To the Nth Degree
Growing up as a Chinese-American in a Boston suburb fifty years ago, I remember that there was one other Chinese family in town, and people always got our families’ identities mixed up. Then when a third Chinese family moved in, there were murmurs of an “Asian invasion”.
Over the ensuing fifty years, how the mosaic of America has changed! Between 1975 and 2000, the Hispanic immigrant population in the U.S. nearly doubled, and white Americans became a plurality instead of a majority. Subsequently, the number of Asians in the U.S. doubled between 2000 and the present, growing from 11 million to 22 million. The Pew Research Center projects that Asian immigration will spur yet another doubling of the Asian population between now and 2050, meaning that Asians will surpass Hispanics as the largest immigrant group in the U.S.
What will be the implications of this dramatic demographic shift for the next generation of Asian-Americans as they strategize their educational paths and career choices? And for the Higher Ed institutions that are one of the pillars on which Asian careers are built?
Before we fantasize about the future, let’s ground ourselves in the present situation. As U.S. colleges and universities turn the calendar page to a fifth consecutive COVID-impacted semester, its leaders are pre-occupied with on-going health protection for students, faculty and staff, and the mental well-being of the entire campus community. Enrollment numbers, already under pressure from a decreasing applicant pool, are being further eroded by an exodus of students who have decided that a COVID-suppressed college experience isn’t worth the cost of attendance, or that the value of a college education isn’t worth the investment at any rate. In this Winter 2022 term, there will be one million fewer students attending U.S. colleges and universities than in 2019.
To the surprise of very few, Asians represent the smallest portion of this current enrollment decline. The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC) reported in October that the percent of Asian student decline in 2021 was only 2.2%, well below the level of white students (-5.1%) and black students (-4.9%). Similarly, for the freshman class entering in 2021, Asian student enrollment was down 1.8%, a stark comparison to the dropoff for white freshmen (-8.6%) and black freshmen (-7.5%). The reasons for these differences are economic and cultural. First, the average median income for an Asian household is $85,800, compared to the U.S. all-household average of $61,800; meaning that Asians are better able to absorb the ever-rising cost of a college degree. Second, the cultural importance of degree attainment has always been much higher for Asians than other ethnicities, making them more likely to endure the disruptions of remote learning, the absence of on-campus clubs and activities, and the shifting tides of public health mandates. For most Asians, the ideal Higher Ed experience was never about being transformational as much as it was transactional.
A more insightful view of the Asian academic phenomenon can be informed by American history, beginning with the anti-Asian sentiment that resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The law was passed by Congress primarily as a policy to suppress West Coast immigration in response to a public outcry for “racial purity” and secondarily as a means of protecting jobs and wage levels that were threatened by immigrant Chinese laborers who were willing to work for less money than white laborers. The Chinese Exclusion Act was targeted at the working class, and made exceptions for educated immigrants such as merchants, teachers and students. The unintended consequence of this exception is that it heightened the value of education in the eyes of the Chinese and other Asians; from 1882 to the time when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed after World War II, generations of Asians were conditioned to believe that being more educated was necessary to come to America, to stay in America, and to be successful in America. Call it hugely ironic that a federal law based on racial suppression would be the seminal reason why Asians are overrepresented in every elite college and university in the U.S. today. Based on the last decennial census (2017) Asians make up 5.1% of America’s K-12 students, and predictably they represent 8.6% of U.S. college students. However, the student bodies of the most highly selective colleges and universities are full of hyper-qualified Asians, most notably at Harvard (21%), Stanford (25%), Princeton (29%) and Cal Tech (44%).
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You may be wondering about the reasons behind the Asian fascination (or fixation) on applying to and attending only the most selective schools. Part of the reason is certainly brand recognition, and part is family expectation. A story told countless times is about Asian immigrants who never attended college, but always pepper their children (or grandchildren) about their plans to become a doctor from “Habaad”, “Purinsiton”, or “Stamfud”. This is especially true for international students, whose parents’ push them to apply only to schools that are top-ranked in U.S. News and World Report.
