Children of Asian immigrants most likely to complete university degrees

A Statistics Canada study said that the children of Asian immigrant parents have the highest rate of completion of university in Canada. In fact, it reported that the rate is more than double to that of other ethnicities, Canadian-born or otherwise.

A Statistics Canada study said that the children of Asian immigrant parents have the highest rate of completion of university in Canada. In fact, it reported that the rate is more than double to that of other ethnicities, Canadian-born or otherwise.

The report also specified that the university completion rate for youth of immigrant parents from India and China was actually 65 percent. And in contrast, this rate among the children of Canadian-born parents was merely 28 percent.

A Statistics Canada Analyst, Feng Hou, said that immigrants to Canada tend to have higher levels of educations partly due to the immigration selection process. Family values of the selected immigrants emphasize on education and as a result of this, their children have higher aspirations, Hou added.

Also, living in the cities where most of the new immigrants settle, also affects that importance that is placed upon the need of university education, he noticed. He citied the example of a farmer who wants to pass on his farm to his children, as in such a case, the demand for kids to go to university may not be high.

The study found that when certain factors are taken into account then education rates fall more into line with each other. For instance, the study found that kids of Canadian-born parents had higher rate of university completion if they lived in urban area and had their own parents as highly educated.

Hou said that in terms of valuing education, parents have lots of opportunity to enrich their children academically, even before university. Care after the school time is not just about kids playing freely, but it is often a chance for the students to complete their homework and get a bit of tutoring, Hou said, adding that these were his own observations and did not come out of the study.

The study named Group differences in educational attainment among children of immigrants, looked at adults who were aged between 25 and 34.

The study also found that children of European immigrants had lower university completion rates than even the kids of Canadian-born parents. The study revealed that only 24 percent of second-generation German and Central and South American youth had attained university degrees.

The data came out of the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey and it focused sub-samples of some 3,300 young adults aged between 25 and 34 years, who were either Canadian-born children of at least one immigrant parent, or have immigrated to Canada before the age of 12.