Ludwig van Bedolla Tapia 204 107 708 Model-Minority: The Opportunity Cost of Studying Many immigrants come

to America looking for better conditions for them and their families, but the American dream is not for everybody. American history is full of successful stories, it seems like everybody can improve his quality of life if he is willing to work hard for it. It is a very suspicious claim if we analyze the wealth distribution, the education access, or the resource allocation among population. One of the most important concerns of Americans is the education access, because it is an important predictor of making well in the country. During the last decade, some scholars have pointed out Asian-American outstanding school performance; this idea has created the myth of the model-minority, which refers to the idea that Asian Americans have been more successful educationally and economically than other minorities. This thesis is based on the idea that the adherence to traditional Asian culture values and family structures improve the school performance of this group (Wong, Faith Lai, Nagasawa, & Lin, 1998). Many different theories tried to explain this phenomenon, most of them are sociological approaches that try to indentify the variables that have improved Asian American school performance. The main question of this paper is: what are the socioeconomic variables that intervened in the creation of the model minority myth or if there is any evidence to support that hypothesis. The hypothesis I will defend is that unlike other minorities, many Asian immigrants come to America with high human capital, and this creates better conditions for their childrens education, which reinforces the social expectations on the performance of this group. All these process creates a spiral of expectations that increase the pressure on this group and modify their opportunity cost of studying. What is important in this hypothesis is that the main explanation that it provides asserts that students low school performance is caused by rational choices that these students make a choice about whether study hard or not. To prove the hypothesis this essay will be divided in four sections. First, I will expose some of the previous researches that have analyzed this phenomenon. Second, I will establish some basic assumptions in order to control the effect of external variables on the dependent variable. Third, I will expose the causal mechanism that explains how sociological variables modify the opportunity cost of study for each minority groupin this part of the essay I will contrast the effects that these variables have on different minority groups like Asian Americans, Latino, and Black students. Finally, the evidence provided on the paper will be resumed to clarify the argument. Background Research The academic research on this topic has used different approaches to figure out what are the variables that affect Asian Americans school performance. There are ethnic approaches, cultural explanations, sociological and psychological analysis that try to explain this phenomenon. In this chapter we will describe some of these studies to extract some important insights that they provide to this paper. The first explanation, and probably the closest to this essay, is the structural approach, which is focus on issues of class and race. This framework points the role that

educational opportunities play in school performance regardless social or racial groups of the students. This analysis argues that there are some material limitations or constrains, such as social capital, unequal funding, language barriers, and others, that contribute to achievement disparities between students. This approach considers that social capital is composed of social networks, resources, and exchange information. In sum, this framework considers that opportunities are the most important capital for students success in school and life (Conchas, 2006). It is important to notice that under this approach the abundance of material resources does not implies students success; however, lack of these resources is a strong predictor of low school performance (Ngo & Lee, 2007). The second approach to this phenomenon is the cultural capital explanation, which asserts that schools are organized to favor the norms, values, knowledge and lifestyle of white middle-class society. The literature of this approach asserts that the underachievement of minority groups can be explained by the cultural experiences of these students. Under this theory, sociological variables and causal mechanism are the most important tools to understand students achievements. This approach asserts that students underachievement is caused by a deficient assimilation process or incorrect adaptation policies that have tried to Americanize these children and have broken some important traditions and cultural roots that give them identity. All these things school performance in minority students, especially when they are part of the first or second generation in the United States (Ngo & Lee, 2007). Finally, the cultural-ecological explanation integrates these theories and emphasizes the importance of community forces and groups historical experiences in the formation of groups educational aspirations. This framework highlights the importance of society in school performance and the relevance that students give to the way the society perceive them; in this sense, society is one of the most important criteria in the formation of individuals aspirations and lifestyle as well (Ogbu, 1987; Conchas, 2006; Carter, 2005). The scholars have incorporated different variables to the original cultural-ecological approach; all these variables and correlations made the analysis more complex. During the last decades the high rate of immigration in the U.S. has increased the importance of scholarships, financial aids, affirmative action integration policies, generational differences within racial groups, and so forth. All these considerations have reinforced the analytical tools of this approach, but it has a cost: the categories increase, the number of variables that we have to consider increase as well, and it is necessary to move from this broad theory to other approach that can be more accurate and less complex (Conchas, 2007). In certain way, all these approaches are interrelated and share some variables but all of them focus on different dimensions of the same problem. As I have explained before, the main concern of this paper is to reveal the socio-economic variables that affect school performance in minority students, but it does not mean that socio cultural explanations are taking apart from the paper, what I am trying to prove is that all these variables are really important when individuals chooses whether study or not, this choice obviously affect the school performance of minority students. The claim of this paper is that all these authors have forgotten that when all these socio-cultural variables
