Educational attainment in second generation immigrants : creating context for predicting college graduation.

Abstract

Educational attainment is a commonly used variable when looking at outcomes of immigration in the United States. This paper contributes to educational and immigrant research in three ways. First, this paper will account for several dimensions of influence when predicting educational attainment. Second, while college graduation will serve as a measure for educational attainment, high school grade point average will also be evaluated as a preceding variable to predicting college graduation. Lastly, a greater investigation of the influence of children’s friend groups will be investigated while still accounting for child, school, and parent influences. My hypothesis is that child expectations and efforts as well as parent and outside resources are all important factors in predicting educational attainment. My hypothesis is tested and overall supported using data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS).