Hispanic population increases; focus goes to higher education
Latinos enrolling in higher numbers; fewer graduating
by Connie Yu, Managing Editor

 

“The economic outlook should be better. More Hispanics should have higher-paying jobs because more Hispanics are receiving higher education.”- Juan Maldonado,nw campus student.

“We need to stay in school. An Hispanic family has a tremendous economic need, but we have to centralize our focus to keep the students in school.”- Ivan Mino,associate professor of history.

   Ana Espino, a 34-year-old sociology student on NW Campus, believes in the importance of education.
   “College will help me become more educated and will instill better values for my children,” she said. “It allows others to see how college is benefiting me, and it encourages them to attend college.”
   But unlike a traditional full-time student, Espino works full time and can only attend college part-time.
   “I sacrifice a lot, such as no TV,” she said. “I spend as much time with my kids as possible.”
   Espino’s situation is not unique in the Hispanic community.
   Twenty-five-year-old Adriana Garcia said a higher education will help her to advance in a marketing career.
   At the same time, the South Campus marketing student has a full-time job and sees herself still in school in five years.
   Business student Juan Maldonado said he believes that education will be the key to Hispanics’ progress in the future.
   “The economic outlook should be better,” he said. “More Hispanics should have higher-paying jobs because more Hispanics are receiving higher education.”
   The 19-year-old NW Campus student also admits that getting a college degree is not all that easy.
   “It is very hard to juggle everything,” he said. “But I manage to do so. You get used to it.”
   As the Hispanic community celebrates its progress in becoming the largest minority race in the nation, more and more people in the community believe that education is the key to their future.
   They may be faced with many challenges.
   According to a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization, though more Latinos enroll in institutions of higher education than most other major races in the nation, they are less likely to graduate. In addition, Latinos fall behind in the pursuit of graduate and professional degrees.
   The report, which analyzed several years of college enrollment data nationwide from Current Population Survey from 1997 to 2000, found that more Latinos choose community college over a four-year institution than non-Hispanics. Latino students also take longer to graduate, and many are older than the traditional college age.
   “There can be no doubt that Latino families are willing to invest in their children’s education,” the report concluded. “Yet, the numbers of students who reach graduation are reduced by part-time enrollment, a concentration in two-year institutions and a predilection to prolong undergraduate education beyond the traditional age.”
   According to the report, Latinos fared only second to Asians in college enrollment. More than 10 percent of Latino high school graduates attended college in the ’90s whereas only 7 percent of all high school graduates moved on to college.
   But more Latinos fell short in completing a degree after they started their college careers than other major races.
  The report attributed such discrepancy to a strong sense of family commitment, lack of financial and informational support and inadequate preparation for college work that are common among the Hispanic community.
   Statistics cited by the report show that attending college part-time results in a higher dropout rate. Nearly half of the part-time students in one of the studies dropped out after three years while only one quarter of their full-time counterparts did the same.
  A previous study by the center also shows “extraordinarily” high participation rates in the labor force for Latino young adults, which the report cited as a major reason for Latinos to attend college part-time.
  Students who start college at a two-year institution also bear greater risk in degree completion. According to research completed in 1999, more than half of the students who began their college career at a two-year college never finished a degree while almost six in 10 four-year college students obtained at least a bachelor’s degree.
  “Attachment to family and community as well as economic need appear to be factors in Latinos’ exceptionally high rate of enrollment in two-year colleges,” the report further stated.
  The report also found that Latinos have the lowest rates in graduate school enrollment of any major race, 8 percent less than African Americans, the second lowest.
  Students from richer families also fare better in completing their degrees than their poorer counterparts, the report found.
  Among the different Hispanic ethic groups, the report showed that Cubans, Central Americans and South Americans do as well as white Americans in college education and are more likely to enroll in graduate school. On the other hand, Mexican and Puerto Rican   Americans have the lowest rates in both degree completion and graduate school attendance.
  First-generation immigrants, who make up a large portion of the Hispanic population, also have less success in completing their higher education.
  Ivan Mino, assistant professor of Spanish on SE Campus, said he understands the problems many Hispanics face in pursuing their higher education.
   “I think the culture is to be responsible for your family,” he said. “If you are the first born, the whole responsibility of your family relies on you.”
  Although there have been some changes in the community, Mino said, such cultural barriers continue to hinder Hispanics’ success in college.
  “It’s very important for education,” he said. “But more importantly, it is the responsibility of taking care of the family. So if the family’s need requires you to take a full-time job, you are going to get a full-time job.”
  Attempting to solve that discrepancy, the National Center for Public and Higher Education and Public Agenda, a nonprofit organization, released a joint report to look at the attitudes, assumptions and difficulties faced by Hispanic high school seniors as they prepare for a college career.
   The preliminary report surveyed about 50 Hispanic seniors and their parents in focus groups and found that some of these students make misinformed choices about their higher education because of poor adult guidance and cultural assumptions.
   Diversity, namely financial, in Hispanic families also dictates these students’ chances to succeed in college, the report stated.
  The report found that though some Hispanic parents, most belonging to the middle to upper class range, are able to offer their children adequate and well informed support every step of the way—many others are not.
  As a result, many students, especially those who have aspirations for a higher education, are left to believe that they are better fitted for other alternative options than attending a four-year institution, the report stated.
  “Without that build-up nest egg of expectations,” Jaime Molera, one of the educators who conducted the focus groups, stated in his commentary, “they are easily knocked off track, or distracted by the idea that maybe they can postpone college for a few years or maybe go start a business first.”
  Mino, a Hispanic himself, agreed.
  “We need to stay in school,” he said. “An Hispanic family has a tremendous economic need, but we have to centralize our focus to keep the students in school.”
  Mino said rumors; misunderstandings and language barriers in many first-generation immigrant families also compromise their children’s opportunity in higher education.
   “[The parents] don’t know what the educational options for their kids are,” he said, “because they themselves have not gone to school.”
  The report also found that many high school counselors and teachers provided the students with little guidance about higher education.
   “Preparing a young person for college is a remarkably complex task with midcourse corrections all along the way,” Marlene L. Garcia, one of Molera’s colleagues, said. “Sporadic information sessions may reach a few students, but they will not do the whole job.    We need to find ways to emulate some of the sustained support received by middle-class students.
   Mino said that some colleges in Texas, including TCC, have begun to take their recruiting mission into the Hispanic community—making it more comfortable for parents to ask questions and get educated about higher education.
   “Anything can be scary for somebody who doesn’t know what’s inside,” he said.
  Both reports call for the government and policy makers to create initiatives that will help more Hispanic students not only to enroll in college, but to complete their college degrees.
   In the meantime, 22-year-old SE student Celina Ramirez sums up her life of juggling school, work and family.
  “Family is my base; school is my future, and work is the present,” she said.