Asian Americans In Higher Education

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Despite the fact Asian Americans have been in the United States Higher Education system for decades, there is still a struggle to research and understand this student populationp (Museus & Chang, 2009). Asian American populations are people whose origins are from the Far East, Southeast Asia and Indian subcontinent. The Asian American label also includes Pacific Islanders, meaning people having origins in Hawaii, Guam, and the pacific islands. It’s very important to keep in this label encompasses vastly different ethnicities, cultures and language groups. So general trends that are covered in this review may and will not apply to all groups or people who are may identify as Asian American (2014, NO AUTHOR, Asian Americans in Higher Education: …show more content…

However the three biggest waves of immigration into the U.S. came from China, Japan, and the Philippines to work physical laborers for gold mines, railroads, farming etc. mainly in Hawaii and California (Hirschman & Wong, 1986).
The Chinese were the first immigrate to the West, starting in the 1850's to work in California’s gold mines and railroads. Limitations on immigration began in 1882, with the Chinese Exclusion Act, which became a permanent feature in U.S. Immigration policy in 1904 severally limiting who can enter except students, travelers, merchants and a few others. This was Act was repealed in 1943 (Hirschman & Wong, 1986).
The second wave of immigration came from Japan wave between 1890's to 1910's, also as physical laborers. In 1908 the Gentleman's agreement was placed, banning immigration except for brides and family of immigrants already in the country. Then the immigration act of 1924 banned all Japanese immigration (Hirschman & Wong, 1986). In the 1940’s Japanese suffered wartime internment camps (2014, NO AUTHOR, Asian Americans in Higher Education: Charting New …show more content…

However Hirschman and Wong (1986) did a study that showed native-born Asian Americans born between 1905-1944 in California, Hawaii and elsewhere, attended college in rates equal or greater than white students did and tended to have more years of schooling as well. The percent of Asian Americans who attended higher education continued to climb, although it also depended on location. Such as Japanese Americans, born in California between 1935 to 1944, college attendance from 44% to 75% (Hirschman & Wong, 1896). Hirschman and Wong (1986) note, while other educational were less in other areas, Asian Americans still had higher educational attainment than whites. Asian Americans continued to have and still have higher rates of educational attainment than any other group (Hirschman and Wong, 1986; Aud, Fox & KewalRamani,

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