The University of California is expanding the categories undergraduate applicants use to self-report their ethnicity as part of an effort to collect and better report the complexities of its Asian American and Pacific Islander students. It'll become the first public institution of higher education in California to collect and report data specifically on Hmong, Filipino and other Asian subgroups: University of California Tries to Better Understand Asian Students.

Next year's undergraduate application will include 23 Asian American and Pacific Islander categories, up from the eight that are currently recorded. This is a pretty big move, since it will go a long way towards dispelling the harmful minority myth in higher education. Through aggregated data, Asians are often portrayed as academically, socially and economically successful. But last summer, the federal Government Accountability Office released a report warning that the "Asian" umbrella masks the underperformance of several Asian Pacific American subgroups, like Vietnamese and Native Hawaiians. A more detailed, comprehensive collection of data will result in a more accurate picture of how Asian American and Pacific Islander students are doing.

Next year's applications for UC admissions will include separate categories for Chinese, Taiwanese, Asian Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Hmong, Thai, Cambodian, Laotian, Bangladeshi, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan and "other" Asian.