Born out of community and on-campus activism, and in solidarity with other students of color, the field of Asian American Studies has existed in the United States since the late 1960s.

Using the interactive timeline, you can click through the different decades and major events from the 1960s to the present day, when student interest in Asian American Studies courses remains high.

While student interest in Asian American Studies is high, the map tool below allows you to explore the top 200 colleges in the US where students are—and aren’t—able to take courses and pursue majors, minors, and concentrations in AAS. It’s clear from the limited offerings that there is a lot of work to be done to improve access to learning about Asian American history in higher education.

Finally, we can see how the availability of Asian American Studies aligns with AAPI undergraduate enrollment. Using the tool below, you can explore where there is a match or mismatch between AAPI enrollment and the availability of AAS offerings.

While AAS courses are beneficial to students of all backgrounds, it’s especially important that these courses be available where AAPI students are.

As you’ll see from the data, the area of greatest concern is in the bottom right quadrant, where there are few offerings for a high AAPI student population.