Northwest Asian Weekly references PIA project in article on Pacific Islanders

This post is a mix of commentary and (a tiny bit of) PIA project self-promotion. Last week the Northwest Asian Weekly published an article called "4 myths about Pacific Islanders BUSTED." The article included some things you've read about in this blog -- like the fact that Asians and Pacific Islanders are two distinct groups with different socioeconomic conditions, and that when you group them together for data collection, Pacific Islanders get lost.

The writer references a number of Pacific Islander academics, as well as the Pacific Islander Access project blog. Here's the part that cites this blog:

According to information collected by the Pacific Islander Access project blog, the 2010 Census reports the percentage of Asians with an undergraduate degree is at 50 percent. The portion of the U.S. population with an undergraduate degree is 28 percent. In striking contrast, the percentage of Pacific Islanders with an undergraduate degree is only 15 percent...

As they're saying, there is a huge difference between Pacific Islander and Asian college graduation rates. At the bachelors degree level, the Pacific Islander graduation rate is just 14 percent (a one percent drop from the 15 percent that the Census reported earlier), which is less than one-third of the Asian graduation rate. In other words, Pacific Islander Americans are over 300 percent less likely to have a bachelors degree than their Asian American counterparts.

Mahalo to the Northwest Asian Weekly for paying attention to this issue, and for reading this blog!

You can read the article that references this blog by clicking here: LINK

Kawika