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    Speaker Session

    2025 Charles F. Elton Best Paper - Oceania in the Desert: A QuantCrit Analysis of the (Under)Counting of Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Students at an AANAPISI-HSI

    Wednesday, May 21, 2025
    11:15 AM – 12:00 PM East Coast USA Time
    Location: Sebastian I3
    Session Abstract: Most education research uses IPEDS, often leaving the logic undergirding the IPEDS racial classification system (i.e., categorization and counting) unquestioned. Framed by QuantCrit principles, this research demonstrates how the IPEDS racial classification misrepresents and undercounts students. Specifically, we show how IPEDS guidance around racial classification misrepresents the number of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AA&NHPI) undergraduates, with particular attention to NHPI students, at a single institution. We show the ways in which IPEDS logic leads to undercounting, namely that, based on the IPEDS racial classification system, most undergraduates identifying as NHPI 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. Our 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 MSIs.