sources:https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_323.30.asp

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_322.30.asp

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?q=S0201%3A%20SELECTED%20POPULATION%20PROFILE%20IN%20THE%20UNITED%20STATES&t=002%3A004%3A012%3A400%3AAge%20and%20Sex&g=0100000US&tid=ACSSPP1Y2019.S0201&moe=false (updated)

tools: tableau

note (edited):

placing the calculation of percentages here in case (there was a mistake on the legend on the graph itself, i apologise)

- % of each ethnicity over the total of all four (aged 18-44 years)

- % of each ethnicity over the total of all four (both masters and bachelors)

- [(% of degree - % of population)/ % of population] *100

The color scale seems unnecessary to me. I would definitely make the y-axis title and tick labels much larger and maybe add horizontal grid lines.

Whatever you are trying to say, it don't

No way to avoid politics here so I'll just go right at it. The problem here is the fact that for Democrats "minority" really only means black people. Hispanics are basically ignored and of course Asians are heavily discriminated AGAINST.

Doesnt hispanic overlaps with the 2 other categories?

it was listed as a separate category in both data sets

Now separate it out into male and female.

Because black people are almost entirely Democrat (some sources put it as high as 95%). Hispanics are closer to 2/3rd Democrat.

Even if this was the truth, and 'Democrats' had so much ability to influence education, how do you then explain the results for the asian demographic?

Asian culture stresses education ridiculously hard. Also, most Asian immigrants are well off.

How come Black people are overrepresented in Master's while being underrepresented in Bachelor's?

Is this saying more blacks have masters degrees than whites?

Why use 18-44 age range when the overwhelming majority of people will be receiving degrees in their early 20s?

So democrats have so much power that they can influence education so strongly against Hispanics, but despite them actively trying to hold other PoC (besides, 'black' people, the only recognized minority) back, those of Asian cultures can not only overcome this bias, but thrive despite it?

Well, I wouldn't say Asians are thriving. They should be far more successful if not for affirmative action.

Strangely, African immigrants do exceptionally well, despite the exact same outward appearance. Why?

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It suggest that compared to whites more black decide to continue to a master while more white are happy to stop at "just" a bachelor degree.

Sadly for a lot of people, college is not an education but a few years of resort living. A master actually requires you to learn the state of the art in a particular field, which is a big fat time sink.

Not more, but a bigger percentage.

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This has both associates and masters in it. I'd agree with your statement if it was just associates.

The average of grad students is in their 30s, though restricting to just masters would bring that down.

Is there no data for arab/ north african?

That would be interesting

This doesn't answer his question. There should be no difference between the two if every external factors were similar.

Why are they not making the same choices once they make it to college?

They're caucasian. Even the hispanic category is questionnable.

There is no reason to expect any two non-uniform-random sampling of such a distribution to have the same characteristics.

Using bachelors and masters as colors in a stacked bar chart would work better too.

I'm curious how this data came about. Does a bachelors include those that have further education? Are you including professional degrees (MD, JD) in Master's as well, as would be the UNESCO definition? What about PhDs, as there are many disciplines where the norm is a direct bachelors to PhD?

Too many reservations without seeing the initial data.

Hispanic people can be any race. How are you counting them? Is this over/under representation compared to the non-Hispanic remainder?

Plenty of people who get advanced degrees work between bachelors and masters. For some places, it's even an application requirement (notably with the MBA).

I think I am the only one having trouble reading this.

This also needs to be broken apart by “type.” You are lumping huge amounts of culture under these broad racial and ethnic categories. Fine detail isn’t possible but at least “Black immigrant” and “South Asian” and “White Hispanic” and “Black Hispanic” need to be elucidated. I have a sneaking suspicion that that very broad ETHNIC category of “Hispanic” has RACIAL disparities within it. To me, this data isn’t saying much since it’s not clear who exactly needs the most targeting for educational campaigns. Hispanic isn’t clear. You’re also lumping male and female together as well. This is an example of data is likely correct but not represented in a useful fashion.

ETA: also immigration status would also be something to consider since I see the source is raw census data that you’ve analyzed, i.e., you’ve analyzed 18-44 year olds but when did they arrive in the US, if US-based education is the litmus vs education received anywhere? This is considering Latin American immigrants make up a sizable portion of the immigrant population. It would be useful for all categories to separate between immigrant and US-born tbh.

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There are black Hispanic folk. As well as white and those who consider themselves mixed (indigenous and white mix). I don’t get this comment — the issue with this data is comparing broad racial groups to an ethnic group.

I’m not ready to make those claims

Hispanic here representing with 3 engineering degrees. 2 masters from top 30 universities. 👊🏽

The answer is we don’t know.

