Asian-Americans : Emphasis on Education Paying Off

Only through education can a person become a true human being.

--Confucian proverb

At 5:30 on a recent Friday evening, Timothy (Tung) Anh Pham was still bending over his biology notes in a third-floor cubicle of the library at the University of California, Irvine. Under the silent fluorescent tubes, he was oblivious to the students outside who were laughing and straggling off campus toward the promise of a moonlighted autumn night.

Their sort of fun can wait, said Pham, 21, an earnest young Vietnamese student who wants to become a doctor. “A student is like any artist. You have to perform well. I am practicing for a performance,” Pham said, referring to his finals a month away.

He knows that in order to convince medical school officials that he is “well rounded” as well as bright, he must volunteer for research and tutoring while continuing to earn more A’s than B’s. But the volunteer work had put him behind in his study schedule, so he began spending Friday evenings in the library, he said.

125% Increase in 10 Years

Pham’s matter-of-fact discipline and ambition are the sort that educators say accounts for the phenomenal, and seemingly sudden, academic presence of Asian-Americans and immigrant Asians throughout the country.

As the Asian population has mushroomed 125% in the last 10 years, Asian students--despite language and cultural barriers--have been swelling the nation’s gifted student programs, high school honor rolls and the ranks of the most selective colleges and universities in the nation.

Asians are the fastest-growing ethnic group in the United States, according to the 1980 Census. And they are the most likely to attain higher education. The U.S. Department of Education says that 35% of all adult Asian-Americans have earned college degrees--a rate more than double that of any other ethnic group, including whites.

34% of Freshman Class

Asians account for 22% of the student body at UC Berkeley, 21% at UCLA and 10% at Harvard University. At UC Irvine, in the heart of once-homogeneous white, suburban Orange County, Asians this school year make up 34% of the freshman class--the highest of any university in the United States outside of Hawaii--even though Asians account for only 5% of the county’s 2.2 million residents.

Asian-American high school graduates are the most likely of all ethnic groups and twice as likely as whites to gain entry to the UC system, which is mandated to admit the top 12.5% of the state’s high school graduates on a merit system based on test scores and grade point averages, according to Bill Burson, consultant with the state Department of Education.

The College Board has collected data by ethnic group for 10 years, and in that time Asian-Americans have consistently scored higher than any other group in the math portion of the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and second only to whites in the verbal portion. In the math score this year, Asian-Americans averaged 518 on the SATs, compared with 491 for Anglos, 426 for Latinos and 376 for blacks. In the verbal score, Anglos averaged 449, Asians 404, Latinos 382 and blacks 346.

In Garden Grove in Orange County--which has one of the world’s largest Vietnamese refugee communities--Asians in the city’s unified school district are among the highest achievers, even though many of them only recently learned to speak English. Supt. Ed Dundon said 85% of last spring’s valedictorians in district high schools were Asian, and most were recent immigrants.

Despite these impressive statistics, the drive to excel has been a mixed blessing for many Asian-Americans. In many instances, it has led to high-paying careers in medicine, law and other professions. But it has also meant increased stress on children and their families. For some troubled lesser achievers, suicide has seemed the only option. And for the majority of Asian students there is a sometimes subtle, sometimes overt resentment from other minorities as well as whites.

“I believe what is happening now to Asian students is like what happened to Jewish students in the ‘20s and ‘30s. . .,” said Sucheng Chan, a Chinese-American who is provost and a professor of history at UC Santa Cruz. “In the case of both Jewish and Asian students, the fear comes not because they’re perceived as inferior, but because they’re perceived as too smart, too successful. (The fear is) that they might take over.”

UC Irvine Chancellor Jack Peltason told a news conference last year that he received some angry phone calls from Orange County residents who accused the university of favoring Asian students through “affirmative action.” But Peltason noted that the reverse actually is true: Asians are among the few minority groups that do not qualify for affirmative action because they already are overrepresented in the UC system in proportion to their percent of the state’s population.

Accusation of Quotas

Meanwhile, U.S. Education Secretary William J. Bennett said in a California speech earlier this year that he has heard of quotas quietly being fixed at some prestigious universities to limit the number of Asian students.

“For several years now,” Bennett said, “Asian student associations at Ivy League universities have cited admissions figures showing that a smaller percentage of Asian-American students than other applicants are being accepted. These figures might indicate that unofficial quotas are in effect. . . .”

L. Fred Jewett, dean of Harvard College, said he had heard of the “quotas” accusation but said “there seems there’s no evidence supporting the charge. I can say categorically that we have no quotas or limitations at Harvard.”

