ABSTRACT

Asian Americans have advantages across numerous indicators for educational attainment and upward mobility. While researchers acknowledge the contribution of positive selective migration in Asian Americans’ academic success, the relationship of selective migration with academic culture has not been clearly studied. Using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study and the Barro-Lee dataset, this study shows that Asian parents’ relative attainment (i.e. the high relative educational attainment of parents compared to their non-immigrant counterparts in sending countries) predicts their children’s advantage in college enrolment over whites. More importantly, a considerable portion of the advantage in college enrolment from parents’ relative attainment operates through youths’ academic culture (i.e. parental educational expectations and youths’ effort, school behaviours, and attitudes). Relative attainment explains the advantage in college enrolment over whites only for the 1.5-generation rather than second-generation Asian Americans. This suggests that change in Asian Americans’ academic outcomes across generations appears to be driven by different factors for each generation rather than by gradual declines in the levels of the same factors across generations.

摘要

亚裔美国人在众多的教育程度和向上流动性指标上都具有优势。尽管研究人员承认积极的选择性移徙对亚裔美国人的学术成就做出了贡献，但尚未明确研究选择性移徙与学术文化的关系。使用来自国家教育纵向研究和Barro-Lee数据集的数据，该研究表明，亚洲父母的相对学历（即，与派遣国的非移民同龄人相比，父母的相对学历较高）可以预测他们的孩子在大学中的优势白人入学。更重要的是，父母的相对学历优势使大学入学的很大一部分通过青年的学术文化（即 父母的教育期望和年轻人的努力，学校行为和态度）。相对成绩说明，只有1.5代而非第二代亚裔美国人在大学入学方面比白人更具优势。这表明，跨代亚裔美国人学业成绩的变化似乎是由各代人的不同因素所驱动，而不是由同一代人中相同因素的水平逐渐下降所驱动。