The fact that certain demographic groups of immigrants in the U.S. have higher education levels and entrepreneurial skills than the natural-born population is not new. But the Pew Research Center has compiled new stats that strongly suggest the anti-immigrant bloc across the nation has a long way to go to match the academic achievements of arriving populations, such as foreign-born Muslims and Hindus, who hold a prominent place as American scientists and doctors and professors.
In the U.S., where Christians make up the majority of the adult population, Hindus, Jews and Muslims are far more likely than Christians to have college degrees. And unlike the Christian population, large majorities of Hindus and Muslims were born outside the United States and dealt with a steep curve of cultural assimilation (87% of Hindus and 64% of Muslims compared with 14% of Christians).
According to Pew, Jews are more highly educated than any other major religious group around the world, while Muslims and Hindus tend to have the fewest years of formal schooling in their homelands.
In a piece published earlier this month, the researchers at Pew summarized their findings:
These gaps in educational attainment are partly a function of where religious groups are concentrated throughout the world. For instance, the vast majority of the world’s Jews live in the United States and Israel – two economically developed countries with high levels of education overall. And low levels of (educational) attainment among Hindus reflect the fact that 98% of Hindu adults live in the developing countries of India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
But there also are important differences in education levels among religious groups living in the same region, and even the same country. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, Christians generally have higher average levels of education than Muslims. Some social scientists have attributed this gap primarily to historical factors, including missionary activity during colonial times.
Drawing on census and survey data from 151 countries, Pew found that many of the highly educated immigrants in America come from Asian and Middle Eastern countries where education is often not highly valued, especially for girls and women.
In fact, about one-in five adults globally — but twice as many Muslims and Hindus — have received no schooling at all.
Formal schooling is neither universal nor equal around the world. The global norm is barely more than a primary education — an average of about eight years of formal schooling for men and seven years for women.
This data confirms that the United States continues to draw the “cream of the crop” to its highly regarded universities. But too often, top-ranked college students who arrive here from overseas return to their homeland once they receive a degree.