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are internalized in the society what really makes the difference is the rational decision of the people, and that is why is so important to analyze the opportunity cost of studying and its role in peoples choice. And we have to assume that As I have said before, the hypothesis of this paper is based in some important assumptions that support the main argument. In this chapter I will explain and justify these premises in order to validate their use in this paper. First, all individuals born in a preexistent society, which is completely independent from them and that will exist even after their deaths. Bases on this statement we can assume that even when individuals choose among different options, they are limited by material constrains and socio-cultural conceptions of life, so that, individuals have reduced options and possibilities. In this sense, society determines the options among which the individuals can choose; therefore, it influences in the very beginning of peoples life the material and socio-cultural conditions in which they will base their subsequent decisions. In other words, society chooses first and then individuals make their decisions. This is a common sense assumption, but it will be useful to isolate individuals choices from social determination or social destination. Second, we have to assume that all students are rational, and even if they are too young they make choices in order to maximize their utility or to satisfy their preferences. This statement does not mean that individuals always choose the best options, it means that they choose the option that maximizes their utility given the information and the resources they have in the moment of the choice. It is important to frame the concept of rationality in the papers context: I am not assuming that students can determine the material conditions in which they will study, or the resources they have to deal with school, what I am assuming is that studentsno matters their age, race, social or economic conditionshave a basic notion of what does their expected utility will be given the resources they have. As I have said before, this premise does not imply that the expected utility that students consider when doing their choices is the real utility that they would getall differences can be caused by the asymmetry of information or by biased conceptions of reality. Third, the expected utility that individuals consider to make their choice is socially constructed and reinforced. This statement implies that the information that individuals have to make their choices is determined by socio-cultural constrains, which means that they do not have perfect information, therefore their expected utility is based on the individual aspirations that each society has impose to their members according certain parameters or criteria that have been socially constructed. This is a very important statement because it implies that students analyze their options based on social constructed aspirations, and this makes them overvalue or undervalue their capacities and, therefore, the expected utility of study or work. Causal Mechanism. Why do I have to study? In this chapter I will expose the causal mechanism to prove the hypothesis of this paper. The hypothesis is that unlike other minorities, Asian immigrants come to America with high human capital which helps the first generation to do well at schools, and usually in life. This situation creates higher expectations on this minority and these expectations
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are transmitted and assimilated by the students whose aspirations increase because of the social expectations. Once this two processes have occurred, Asian American students perception of their opportunity cost of studying decrease, which means that they give a higher value to education compared with the other options that they are leaving. When all these things increase the incentives to study for the Asian Americans; this is because they actually think in education as an important factor of social mobility. When the incentives and the aspirations are alienated with social expectations the scenario is perfect to reinforce myths like the Model-minority. During the last decades, many scholars have analyze this phenomenon and when they analyzed the descriptive statistics of school performance of different minorities groups most of them did not consider that the aggregate numbers of Asian Americans hide some particular irregularities. (We also have to consider the problem that Americans think is Asians as if they were all the same, as an homogeneous group, I have to consider the implicit racism of the Americans in the expectations social constructions) My argument implies that other minorities have passed through the same process but, unlike Asian Americans, the outcomes of this process have been negative. When Latino immigrants come to America their human capital is not as high as the Asian Americans and it impacts in the school performance of their children, even when they have high aspirations and some resourcesit is important to point out that many Latino students come from poverty backgrounds, but they still have options to get into collegeto attend school their performance as first generation is limited by the human capital of their homes, which is one of the most important predictors of school performance (Becker, 1975). Because of this experience, social expectations on Latino students decrease; low expectations and poor school performance are components of a scenario where the society raises the opportunity cost of studying for these students. When the opportunity cost of studying increases students start to value more the job opportunities that they have; as a consequence, the expected utility of studying decrease as well as the incentives to attend school. Once we have established the basic intuition of the argument is necessary to explain every part of it and also to provide evidence to support it. First I have to define properly the concept of human capital; to do so, I will use the definition of Garry Becker who said that human capital are all those investments that people do on education, training, medical care, and so on, that cannot be separated from peoples knowledge, skills, health or values in the way than they can be separated from their financial and physical assets. Becker argues that education and training are the most important investments in human capital because both have a great impact in peoples income. He also explains the differences in average earning between college and high school degrees in the U.S. in the last decades. Becker argues that during the last decades the average earnings of the people with college or high school degree have changed, and it caused the variations on human capital investments during these years (Becker, 1975). It is important to point out that Becker argument suggest that investment in human capital raises with real wage rates of white collar jobs, with the decrease of lowskill jobs, or with a combination of these two. Beckers theory is not blind to the opportunity cost and its implications; he also considers the effect that tuition costs have
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in human capital investments and the expected utility that student perceive from the labor market. What he has forgotten is the social construction of this perception, but he does not deny the influence of family in the human capital; actually, he argues that human capital of children and parents are strongly related. However, Becker does not analyze the effects that society imposes on students choices and he neither explains the variations of the opportunity cost of studying caused by this changes. This paper claims that human capital of the parents influence students performance in schools, this argument has been pointed out by different authors before. The claim is that cultural and social capital are important aspects of formal education. Even if holding other variables as constants, the human capital of the students parents seems to improve their school performance. This is because students require some basic understanding of how does the system work, and most of the time their parents or guardians can guide them better if they have passed through the same learning process. Moreover, parents with higher educational level can help their children with homework and assignments. It also important to note that the level of education is strongly and positive related with family income level, so that it is obvious to think that homes with higher income will spend more resources in childrens education (Gandara & Contreras, 2010; Coleman, 1987; Robinson et. al., 1998).