The 2014 lawsuit filed (and ultimately lost in U.S. District Court) by the organization Students For Fair Admission against Harvard University claimed that Asian-American applicants with perfect test scores and 4.0+ GPAs were being held to a higher standard for admission than non-Asian applicants. The public perception of this lawsuit was that, were college admissions to be based purely on SATs and GPAs there would be a much larger percent of Asian students enrolled at the nation’s top schools. Exploring this argument, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce conducted a study on what the actual result would be from an admissions process based strictly on academic merit; the study concluded that the impact would be nominal, perhaps 1% – 2% more Asian enrollment at top schools. Whether this is accurate or not, we can feel nothing but sympathy for the unfortunate Harvard applicants who have to suffer the indignity and shame of spending their next four years at Yale or Penn. There is an unofficial pecking order below the most selective schools; for example, my son just graduated from Case Western Reserve, a fine school that is 16% Asian and arguably the top university in the state of Ohio. The student body at Case describes it as “the place where all the Ivy League rejects go.”
How much do Asians love their academic degrees? According to the 2019 American Community Survey, 54% of Asians over the age of 25 hold at least a bachelor’s degree, compared to just 33% of Americans overall. Bucking the trend of declining undergraduate enrollment, the number of students pursuing graduate degrees in the U.S. actually increased in the last two years, driven by (you guessed it) Asian internationals. For Naomi, a 26-year-old Taiwanese who earned her undergraduate degree from University of Washington and her Masters degree from the University of Michigan, her plan to study in the U.S. began when she was very young. “My parents sent me to a bilingual kindergarten, as English has always been an important part of my education. When I was 12, I went to a summer program at Oxford to get a feel for what study abroad would be like”. It is typical for students who are planning to study abroad to go to “cram school” and other programs that prepare them for the SAT and TOEFL (English language proficiency) exams and for the years of academic rigor to follow.
Naomi’s decision process for choosing schools and majors was very career-driven; she chose UWashington because it enabled her to pursue a double major (psychology and business) that would be a foundation for her graduate work in data science. Working in industry for two years before she went to grad school provided her with valuable insights about the relationship between education and career paths. “That was when I realized the power of data in the business world, and how valuable data-driven decision making is in nearly all industries. Since I already had a background in business, I decided to go with a more analytical degree to strengthen my technical skills.”
American-born Asians feel similar pressure from parents who subscribe to the “do more, get-ahead” philosophy. Lindsey, a senior at Northeastern University, recalls pushing back on her mother’s suggestion that she attend an after-school program at the Russian School of Mathematics when she was in 8th grade. “I asked my mom why I needed to go to extra school, and she said ‘so you can get into the best college’. And I said “well, what if I don’t want to go to college? The look I got, that was the last time I ever brought that up,” Lindsey said laughing.
Lexington High School is one of the top public schools in Massachusetts, 42% of its students are Asian, 41% are white. “Families come to Lexington for the schools, and after their kids graduate from high school they often move out,” said Lindsey. This is more typical of wealthy immigrant families, less so if both parents are born in the U.S.
Similar to Naomi, Lindsey is extracting the maximum value from her academic experience. She entered Northeastern planning to be a history major, took a coding course her freshman year, and ultimately will earn a double major in history and computer science. “I loved history in high school, but when I got to college I couldn’t think of a practical use for it that I wanted rather than software engineering.” She did three co-ops with tech firms in the Boston area, and after she graduates this spring she will start a job as a software engineer in NYC with one of her co-op employers.
Through these examples you can see the three main elements that contribute to strong academic achievement among Asians: (1) parental investment in a child’s education at any early age, (2) a strong appetite for learning across different disciplines, and (3) a clinical strategy for determining how academic degrees will produce career opportunities. These elements are certainly not unique to Asian students and families, but other races and ethnicities do not appear to execute them in such a methodical and prolific manner.
