If Trends Continue: Is there an End in Sight for the Underrepresentation of Pacific Islanders?

Happy New Year!

In the last post, I presented U.S. Census data on Pacific Islander underrepresentation from the past twenty years. As promised, in this post I'm expanding on what those numbers say. The question I'm going to answer is "what has the trend been for the past two decades in terms of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander college graduation?" The overall message is clear, but there are also what my dad would call "glass half-full and half-empty" ways of looking at the data.

Overall
The clear finding is that for at least the past twenty years, U.S. Census data has consistently shown that Pacific Islanders are underrepresented among college graduates.

Glass Half-Full
While Pacific Islanders continue to be underrepresented, the good news is that the percentage of us graduating is rising. Between 1990 and the data the Census used in 2010 publications, the percentage of Pacific Islanders with college diplomas increased from about 11 percent to 15 percent. That's an increase of about 36 percent. Pacific Islander scholars, community advocates and leaders, and others should be proud of this progress, especially since it has been achieved without access to most scholarships, fellowships, and other academic programs for underrepresented minorities.

Glass Half-Empty
You might wonder: if this increase in graduation rates continues, will Pacific Islanders no longer be underrepresented in the near future? Sadly, the numbers say absolutely not.

During the same time period that Census data showed a 36 percent increase in Pacific Islander college graduation, the overall U.S. population's graduation rate increased by about 40 percent. Pacific Islander graduation rates have risen, but not as fast as the overall population. Here's another way to look at it:

Census data says that in 1990, Pacific Islanders were 45 percent less likely to have a college degree than the general U.S. population.

According to Census data published in 2010, Pacific Islanders are 46 percent less likely to have a college degree than the general U.S. population.

That means that Pacific Islanders are almost exactly as underrepresented among college graduates now as they were 20 years ago. A continuation of this trend would be permanent underrepresentation in higher education.

If we are going break this trend, we will need find smarter, better ways to help Pacific Islanders succeed. One way to help Pacific Islanders in the next twenty years is to allow them to have access to the same resources as other underrepresented minorities - the scholarships, fellowships, and other academic programs for underrepresented minorities.


Kawika

Looking Backward: Census Stats on Pacific Islanders

With the New Year rapidly approaching, I wanted to share some perspective on Pacific Islander American higher educational attainment over the past couple of decades. Pacific Islanders have been immigrating to what is now the continental U.S. for around 200 years (two examples are the Native Hawaiians who worked in the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Islander Mormons who immigrated to Utah). Also, in the case of the native peoples of American Samoa, Guam, and Hawaii, Pacific Islanders have been living on U.S. soil while later became part of the United States. U.S. Census data on Pacific Islander higher educational attainment took a while to catch up, but we do have numbers going back two decades.

Here are some of the online resources dating back to the 1990 Census:

1990s: As part of the U.S. Census Bureau's "We the People" series, the Census released a 10-page document on the demographics of Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders living in the 50 states. The document was published in 1993, and based on 1990 Census data (LINK).

• Percentage of Pacific Islanders with an undergraduate degree: 11 percent
• Percentage of the U.S. population with an undergraduate degree: 20 percent
• Percentage of "Asian and Pacific Islanders" with an undergraduate degree: 37 percent

2000: In 2003, the Census Bureau released a 12-page document on higher educational attainment in the U.S. It included attainment stats broken down by race and ethnicity (though multiracial individuals were counted as "two or more races" instead of being included in each racial group they reported). Here are the stats, which were based on Census 2000 data (LINK):

• Percentage of Pacific Islanders with an undergraduate degree: 13.8 percent
• Percentage of the U.S. population with an undergraduate degree: 24.4 percent
• Percentage of Asians with an undergraduate degree: 44.1 percent

2010: We are still waiting on the results of the 2010 Census, but we do have data from surveys and other research that the U.S. Census Bureau did between the 2000 and the 2010 Census. Here are the higher educational attainment stats reported by the Census in March 2010 in preparation for "Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month". (Here's the LINK)

• Percentage of Pacific Islanders with an undergraduate degree: 15 percent
• Percentage of the U.S. population with an undergraduate degree: 28 percent
• Percentage of Asians with an undergraduate degree: 50 percent

I'll expand on this in my next post, but that's it for now. Happy holidays!