BUT my guess is that it’s the good work of programs that connect underrepresented undergrads to grad opportunities, contrast against the rapid growth of the Hispanic population vs rest-of-America including Black Americans. Graduate funnel programs that have existed for decades will show a lagging correlation to undergrad affirmative action and Black outreach. Undergrads and then grads need to adjust to the Hispanic population growth to fix the numerator https://costar.brightspotcdn.com/c1/86/16e793de4cdcaa84724a5f7990d9/slide277.jpeg

Could be a lot of things happening. It could be something like, fewer Black people are accepted to university in the first place, which means that the work ethic and skill level or aspirations of many of those few who are accepted are equivalent to the top 25% (arbitrary number) of white candidates, for whom college is a given, so they are more likely to continue as a group.

It could be cultural. Both the feeling that you have to be a "good" representative of your race, and the fact that most of your peers of the same race feel the same way will push you to achieve more/avoid "failure". It could also be the reasons that they are choosing university in the first place. Social work, Healthcare, education, and so on are fields where getting a masters is often necessary. I don't know if there is specific pressure from parents of high performing Black students to go towards specific fields or not the way there is for Asian students to go into engineering or medicine.

It could also be that recently graduated Black students find themselves unable to find the same caliber of job opportunities as their white peers so have to continue education to find good jobs in their field.

Just spitballing.

Mindset which is heavily shaped by environment. Recent immigrants usually have strong enclaves/communities with a lot of social cohesion and support for each other. On the other hand, US and more local policies have been pretty directly responsible for the weakening of certain communities and reducing opportunities. Some of these policies, like redlining, were a long time ago but still have clear rippling effects on investment into these communities.

It's not "playing victim" when you and your recent ancestors were absolutely victimized by the society you live in.

Does Masters include PhDs ? I guess not, so in that case it would be interesting to look at the demographics of PhDs...

Do you have a source to backup the claim of “most Asian immigrants are well off”?

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I like the description "resort living". It really was exactly that for me, minus the sex believe it or not. I thought I was doing good studying half arse and doing relatively well in classes and such. I thought that was the life. I ended up getting a masters after all, but certainly not because I really loved the subject.

What does percentage difference in this case mean? Is it referring to (number of degree holders in ethnic group j - number of degree holders) / number of degree holders?

When I saw a top 10 of the best US universities waterparks, I thought all pretense was lost.

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Hispanic is Hispanic of any race.

Black/White/Asian is non-Hispanic Black/White/Asians.

So a Black Hispanic in the chart above would be coded only as Hispanic.

This is a ridiculous comment which has nothing to do with the data presented. This graph mostly implies how much each group pursues masters level education. Nothing about this graph says anything about discrimination. The real question is what is motivating each group to pursue or not pursue masters level education, and why some groups pursue it more than others.

Remember, to get a masters degree a person has to choose to apply for a masters program. Universities aren’t scanning the general population for choice candidates, which is why your comment suggesting discrimination against Asian students or preference for Black students is irrelevant to the discussion of this data.

Yep, doesn’t provide a source and just downvotes. Random numbers of a username only make you look like more of a bot 🤖

You argument sounds contradictory. If college is a resort then shouldn't everyone want to get a Masters? At any rate I only got a bachelors because when I graduated no jobs were asking for a Masters so it made no point to pursue one.

Hate to break it to you Elon, but everyone who disagrees with you isn't a bot.

Nah like I wrote anyone can get a bachelor in some easy fields by picking easy classes, but master is something else, you usually have to write a master thesis and pass in front of a comittee.

I got my master because I graduated right after the .com crash and there was no work for a while.

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Victimized but got away from it. It is exceedingly difficult to "escape" poverty and the culture that goes with it when there isnt another place accepting you. Immigrants here typically have a very different support network than some poor kid in the bad part of town, who is born here into the systems (or legacies of the systems) that have kept them down. Even if that kid has a great mindset and works hard, the cards are stacked against them succeeding. I had a good friend I went to community college with, who had been arrested for breaking up a fight at school. His school had more cops than college councilors. He talked about this stuff a lot, because he was one of the only people from his class who went on to college and it upset him, obviously.

And what does success look like for someone like that? Leaving their family and neighborhood behind? Essentially becoming an immigrant in their own country? It's complicated. That's what a lot of successful people end up doing, because otherwise, they can't be very successful, because of the lack of investment into these communities means there's not much opportunity. These pioneers leaving continues to keep the investment out and the poverty concentrated. Its a cycle.

The mindset, if that's the issue, isn't going to easily change without serious investment into poor communities. The culture didn't develop out of nowhere.

It will would be interesting to split Asians into various ethnic group. Hmong and Laotians are vastly underrepresented in Universities vs Chinese. If you break it down by generation too, my bet is on a sharp decline in education level for certain ethnicities like Filipinos.

