"THIS is an awkward question, but here goes: Why are Asian-Americans so successful in America?
It’s no secret that Asian-Americans are disproportionately stars in American schools, and even in American society as a whole. Census data show that Americans of Asian heritage earn more than other groups, including whites. Asian-Americans also have higher educational attainment than any other group.
I wrote a series of columns last year, “When Whites Just Don’t Get It,” about racial inequity, and one of the most common responses from angry whites was along these lines: This stuff about white privilege is nonsense, and if blacks lag, the reason lies in the black community itself. Just look at Asian-Americans. Those Koreans and Chinese make it in America because they work hard. All people can succeed here if they just stop whining and start working."
Funny…on the “hard work/naturally smart” spectrum, I probably fall toward the camp that A’s go to hard workers…especially through high school. Yet at high levels of education I often think “you can’t teach smart”. I wonder how others feel.
Regarding Asian Americans, consider the effect of immigration selection.
China is not a highly educated country. About 6% of people age 25-29 have bachelors degrees, which is much lower than in the US at 34%. But 50% of Chinese immigrants to the US have bachelors degrees, as a result of entry through PhD student visa and the like. So Chinese Americans are a highly selected subset of all Chinese ethnicity people. However you see nature versus nurture, the next generation with high education parents will be advantaged in both.
Indian immigrants are even more highly educated, with 70% having bachelors degrees. However, Filipino and Vietnamese immigrants are much closer to the US non immigrant average.
Note the reverse for Mexican immigrants to the US, 4% of whom have bachelors degrees, compared to 22% of Mexicans.
The supposed cultural attitudes toward education may very well be more related to high parent education than to ethnicity associated aspects.
When children of parents without degrees have friends from their own ethnicity who are educated and successful, it’s often an incentive to strive for the same. So both families and the social circles they move in influence the desire to get educated.
I have said this before in other similar discussions on CC.
I am a white American married to an Indian. Yes he is an engineer. I am a lawyer.
I see very drastic differences in the approach to education and child rearing that are entirely cultural.
(Type A) One side is push, push, push. And the concern is about high income potential careers and the paths that will lead to them. This is how my husband was raised. It is why he was able to come out of a lower middle class family, go to graduate school in the US and work in some of the largest tech multinationals in the world.
(Type B) The other side is a bit more relaxed, open to the child following his/her dreams, figuring out passions, etc. This is how I was raised. It may be why I still haven’t figured out what do to with my life…and will be paying off my educational debt for forever!
You are going to see very different outcomes for kids from a family where both parents are Type A than from a family where both parents are Type B. And, I guess, a different outcome for kids who come out of an A/B family, too!
You cannot discount the immigrant experience from the educational achievement of the kids of those immigrants for first and maybe second generations.
However, that is a result of the immigration selection of highly educated people of that ethnicity, not anything necessarily inherent in that ethnicity’s cultural attitude toward education.
However, the common assumption that it is all based on ethnic cultural attitudes is also not proven. Indeed, the low educational attainment in China is a strong hint that the emphasis on education among Chinese people whom Americans see may be more due to selection bias (i.e. viewing Chinese immigrants selected for high education, rather than a representative sample of Chinese in China) than anything inherent in Chinese cultural attitudes toward education.
Another spin of this statement is that this could be a more politically correct way to explain it, as compared to some alternative way to explain it.
However, explaining this in this way has an “ugly” part: In the past two decades or so, much more such immigrants came to the US but the percentage of students who have been admitted to certain schools stay relatively a constant. Keeping explaining it in this way all of a sudden becomes not good anymore – so politically incorrect that it is better to not to go there, otherwise we run the risk of having this thread being shut down quickly.
So, this way of explaining it is not good after all. We should try harder to find an explanation that is acceptable to everybody or at least most people.
The statistic that there is low educational attainment in China does not necessarily translate to cultural non-ubiquity of appreciation for education. The rural folk in China know that education is the key to lift them out of poverty, but rural students get deliberately shut out of the university system because of the discriminatory & morally bankrupt hukou registration system.
I was really struck last year by the roster of NMSFs in our local schools and how they were largely Asian names. These are schools in areas that are predominantly white. In my son’s school, 6 kids made NMSF out of a class of less than 90. 5 out of these 6 were Asian or part Asian. This is a very homogeneous private school with very supportive and high achieving parents of all races, albeit mostly white. The Asian families were of the same relaxed mindset as the white families. There were no tiger moms that I know of.