Jewett said Harvard has had “an extraordinary growth in Asians who have been applying and have been admitted” to the university. He said 11% of Harvard’s freshman class this academic year is Asian.

Despite the high percentage of Asians at UC Berkeley, some students have charged that the campus was putting “subtle” limits on Asian enrollment.

UC officials denied the accusations, “but the fact that numbers went up after complaints were made indicates something was wrong,” said Chan of UC Santa Cruz. Chan said she believes “the discrimination is very subtle and hard to prove. . . . Some universities are emphasizing students’ written statements on application for admittance more heavily than the objective test scores.”

No Proof of Quotas

Bennett has said he has no positive proof of quotas being imposed, directly or indirectly, on Asian students. But he vowed to take federal action if any cases of discrimination against Asian students can be verified.

“Discrimination against Asian-Americans is as unacceptable as all other forms of racial or religious discrimination,” Bennett said.

Some educators, including Elaine Kim of UC Berkeley’s Asian studies program, say a major reason that so many Asian students are bright is “selective immigration” by the United States over the years. Kim and some others argue that U.S. immigration policy has culled out the bright, professional adults from Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and other Asian countries. Their children, Kim said, are naturally going to be upwardly mobile in school.

But the greatest wave of recent Asian immigration to the United States has been from South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos--and it has not been selective. More than 730,000 Southeast Asia refugees came to the United States several years after the fall of Saigon in 1975. These late arrivals were predominantly poor, illiterate “boat people” who fled after the Communist takeover.

Nathan Caplan, a researcher and psychology professor at the University of Michigan, made a federally financed, three-year study of these “boat people,” including how their children were faring in American schools. His study found that the children of these poor farmers, fishermen and laborers are as high-achieving in their classes as are Asian students whose parents were better educated.

” . . . This group of (boat people) immigrants has in fact demonstrated remarkable progress,” Caplan said.

Ties With Parents Cited

Bennett said he thinks a key reason for the Asian students’ educational success is “the existence of extraordinarily close ties between parents and children and the willingness of parents to sacrifice for the sake of their children’s education.”

Bennett also cited a general cultural trait of Asians: “a deep respect for learning.” And Asians themselves, while often hesitant either as groups or individuals to boast about their educational achievements, agree that culturally education is very important to them.

“Clearly many fashionable theories about educational and social achievement--theories which emphasize the deterministic role of class, of the environment, of material factors, of society--do not apply here,” Bennett said.

In Confucian thought, teachers rank above fathers and below only the king in the social hierarchy, said Vy Trac Do, a student counselor at Fullerton College and the author of several books and a tape series on Vietnamese culture.

“People in Vietnam, China, Japan or Korea say, ‘You can be poor, but if you are educated, I’ll respect you,’ ” said Vy, a native of Vietnam who went to college in the United States but recalls the competitive Vietnamese educational system in which university entrance is based on survival of the smartest.

Vy considers himself bicultural but admits he is “100% Vietnamese” in pressuring his children--ages 9, 12, and 16--to excel in school. He said he started telling them when they were only 3 years old that he wanted them to be doctors. They are all honor students.

B Not Good Enough

“I really don’t accept B’s,” he said. Once, Vy’s son brought home a report card with all A’s. “I said it’s not good enough. I said I want A-pluses.”

At home in El Toro, he has three sets of encyclopedias and helps his children with their homework when he can. When he can’t, he hires a tutor--”no matter what it costs.” Because his children know that, he said, “they have no excuses.”

Asian parents are more willing than other ethnic groups to sacrifice for their children’s education, sometimes working 12 hours a day to save money for college, according to a 1983 study of the cultural explanations for Asian-American educational success by Yongsook Lee, Barbara Schnieder and Oswald Werner of Northwestern University. Eight of the nine Asian parents interviewed said without hesitation they would sell their only house if necessary to send their children to college. Only one of the five Anglo parents said they would sell their home.

The study also found that Asian-American parents spell out their expectations of specific careers for their children, while white parents usually let children know they can decide their own future.

Moreover, family expectations are highest among first-generation Asian immigrants, the researchers found. Second-generation Asian-Americans may have higher educational achievement than those of the third generation, who have assimilated more into the mainstream culture, they found.

Some Asian parents who suffered downward social mobility when they left their country are seeking compensation for themselves through their children, said Wendell Stanley, associate dean for undergraduate affairs in UC Irvine’s School of Biological Sciences, whose student body is about one-third Asian. It is common, he said, for several families to live together under one roof, and sometimes students themselves are asked to contribute financially or work in the family business.