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Because Nigerians

This of course implies independence, which these two events are not

‘Associates degree’ is a weird category: most people who earn them are either young (like right out of HS) or older than those who stop at a Bachelor’s: women who return to school during or after raising families, for example. Either way, an Associates degree is nowhere near comparable to a Bachelor’s in terms of the health or economic benefits that accompany that level of educational attainment. Statistically, a person with a terminal Associate’s is no better off than someone who ended their formal education with a HS diploma.

This is why demographers frequently separate educational attainment categories as HS or less vs. Some college or more, or Bachelor’s degree or more vs. Some college or less (this category includes those who’ve completed formal education with a HS diploma or GED but no college at all, even if a person completed five years of trade school and makes $100K/yr).

A Master’s category should never include PhDs; a PhD category may, however, include plenty of people who have earned both degrees.

It is not the case in the US that a larger proportion of Black women have advanced degrees compared to the proportion of White women who do.

Additionally, when Black women do earn advanced degrees, they don’t see nearly the return on investment that White men or women do.

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Cmon mack

This is a popular idea, but it’s mostly false. The main reasons immigrant groups today are unusually successful is the same as it has been throughout American history: with a few exceptions, immigrant groups are selected from the higher socioeconomic strata of their home countries. This is partly because mobile people tend to be wealthier and more educated in the first place, but it’s also a function of our immigration restrictions.

A recent book by Leah Boustan and Ran Abramitzy covers this topic over the past century. Research by Ed Lazear covers the part about how current country-specific numerical limits function to select higher-educated groups.

I don’t know where OP has gone wrong, but it’s just false that black people are over-represented among MA-holders. 8% of black non-Hispanic people age 25-44 have an MA or more, compared to 12.5% of all races/ethnicities (not visible on that table because I filtered to non-Hispanics).

Maybe more Black people need or feel like they need that additional education and that piece of paper to advance their career while less White people do?

I don’t understand your calculation. You’ve effectively divided by population twice (% of degrees)/((% of population)^2 ). Put it simply: according to your data, black people earn 11% of all master’s degrees. Your Census link isn’t working, but the black percent of the age 18-44 population is somewhere over 13%. How does this end up as overrepresented?

Generally not those accepted, but those applying to begin with.

i just relooked at what i typed and realised that i wrote divide instead of minus, i'm sorry about the oversight on my side

but the bars are based on the formula below:[(% of degree - % of population)/ % of population] *100

in 2019, the percentage of blacks aged 18-44 were 12.4% and they were 13.79% of the master degrees, so

[(13.79-12.4)/12.4]*100 = 11.21

TLDR:

- my mistake for typing / instead of - (but the bars are not affected)

- i've updated the census link as well, thanks for the heads up

- i could upload a table if necessary

Yeah I’m afraid the Census links don’t seem to work. That’s fine. I use the microdata and calculate that black non-Hispanics are 13.4% of the 18-44 population, and 15.7% of the 18-44 population when you exclude foreign-born and limit to the racial categories you are using.

Edit, I put the wrong link: https://imgur.com/a/PvEWW3o

While this is only speculation, why would that be? For other minorities we observe the opposite trend.

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>Could be a lot of things happening. It could be something like, fewer Black people are accepted to university in the first place, which means that the work ethic and skill level or aspirations of many of those few who are accepted are equivalent to the top 25% (arbitrary number) of white candidates, for whom college is a given, so they are more likely to continue as a group.

If that was a leading factor, we would see a similar trend for hispanics, but we observe the opposite.

>It could be cultural. Both the feeling that you have to be a "good" representative of your race, and the fact that most of your peers of the same race feel the same way will push you to achieve more/avoid "failure". It could also be the reasons that they are choosing university in the first place. Social work, Healthcare, education, and so on are fields where getting a masters is often necessary. I don't know if there is specific pressure from parents of high performing Black students to go towards specific fields or not the way there is for Asian students to go into engineering or medicine.

That's an interesting hypothesis. It would be interesting to see a comparison of the fields of study for different racial ethnicity to verify this hypothesis. If blacks do indeed disproportionately choose fields of study that require a master's degree it could support your hypothesis.

>It could also be that recently graduated Black students find themselves unable to find the same caliber of job opportunities as their white peers so have to continue education to find good jobs in their field.

Unlikely considering the data for other ethnicities and for African born black immigrants.

Once again, Asians rule. We recognize the importance of education in changing our future, sometimes even giving too much importance to it.

Many highly value education but also America only lets Asians into the country if they already have an education and are skilled

Thing is most Asians go there for higher education and end up staying there. A win win for both, if they complete their education.