I had always thought that it was likely the immigrant population that selected for high achievers in this group but find it hard to explain my anecdotal exposure with that.
In DS’s high school graduation class, the top 10 (not 10%) students were asked to enter the stadium first during their graduation ceremony, per their high school’s tradition. 8 out of these 10 students were Asian American students.
Also, for some reason, the white females are often better academically than the white males. For example, the two non-Asian students among the top 10 students in that class year were female.
Usually, when a while male and a white female are equal in their stats, the male one would more likely do better in the college application game – unless it is the tech school.
(However, once these students enter the workforce after college, the situation becomes very different. This shows that what you have learned from school is not all that “useful”. Maybe what could be passed down from parents to the children in the day-to-day family life is more critical than what the teachers or books can teach the students at school.)
Not all bachelors degrees or even HS/middle school diplomas are created equal in terms of minimal educational attainment are created equal…even here in the US. For instance, you have high schools which graduate students well-prepared to tackle graduate level coursework or even PhD programs whereas other high schools graduate students who are functionally illiterate. The friends who teach freshman/remedial courses at local community and directional 4-year colleges deal with the latter type of students on a routine daily basis.
You also have the existence of vocationally-oriented for-profit colleges with admission standards and educational programs that are much more similar to a vocational high school in many foreign countries in Europe and East Asia. In some cases, the latter would have higher admission standards and more academic rigor.
It’s more stark when one compares K-12 or even K-8 between the US and other countries.
For instance, one older fellow alum from my HS recounted how he didn’t start learning anything new in math or science from 5th grade at an ordinary public elementary school in the ROC(Taiwan) until well into his freshman year at our STEM-centered public magnet. He was more shocked at the widely varying levels of writing proficiency among native-born classmates in his public middle school, fellow frosh at beginning of HS, and at his top 30 university which he attended on a complete full ride.
That doesn’t surprise me considering over there, one’s expected to have completed courses we’d consider high school level here such as calculus or bio/chem/physics with lab by the end of middle school if one hoped to fulfill prereqs to take exams for direct entry to academic-track high schools.
This is underscored by the fact my mother was considered a “remedial student” over there back in the '50s because she didn’t take calculus until her sophomore year at a private remedial HS for well-off students who were academic laggards by the standards of their national educational system. A subject her siblings all completed by the end of 8th grade. And they all attended the local public middle school.
They’re not directly shut out of the university system through hukou.
To be much more accurate, they’re shut out of higher education because if they stay in the rural areas the rural schools and resources are such they’re much less likely to pass exams to attain admission to an academic track high school which will provide them the educational preparation and prereq necessary to take the national college entrance exam.
And if they move to another area without getting the Hukou changed, they’re not allowed to attend the public schools there. In some ways, it’s a much more rigid version of practices of some well-off US school districts investigating, kicking out, and sometimes even prosecuting parents of children who they found were lying about their residency status in order to facilitate their kids’ attendance at that district’s public K-12 schools.
The Asian-American experience of today is nit much different than the Jewish-American experience of the 30’s and 40’s. Bot groups were high academic achievers and were discriminated against to varying degrees for admission to elite universities, I believe it is each culture’s value of education and that it is the quickest way to upward mobility that drove this.
Working exceptionally hard is normal cultural value.
My D. and granddaughter happen to have first hand experiences with Asian kids. D’s Med. School class was greatly disproportionately Asian which was obvious from just attending few events there. Granddaughter’s very selective test-in NYC HS is about 78% Asian. This HS accepts strictly based on the test score results, nothing else is considered.
There is no magic or any gimmicks, Asians have to work harder than others to overcome definite ORM status at many places.
So basically a lot of complaining about students that come from homes with good parents. Amazing how that is considered an ‘advantage’ or ‘privilege’ these days.
“Good parents” has different meanings in different cultures.
For example, consider this situation (which is real and involves people I know).
The school district has a selective math/science magnet program, but the regular high schools also provide a high-quality education. The parents force the child to apply to the math/science magnet and then, when the child is admitted, force the child to attend that program even though the child is not interested in math and science. The parents’ rationale is that the education offered at the math/science magnet is the best available in the public schools (which is arguably true).
Is this good parenting or bad parenting? It’s hard to say.
At my kids schools, white male who are immigrants from Eastern European countries or from Isreal were valedictorians. There were female Asian valedictorians too but they are not solely from this group.