November 28, 2007

Report Calls U. of California 'The Immigrant University'

About 54 percent of students in the University of California system — and about 63 percent of those at its prestigious Berkeley campus — have at least one parent who is an immigrant, according to a report released this month.

The report, by researchers at the Berkeley campus’s Center for Studies in Higher Education, is based on a 2006 survey of the University of California system’s undergraduates. Because only 38 percent of students responded, its numbers are not exact, even though the researchers involved regard them as close.

The report says “the startling number and range” of student backgrounds revealed through its survey “points to the need for an expanded notion of diversity beyond older racial and ethnic paradigms.”

Among its key findings, the report says that just 54 percent of undergraduates in the university system said that English was their sole first language.

At the Berkeley campus, 28 percent of undergraduates immigrated to the United States, and 72 percent of undergraduates have at least one immigrant grandparent. Throughout the university system, 95 percent of Asian-American students, 88 percent of Hispanic students, and 40 percent of white students reported that they or at least one parent or grandparent came from outside the United States.

The report says that first- or second-generation immigrant students tend to gravitate toward fields such as engineering and the sciences, and to be focused heavily on careers and professional prestige. Although some come from low-income backgrounds, most are more likely than other immigrants to come from families that are well educated. —Peter Schmidt

Comments

1. The Jewish mother has been replaced by the Asian mother.

   — marci    Nov 28, 11:32 AM    #

2. A 38% response rate across 10 campuses and the researchers have the audacity to even publish this study? If we need an example of why education research is so poorly regarded, this report is it.

   — doug    Nov 28, 12:37 PM    #

3. 38% frankly sounds like a rather high response rate for a quanitative survey.

   — Andrew    Nov 28, 03:14 PM    #

4. I would think that the study should be replicated for a larger sample of the student body (51%), except we are told that sampling procedures have produced a certain degree of confidence and in any terms, the conclusions can only be limited to UC.

   — Sylvan    Nov 28, 03:25 PM    #

5. Regard the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph: what minority is absent? What could this absence indicate?

   — richard    Nov 28, 03:51 PM    #

6. I wonder what the percentage of immigrant parents and grandparents would have been if the poll had been taken in 1950 or ’60, say.

   — Mark    Nov 28, 03:52 PM    #

7. We should not care that much about the response rate but rather if the responders were reflective of the population surveyed. If you get a 50% response rate and then learn only males responded you still have a problem, unless you restrict your comments to males only.

   — richard    Nov 28, 03:55 PM    #

8. Richard, It indicates to me that most African American students at UC are themselves born in the U.S. and that both their parents were born here. The fact that African Americans may be underrepresented at UC is a separate issue, I think.

   — Rob    Nov 28, 04:22 PM    #

9. Whatever hapened to the kids whose both parents were born here?

   Of course there aren’t too many that have two parents AND were born here. What is this country becoming?

   — STP    Nov 29, 12:39 AM    #

10. One thing this data might tells us is that for all the caterwauling about “diversity,” the UC student body is much more richly varied than would be apparent by a superficial look at racial breakdowns.

    — J. Ward    Nov 29, 12:50 AM    #

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