Kristine Jan Cruz Espinoza, Blanca E. Rincón (both Educational Psychology, Leadership, and Higher Education), Brent M. Drake (formerly Decision Support), J. Judd Harbin (formerly Student Affairs Strategic Planning and Assessment), and Kyle Ethelbah (Center for Academic Enrichment and Outreach) published a study, "Oceania in the Desert: A QuantCrit Analysis of the (Under)Counting of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Students at an AANAPISI-HSI," in a special issue on "Critical Quantitative Approaches for Anti-Racist Transformation in Education" in the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness (JREE).
Although most education research uses the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the logic undergirding the IPEDS racial classification system (i.e., categorization and counting) is often left unquestioned. Framed by Quantitative Critical Race Theory (QuantCrit) principles, their research demonstrates how the IPEDS classification misrepresents and undercounts students.
Through this descriptive study, they demonstrate how IPEDS logic leads to undercounting, namely that, based on IPEDS, most undergraduates identifying as Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander are classified as Two or More Races and Hispanic or Latino. A similar pattern of suppression is found to varying degrees for students identifying as American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Black or African American. Their findings complicate the taken-for-granted nature of IPEDS racial classification and have implications for serving racially minoritized student groups and for institutions that may qualify as enrollment-based Minority-Serving Institutions (such as Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions (AANAPISIs)).
Reference:
Espinoza, K. J. C., Rincón, B. E., Drake, B. M., Harbin, J. J., & Ethelbah, K. K. (2024). Oceania in the Desert: A QuantCrit Analysis of the (Under)Counting of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Students at an AANAPISI-HSI. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 1–24.
