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About Our Project

By Nishaanth Krishnan and Ivy Tang

Background

Educational inequity describes the disparity in academic resources, educational quality, and achievement among students, especially impacting marginalized groups and their opportunities for economic and social mobility. Among racial minorities, achievement gaps correlate with socioeconomic factors such as income gaps, poverty rates, and parents’ educational levels. These gaps starting from preschool form the foundation of students’ experiences as they enter and become integrated in higher education institutions. Currently, Asian-Americans make up a decent percentage of the population at top universities, and overall have the highest level of postsecondary degree attainment. Data like this contributes to the dominating narrative that Asian-American students are doing well in higher education, but oftentimes these data treat Asian-Americans as a monolith. In reality, Asian-Americans vary widely in ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and parental educational background, and lumping them together ignores the diverse array of experiences they each face. As part of our project for Asian American 191A, our mapplication will hone in on the stories of Asian-American students at UCLA, who make up about a third of the student body, and how they each are navigating their academic journeys.

Long Term Impact

We desire to transfer back the ownership to the users of the site - Asian American UCLA students who are facing difficulties in colleges as a result of their background. In order to facilitate this, we intend to reach to organizations such as the UCLA Asian-Pacific Coalition and the UCLA First to Go organization. These organizations deal with the Asian American students here, and we think it will be valuable for them to use this application in their efforts of improving the experience of Asian American students. We hope that the experiences that are shared by community members are used in order to tailor resources to better meet the needs of Asian Americans at UCLA.

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