Kawika

Census Data Indicates Growing and Dispersing Pacific Islander American Population

Earlier this week, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser published a story on Hawaii's changing demographics, as depicted by the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey. (Here's that story: LINK) Among other things, it reported that while Hawaii's population increased 5.7 percent from 2000 - 2009, during that same time the Native Hawaiian population in the state decreased by 6.8 percent.

First, I want to talk about why those numbers may end up being misleading. Next, I want to talk about some other results of the American Community Survey which indicate that the Pacific Islander American population grew in number during the past decade.

The Hawaii Data: Anytime you're looking at Census data on race, make sure to check whether the results say "X" race "alone" or "alone or in combination." The difference is that "alone or in combination" stats mean that multiracial Americans are included as members of more than one of the races they identify as. Overall, multiracial individuals are not a huge percentage of the American population: we're somewhere above 2 percent. But in Hawaii, over 20 percent of the population identifies as multiracial. This means that if you want to get a detailed picture of race and ethnicity in Hawaii, you need to be able to look at "alone or in combination" stats. This is especially true for Pacific Islander Americans - in the 2000 Census multiracial Pacific Islanders greatly outnumbered those who identified as Pacific Islander alone. Unfortunately, the American Community Survey numbers that were referenced in the Star-Advertiser didn't do that.

When the richer data that includes multiracial Hawaii residents is released, it may end up indicating the same thing that the "alone" stats say... but we won't know until we see it. For now, what we do know is that in Hawaii, a segment of the Native Hawaiian population (those that identify as Native Hawaiian alone), as counted in a large government-conducted survey, declined over the past decade.

National Pacific Islander Stats: Being more curious than the average twenty-something is about Census stats, this article above encouraged me to dive into the Census Bureau's website and see what else the American Community Survey (ACS) said about the Pacific Islander American population. Here were my two major findings, comparing the American Community Survey results with the Census 2000 results:

• From 2000 - 2009, the number of American residents who identified as Pacific Islander (aka "Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander") alone grew significantly, from 398,800 to 447,500. That's a 12 percent population increase over that decade. (It will be interesting to see what the change was when the multiracial Pacific Islander population is included.)
• From 2000 - 2009, the number of Hawaii residents who identified as Pacific Islander alone fell slightly from 113,500 to 112,900.

The takeaway is that at least in the case of individuals who identify as Pacific Islander alone, their numbers are growing noticeably across the nation, while they are slowly declining in the only Pacific Island State of the Union. (Here's a link to the Census Bureau's ACS web page: LINK)

How does this tie back into the PIA project's mission to see Pacific Islanders included in scholarships and fellowships for underrepresented minorities?

Simple. In places like Hawaii, Pacific Islanders are a significant percentage of the total population, and it is widely known that they are underrepresented in higher education. Any Hawaii-based program for underrepresented minorities would allow Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders to apply, because those programs would be aware of our underrepresentation.

Nationally, this is not the case. Many communities are hardly aware that Pacific Islander Americans exist as a thriving, growing, and sometimes struggling community. Most of these well-intended scholarships and fellowships who want to help underrepresented minorities do not include or advertise to Pacific Islanders.

Now, as the Pacific Islander population disperses across these communities, and attends college in these communities, they will find that they are being excluded from scholarships and fellowships that they should at least be able to apply to. They will find that some underrepresented minority programs which would have included them in Hawaii are not doing so across the mainland. In some cases this could make the difference between a diploma and a dropout, or attending graduate school or not.

This is another reason why - as the Pacific Islander American population disperses in greater numbers across the mainland U.S. - it is important for underrepresented minority programs to include Pacific Islanders now.

Kawika