If Daniel's educational devaluation argument applies only to Asian immigrants, its importance depends on how many federally employed Asians are foreign-born. As Daniel notes, veterans' preference and citizenship rides probably mean that Asian federal employees are less likely than Asian Americans generally to be immigrants. Because almost all veterans were probably born in the United States or moved here as children, this suggests that a sizeable majority of federally employed Asians have lived in this country since childhood, and that the educational devaluation hypothesis applies to a limited number of Asian federal employees. Numbers represent the percentage of college graduates in each group who majored in a particular field. Different occupational choices, however, need not lead to lower grades and salaries.
Engineering pays well, and college professors earn more than school teachers.
In a reanalysis of the CPDF sample, we compared the grades of white males and other groups who not only had the same level of education and experience, but had majored in the same field. For most groups, the grade gaps were narrower than when we only controlled for level of education and experience, suggesting that white males studied more lucrative fields. White women and blacks who had earned engineering degrees held positions at about the same grades as comparable white men. We now possess that evidence. Women were less likely than men to complain of bias in all groups, and Asian women differed little from white women.