How crucial are family expectations to understanding the Korean-American university experience?
I think that family is important to the college lives of all students, especially traditional-aged students, but more so for students from immigrant families for whom college attendance in the United States fulfills an often long-embraced and hard-earned dream. As such, the promise and expectations of college are often richly elaborated in immigrant families in ways that can be weighty for the students themselves. Korean Americans, as I indicate above, come from families whose histories are enmeshed in South Korea’s U.S.-inflected modernity; they bring to college complex and sometimes contradictory expectations of college – to become both widely educated and able to practically succeed – tensions at the heart of American education more broadly. Also important to the university experience of many Korean Americans is extended family: as for many immigrants, many Korean Americans have navigated the United States in the dense company of immigrant kin. Q: How key is the church role for Kore
