Traditional Higher Learning from an Immigrant’s Perspective

Saturday September 28^th, 2024, 11:24AM MST Arizona has huge presence in state colleges, one being Arizona State University in Tempe. This year, ASU has recorded the highest enrollment this fall semester in both undergraduate and graduate programs at the State University. They are now being recognized as one of the fastest growing innovative schools in the country, according to local news station ABC 15, and that’s for the last 10 years with no signs of slowing down.

Anshula Kulkarni, a 2008 graduate and MBA recipient from Arizona State University found her passion for innovation in aerospace and is now an Executive Director for the well known Honeywell Aerospace Corporation.

Her mother and father immigrated here along with a 2-year-old Anshula in tow in 1985 and the settled shortly in Wisconsin for a few years before eventually coming to Arizona and making the valley their permanent home.

Once settled her parents continued the family tradition of generations of higher learning with most having their doctorates or at a minimum their aster’s. Uday Kulkarni, Anshula’s father, did just that and with it became a prolific professor for over thirty-five years at Arizona State University’s graduate programs.

Anshula talked about how ingrained it was that it was part of their tradition, and there were no other options “It was just normal for us, all my sisters have a master’s or a doctorate,” says Anshula, “everyone on both sides has some sort of higher education and it goes back all the way to India.”

In the United States the percentage of Americans over the age of twenty-five that hold a bachelor’s of some sort is close to 34% while a master’s or above sits at just over 13% according to www.worldpopulationreview.com, a news website that knows all things percentages across the globe.

So, you can feel and see the lack of amazement shown from someone such as Anshula that was ingrained and holds such high regard to education, and her father being a professor and her mother being an elementary school teacher is a solid affirmation. This family has a 100% rate in higher education, while the average in our country sits well below that, you have to admire the discipline and structure of such a family and their educational prowess.