Escalation Expected

According to Ron Wilson, UC Irvine ombudsman, the problems of parental demands--particularly on first-born children who are expected to set an example for their siblings--”have just started to escalate.”

Last year, he said, six Vietnamese students at UC Irvine attempted suicide. Two succeeded. Wilson, who interviewed friends and family members of the students who tried to kill themselves, said all of the attempts were related to academic pressures. And, Wilson said, those attempts represented two-thirds of all known suicide attempts by UC Irvine students that year.

Wilson said one was a junior science major who had a 3.3 grade average. His father, Wilson said, explained that the young man was working in the family shop and had to set an example for his brothers and sisters by getting through school quickly, then finding a top-paying job to help finance their educations. Although the student was doing well, his grades were not high enough nor was he getting through school fast enough to please his father, Wilson said.

“The worst thing is the guilt,” said UC Irvine senior Dennis Cajayon, a second-generation Filipino. “My parents are into (saving) face. Their pride is their kids. . . . I’m the oldest. I can’t disappoint my parents. I can’t be a failure.

“If (you’re) too much of a rebel, they’ll cast you off.”

‘I Could Fall Off’

Trying to please his parents and fit in with friends at school is like “walking a tightrope,” he said. “Any second I could fall off.”

The signs of stress also are increasing among the young Asian students in the Pegasus Programs conducted at UC Irvine during the summer, said John Boomer, assistant director of these accelerated enrichment courses for gifted junior and senior high school students.

One seventh-grader who wrote that she was always having to perform and would never be able to measure up to her parents’ standards was preoccupied with death, Boomer said. An eighth-grade boy shouted out in a summer computer class that he did not want to be there. “He wanted to be at the beach. He would just rather play,” Boomer said.

However, students and teachers say the image of the Asian student as a shy drudge is a myth. Southeast Asians, particularly, are more assertive and “more willing to speak up in class” than American-born students, Chan of UC Santa Cruz said. The new immigrants are less timid than native-born Asian-Americans because they spent their youth in Asia where they were not discriminated against, she said.

Linda Nguyen, 13, of Stanton is one student who thrives with one foot in Asian tradition and the other in what has been called the Calvin Klein culture of Orange County. An engaging girl with bright brown eyes and a quick laugh, she left Vietnam with her father, mother and seven older brothers and sisters on April 28, 1975, just two days before Saigon fell to the Communist North Vietnamese. She was 3 years old and remembers the dolphins that swam past their boat.

Linda wears New Wave clothes, plays the clarinet and watches television--even when she is studying. She has a 4.0 grade-point average, works for her school newspaper, has been elected to student government and is vice president of her eighth-grade class.

‘Polite, Industrious’

According to Supt. Dundon, Linda is typical of the adaptive and high-achieving Asian students whom he described as “polite, industrious, serious and attentive.”

For some, dedication to educational achievement pays off. The 1980 Census showed that people of Asian ancestry have the nation’s highest median family income of any racial group--$22,075, contrasted with $20,840 for Anglos, $14,711 for Latinos and $12,618 for blacks. The figures may be deceiving, however, due to the numbers of family members who contribute to the family income, said Morrison Wong, assistant professor of sociology at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

Basically, Asians “can make it, but they have to work twice as hard,” said Wong, who last year, along with Charles Hirschman, a sociology professor at Cornell University, published a study in the American Journal of Sociology showing that Asians outnumber whites in the professions. However, they also found Asians have had to achieve higher education levels to earn only comparable salaries.

Wong said he suspects, though he has no evidence, the presence of a subtle form of discrimination in which Asian employees are not promoted into partnerships or decision-making positions and remain relegated to technical work.

The “American tradition of prejudice against the new guys on the block” is always strongest during times of large inflow migration, said Stuart Krassner, acting dean of graduate studies and research and faculty adviser to the Vietnamese Student Assn. and the Korean Student Assn. at UC Irvine. Like “suspicion” of other, earlier immigrant groups, that fear of the new immigrant Asians will abate over time as they become steeped in the American culture, Krassner said.

Linda Nguyen, the straight-A Garden Grove eighth-grader whom her teachers called “typical” of the new Vietnamese immigrants, is an example of an Asian student who is fitting into the American cultural mainstream, even as she performs considerably higher than the norm for American students.

While proud of her Vietnamese heritage, Linda is happily immersed in the Southern California teen culture--including the colorful clothes and rock-star-like long, dangling earrings she sometimes wears to class.

Said her father, Lap Nguyen, in mock disgust:

“Some days I tell her, Linda, don’t go to school dressed that way. You’re a student. Not a movie star.”