Candice Shikai doesn’t like math.

She took advanced math classes in elementary school only because her parents pushed her.

“Other students said that because I was Asian, of course, I was going to be in the advanced class,” said the UCLA senior. “But I struggled immensely in math. Now I’m a history major.”

Being held up collectively as the “model minority” is a disservice to some Asian American students, say University of California administrators and student groups that pushed to change the way the UC system collects students’ ethnic data.

“Forty percent of UCLA fits under the Asian category, and it is presumed that we don’t have any educational problems,” said Shikai, who is Japanese American. “That is not true.”

The UC system announced recently it will become the first public higher education institution in the state to collect data on an expanded list of Asian ethnic groups, from Tongan and Fijian to Hmong and Cambodian.

Full story…