-American and Pacific Islander students struggle with high school and college completion

   Across the U.S., Asian-American and Pacific Islander students often have trouble completing their degrees, with issues in high school and college completion. In Hmong adolescents, 40% do not complete high school, almost half. In Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander groups, bachelor's degrees are scarce, with only 14% of students achieving this goal, compared to 28% of Americans with a bachelor's degree.

10. Overall, Asian-Americans achieve more college degrees

    Although certain Asian-American groups may struggle with earning degrees, overall, Asian-Americans earn the highest college graduation rate. Asian-Americans have 65% college graduation rates, followed by whites at 59%. Additionally, Asian-Americans are the only racial group that does not have young men falling behind their predecessors in postsecondary attainment.

11. Not every Asian group is doing so well

    Chinese-Americans and South Asians personify the high-achieving Asian stereotype most people have come to know, but there are other Asian-American groups who are struggling to make things work. According to Asian Nation, for every Chinese-American or South Asian with a college degree, there's an equal number of Southeast Asians struggling to adapt to living in the U.S. Specifically, Vietnamese-Americans only have a college degree attainment rate of 20%, and Laotians, Cambodians, and Khmer have a rate less than 10%.

12. Some Asian-American students face severe disadvantages

    Students from Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos come to the U.S. with issues that can impact their education, specifically war-related trauma and educational disruptions prior to immigration. While living in the U.S., many of these students deal with poverty, racism, and even limited access to educational resources, which can clearly put them at a severe disadvantage compared to other ethnic groups and even Asian-American families who have lived in the U.S. for multiple generations.

13. The achievement gap is getting even wider

    The gap between Asian-American students and everyone else is large and growing. Nationwide, Asian-Americans in the upper echelons of standard math exams were scoring 17 points higher than white students, and has widened in recent years according to the Center on Education Policy. Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, remarks that other groups should learn a lesson from Asian-American students, who are "working harder, doing better, and getting ahead."

14. Asian-Americans perform well on math SAT sections, but not as well in reading and writing

    Asian-Americans typically do well on the SATs, and in the math section, Asian-Americans earned 42 more points than the average white student did. However, the same can not be said about the reading and writing section, with Asian-American students scoring seven points lower in writing, and 17 points lower in reading. This is perhaps due to language differences in families who have immigrated recently.

15. Southeast Asian students are sometimes misdiagnosed as learning disabled

    Newly immigrated Southeast Asian students often have limited English proficiency, and as a result, some are misdiagnosed as "learning disabled" and placed in special education. Asian-American and Pacific Islander students are 1.24 times more likely to receive special education and related services than all other racial and ethnic groups combined.

16. Often, Asian students are not prepared for college-level coursework

    Asian-American students may be doing well overall, but often, they're simply not ready for college. In California in particular, students are really struggling. The Education Trust published a study, Overlooked and Underserved: Debunking the Asian 'Model Minority' Myth in California Schools. In this study, researchers found that about 7 out of 10 Asian students and 9 out of 10 Pacific Islander students are not prepared for college-level coursework upon high school graduation. Further, less than 10% of Filipinos, Cambodians, Laotians, and Samoans are ready for college math.

17. Asian-Americans have a higher per-capita income

    According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2008, Asian-Americans overall achieve a higher per-capita income than all other groups. Asian-Americans had per-capita incomes of $30,292, compared with whites, who had a per-capita income of $28,502, and blacks with a per-capita income of $18,406. This is likely due to the fact that Asian-Americans are well represented in management positions.

18. Western moms have much different ideas about education than Chinese immigrant moms do

    There are certainly quantifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to educational opinions, and that may shed light on why Asian-Americans seem to do so well in school. In one study, most Western mothers (70%) believed that "stressing academic success is not good for children" and that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun." Chinese mothers feel completely different, with 0% of the Chinese moms responding positively to these statements. Rather, they believe that their children should be the best students, and that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting."

19. Chinese kids spend more time studying than playing sports

    Each day, Chinese parents spend about 10 times longer per day teaching and pushing children to engage in academic activities than their Western counterparts do. With this extra time, Western kids seem to spend it playing sports instead of studying.

20. Asian-American students are achieving at high-poverty schools

    Overall, Asian-American students are doing well and living up to their status as the "model minority." Interestingly, 30% of Asian-American and Pacific Islander students attend high-poverty schools, meaning that they're not just doing well, they're doing well at schools that are chronically underfunded and lacking in resources that other schools may have to offer.

Taken From Online College