Week 3

Gabriela Garcia-Mejia

Section A03

Week 3

As OiYan Poon and Ajani Byrd mention in “Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices”, the common idea that Asian Americans are dominating in higher education because they have overbearing parents, aka Tiger Moms, who are making them go to college is an exaggerated generalization. Academia is very important to Asian Americans but as we saw from their data it is much more complex because there are ethnic divisions within Asian Americans, there’s gender differences and generational differences that all affect if, where and why they go to college. Going to college is important to Asian parents and it is something that they instill in their children at a young age but at the same time many are limited to how much they can directly influence their child’s college decision because they themselves don’t know how to navigate the system.

For me personally neither one of my parents went to college and so they knew early on that I wanted to go to college and they also wanted me to go but they didn’t know anything about the process. My mom actually took the initiative when I was in high school and since she’s always been very involved in our academics she got a group together of acquaintances whose kids also went to my high school and the school agreed to host weekly workshops in Spanish for Latino parents. They covered a range of topics but the major focus was on college, financial aid and what requirements were needed to graduate etc. In that way my mom tried to be as informed about college as she could which I’m very grateful for but even then my biggest influences and sources of information on specifically what colleges to apply to came from my peers and teachers. Just like Elizabeth, the Korean American student that was part of the research, my AP teachers really saw the potential in every single one of us and pushed us to be better and to know that the next logical step for us was to go to college.

Question: Why is it threatening to see so many Asian Americans in higher education? And is it more threatening to White Americans or to other Asian Americans?

RESOURCES:

ASIANS TAKING OVER COLLEGE?! - Level: Asian - Fung Bros. (2014, March 24). Retrieved April 15, 2017, from https://youtu.be/UkrABHXZb70

OiYan Poon and Ajani Byrd Loyola. “Beyond Tiger Mom Anxiety: Ethnic, Gender and Generational Differences in Asian American College Access and Choices.”