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It appears that the pandemic is going to negatively impact another yearly cycle of SAT/ACT testing, and will lead the 76% of schools that instituted a test-score-optional policy to assess the incoming Class of 2025 to extend that practice for at least another year. The record level of applications at highly-ranked colleges and universities was driven by applicants from economically-disadvantaged communities who saw this as an opportunity to gain entrance to a school that ordinarily would have been out of their reach. For Asian-Americans and international Asian students, the move to test-optional is seen as a mixed blessing. “Anyone who has excellent test scores would obviously include them in their application,” says Tori Guen, a former Admissions officer at Colby College and Brown University, and currently Dean of Students at a private secondary school in New York City. “But in a test-blind admissions process this might not carry the weight it once did. Due to the model minority myth that says Asians are good at tests, it’s almost expected that Asian applicants will submit strong scores, strong GPAs and even demonstrate excellence in classical instruments. These hard-fought achievements aren’t as respected in the process because they align with harmful stereotypes that consider Asians cool and competent and nothing more.” For Asian applicants, aspects of their application that highlight their relationships (such as letters of recommendation or activities that are non-traditional), as well as humor or creativity in essays, can make an applicant compelling to admission officers who have some of these unconscious biases. Furthermore, students who indicate an interest in uncommon majors can distinguish themselves in highly selective admissions processes.
If the Pew Research is even close to accurate, an increase of 20 million Asians in the U.S. is sure to have a seismic impact on Higher Education, on American and global industry, on the fabric of American society and its political systems. For the benefit of the LinkedIn member audience, here are the potential implication on jobs and industry, and where Asians are more likely to focus their careers:
- Medicine. To the dismay of millions of Asian parents, not everyone of their kids is going to become a doctor. Today, over 20% of physicians in the U.S. are Asian, and even though the number of medical school graduates has increased by a total of 10% in the past five years, the Association of American Medical Colleges is predicting a physician shortage of between 50,000 to 130,000 around the year 2033. The reason: a finite number of hospital residencies and training centers that are essential for medical school graduates to get their medical license. Even with this logjam, Asians appear to be less keen on becoming physician assistants (10% of the U.S. total) or nurse practitioners (4%), perhaps because of the reduced prestige (think about parental bragging rights).
- If the new generation of Asians should remain strong in math and problem-solving (a solid bet), they will continue to be a pillar of the tech industry. Asians will excel in software development, computer science and engineering, and robotics. IT systems support for corporations will provide ample career opportunities, as demonstrated by the armies of developers and coders (largely Asian) involved in the migration to cloud-based computing. More Asian entrepreneurs are getting involved in tech start-ups, creating new products and applications and flipping the companies to larger tech firms. Maybe Asian parents of the future will start crowing about “My daughter the technology czar”.
- Information and Research. Data science is the fastest growing specialty under the information technology umbrella, and looks to be an area where women are experiencing career success at a comparable rate to their male counterparts. Look for Asian women to reach senior leadership positions in all research domains over the next 20 years, including life sciences, product development, customer experience, and social sciences.
- Public sector. The projected increase of over 20 million Asians means that the political landscape will inevitably change, much like it did when the Hispanic population in the U.S. grew in the 1990s. As we saw then, not all Hispanics held the same values and beliefs, and the same will be true of the next generation of Asians. Still, with most state and federal elections being won by a margin of 1-2 percentage points, having an Asian population grow from 6% to 12% means that there will be a courting of the Asian vote that is likely to result in a different level of inclusion that has been experienced by black and brown communities (for economic reasons). Asians have historically shown little interest in holding public office or working in government in general; yet with the opportunity for a true “seat at the table” this may be the time for Asians to invest their time and talents in community-building roles.
- The Arts. Asians are poised to breakout from stereotypical artistic pursuits (i.e., classical music), and to participate more fully in mainstream expression; the next generation of Asians will include writers, painters, photographers, architects, and filmmakers who will be informed by their cultural pasts and their current sensibilities. The recently released Marvel action movie (The Legend of Shang-Chi) starring Asian heroic characters was seen by many as a watershed moment for the authentic blending of eastern and western values. The entire art world stands to benefit from the multi-cultural inspiration that will evolve; not only from the work of Asian artists but from all artists whose social commentary will be shaped by the changing face of America.
The road to success in all the industries cited above would appear to run right through a campus quad, including schools that up to now have not been the target for Asian applicants. Admissions and marketing leaders at these schools will benefit from acquiring a thorough understanding of the functional, social and psychological needs of this upcoming generation of Asian students, as the rewards for first-movers institutions can be significant. For all the anxiety that Higher Ed institutions are experiencing at the moment with declining enrollment, it is easy to foresee that the Asian appetite for academic achievement is going to escalate to the Nth degree.
Tim Guen is President of CareerMap and blogs frequently about the challenges of career building during the pandemic.