The Immigrant University: Assessing the Dynamics of Race, Major and Socioeconomic Characteristics at U of California

CSHE > News > The Immigrant University: Assessing the Dynamics of Race, Major and Socioeconomic Characteristics at U of California

November 28 2007 – The University of California has long been a major source of socioeconomic mobility in California. A new study, “The Immigrant University,” by CSHE affiliated researchers John Aubrey Douglass, Heinke Roebken, and Gregg Thomson reports that 54 percent of the undergraduate students in the UC system have at least one parent who is an immigrant. The ratio is even higher at UC Berkeley. The high participation rate of immigrant groups with varying racial and ethnic backgrounds reflects, in some measure, dramatic demographic changes in California; but the phenomenon is also part of a larger national, indeed global, trend of immigrant groups attending public and selective universities.

Who are these students and how are they both influenced by and influencing the academy? Using a unique data set of survey responses and other sources, the authors explore the dynamics of race and ethnicity, undergraduate major, and the differing socioeconomic backgrounds of immigrant students within the vast University of California system. The study provides a focus and three racial/ethnic groups: Chicano-Latinos, Chinese, and Euro-Americans, on the Berkeley campus. Among the major conclusions offered:

- There are a complex set of differences between various “generations” of immigrant students that reflect earlier historical waves of immigrant groups to the United States.

- The startling number and range of students from different ethnic, racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds points to the need for an expanded notion of diversity beyond older racial and ethnic paradigms. “Discussions about race and ethnicity, and diversity in general,” notes Douglass, “are severely handicapped without a greater understanding of demographic changes in states such as California, in the US generally, and indeed in other parts of the world that are experiencing the forces of globalization.”

- While there are growing numbers of immigrant students at Berkeley from different parts of the world, and often from lower income families, there is a high correlation with their socioeconomic capital, described as a variety of factors but most prominently the education level of their parents and family. “A place like Berkeley gets a certain slice of the vast first and second generation immigrant population,” observes Douglass.

“Students at Berkeley who come from lower income families,” state the authors, “and who have relatively low socioeconomic capital (in particular Chicano/Latinos) do well academically, only marginally less than those with higher rates of educational capital. At the same time, they also spend more time in paid employment, spend approximately the same amount of time as Euro-Americans studying and going to class, and have relatively high rates of overall satisfaction with their social and academic experience.”

For a on-line copy of the study, see: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?s=1

The study is part of a larger Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Project based at CSHE, and uses recent data from the project’s University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey – an on-line, census survey with 57,000 individual responses with funding support from the UC Office of the President and each of the nine UC undergraduate campuses.

John Aubrey Douglass is a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley, and author of the recently published book, The Conditions for Admissions: Access, Equity, and the Social Contract of Public Universities (Stanford 2007). Heinke Roebken is on the faculty at the University of Oldenborg, Germany. Gregg Thomson is Director of the Office of Student Research at Berkeley.

CONTACT:
John Aubrey Douglass
douglass@berkeleley.edu
http://cshe.berkeley.edu/people/jdouglass.htm

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