| Description |
The term "Pacific Islander" encompasses a very broad, very diverse and very small population. The unique size and composition of the Pacific Islander (PI) community in the United States leads to two major consequences for Pacific Island students: they are often not catered to in educational environments and their achievement level is misrepresented in aggregate data. Educational material is communicated without Pacific Island pedagogical practices in mind, which hurts the ability of PI students to effectively learn. The Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) label that is often used to categorize students misrepresents the achievement level of PI students. Because the Asian American population is much larger than the Pacific Island population, datapoints representing PIs within the AAPI label are dwarfed. Using data from the University of Utah, this paper looks at student success outcomes for each student enrolled within the Fall Cohorts from 2011-2021. Models predicting student success (defined as Fall 2 Retention and graduation in 6 years, or Grad6) that separate the Asian American and Pacific Islander student groups rather than using the AAPI umbrella term were found to be better fits for the dataset with more significant variables. While there are numerous factors that play into a student's success beyond their ethnic demographics, these findings support the claims that failing to recognize Pacific Island students as a unique community harms student outcomes, and failing to distinguish between Asian American students and Pacific Islander students diminishes the impact of PI student data, leading to misrepresentation of outcomes. |
