According to a new study from the National Center of Education Statistics, roughly 23 percent of the approximately 22.3 million undergraduates in U.S. postsecondary schools during the 2007-08 school year were immigrants or were second-generation Americans with at least one immigrant parent.
The proportion of these undergraduates varied across the six states examined in the study, ranging from nearly double the national percentage in California (45 percent) to 14 percent in Georgia.
Other key findings:
-Asian and Hispanic students consti tuted the majority of immigrant and second-generation American un dergraduates. Asians made up the plurality (30 percent) of immigrant undergraduates, while Hispanics made up the plurality (41 percent) of second-generation American undergraduates.
-Hispanic and Asian immigrant and second-generation American undergraduates differed from each other and from all undergraduates on several background characteristics, including whether their parents had attended college. Among Hispanics, a majority of both immigrant (55 percent) and second-generation Americans (54 percent), respectively) had parents who had not attended a postsecondary institution, compared with 33 percent of all undergraduates.
-Immigrant Asian and Hispanic students enrolled in community colleges at higher rates (54 percent and 51 percent, respectively) than did all undergraduates (44 percent). Among immigrant and second-generation American undergraduates, larger percentages of Hispanic students (12 percent of each group) enrolled in for-profit institutions than did their Asian counterparts (7 percent among immigrants and 5 percent among se cond-generation Americans).
