Pacific Islander 20-somethings three times less likely to hold college degrees than Asian American peers

For this week's post, we're sharing an interesting stat that appeared in an online story in the New York edition of Metro.us:

In 2007, 59.6 percent of all Asians in the United States 25 to 29-years-old had a college degree. But only 18 percent of Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders of the same age had a degree. The AAPI designation combines all of these groups into the same category.

In other words, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islander 25 to 29-year-olds are more than three times less likely to have a college degree than Asian Americans in the same age group.

We've shared lots of data on Pacific Islander underrepresentation, but this figure is interesting because it looks at the youngest cohort of college graduate age Americans, and finds that Pacific Islanders in this age group are over three times less likely to hold a college degree. This is very similar to the overall data showing that for Americans over 25 years-old, Pacific Islanders are over three times less likely to hold a bachelor's, and five times less likely to hold an advanced degree.

Kawika