Study Notes College-access Barriers Faced By Asian American Students: Despite the pervasive “model-minority” myth of overachieving Asian Americans easily getting into U.S. colleges and universities, a study at the University of California, Los Angeles has found that more Asian American students are facing problems in accessing higher education opportunities than ever before.
“That myth prevents us from recognizing the issues for large portions of Asian American student populations — that do not fit that myth and in some cases are struggling more than other groups in the country,” says Dr. Michael Chang, the study’s co-author and an associate professor of education at UCLA. The study, “Beyond Myths: The Growth and Diversity of Asian American College Freshmen, 1971-2005,” analyzed the past 35 years and more than 361,000 Asian American, first-time, full-time college students.
Conducted as part of UCLA’s Cooperative Institutional Research Program and administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, it is the largest compilation and analysis of data on Asian American college students ever undertaken.
