California has the most Latinos, but most don’t have a degree

This is a weekly newsletter. Sign up for a free subscription, and invite a friend to subscribe.

View this email in your browser

Support for this newsletter comes from

A newsletter from The Hechinger Report

Share

Forward

By Delece Smith-Barrow

For anyone invested in education, it is critical to pay attention to Latino learners. They are a growing population at all levels of education, and if the United States is to remain competitive in the landscape of well-educated countries, engaging, enrolling and retaining Latino students in college will likely be a part of the strategy. And that’s why new data about Latino graduation rates in California should give higher education policy experts reason to be concerned.

The state has the largest Latino population, and more than half of students in kindergarten through twelfth grade are Latino. But many of these students aren’t going on to earn college degrees.

Latinos make up 39 percent of the population in California, and just 20 percent of Latino adults age 25 or older have an associate degree or higher, according to Excelencia in Education, which advocates for Latino students in higher education. Nationally, 24 percent of Latino adults have a degree.

Part of the reason fewer Latino Californians have a degree is that many of them start college but don’t finish, said Deborah Santiago, co-founder and CEO of Excelencia in Education.

“Almost as many Latino adults have some college, no degree, as have a degree,” Santiago said.

At California two-year colleges, 41 percent of Latino adults who started in fall 2015 were no longer enrolled, had not transferred and had not graduated three years later, according to Excelencia in Education. About 32 percent had graduated.

Last week Excelencia published new research on Latino degree completion in each state and territory, as well as a broader look at what’s happening in the nation as a whole. Nationally, it appears the U.S. is trending in the right direction with helping students from underrepresented backgrounds complete college. But the state with the highest population of Latinos struggles to graduate them.

The reasons more California Latinos do not have a degree start at the K-12 level, education experts say.

“California’s K-12 system does not adequately prepare Latinx students for college opportunities, which at the onset then reduces the pool of prospective college students who can enter into our state’s most resourced public colleges and universities,” said Yvonne Muñoz, a higher education policy analyst at the Education Trust-West, which advocates for students of color and low-income students from pre-kindergarten through college in California.

Many Latinos are in segregated schools that don’t offer all of the required courses needed to enroll at California State University and University of California institutions, and just one-third of Latinos graduate from high school having completed all of those required courses, she said.

Because of this, once Latino students enroll in college, they’re more likely than white students to be placed in remediation courses. “Their placement in remediation courses slows down their time to degree and stymies their progression and persistence through,” Muñoz said.

These students are also less likely to finish. At four-year institutions in California, about 30 percent of Latinos who started in fall 2012 did not finish their degree within six years, according to Excelencia in Education.

Ballot measures that voters will take up in November may help improve student outcomes, education policy experts say. Proposition 15, the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act, would provide up to $12 billion each year to schools, community colleges and local governments. Proposition 16 would allow the use of affirmative action in admissions, which could change what enrollment looks like at colleges and universities across the state.

“It can provide an additional tool for higher education to really target resources and supports for students based on race,” said Michele Siqueiros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunity and a member of the ballot measure committee supporting Proposition 16.

“When affirmative action was banned in California in 1996, we saw a huge drop off not only in enrollment of Latinos and Black students and other students of color across the University of California, but also in graduate school,” she added.

Siqueiros and Santiago are members of California’s new Higher Education Recovery with Equity Taskforce, which will focus on helping post-secondary institutions recover from the Covid-19 pandemic while also becoming more equitable.

To close the degree completion gap between white and Latino adults, Latinos will need to earn 6.3 million degrees by 2030, according to Excelencia data.

“What we know is that while Hispanics have increased, and we have increased our degree attainment, we have to accelerate that if we’re going to close the gap,” Santiago said.

How can colleges and universities increase the graduation rate for Latino students? How can states ensure institutions have the resources they need to support Latino students? Email or tweet me your thoughts.

Was this newsletter forwarded to you?
Click here to subscribe!

California has the most Latinos, but most don’t have a degree

Older messages

What will the school year look like?

Proof Points: Coronavirus school budget cuts

Tuition insurance for Covid-19

Future of Learning: What will schooling be like post-pandemic?

Public education faces unheard-of challenges

You Might Also Like

Kindle & Audiobook : Santa's List: A Short Christmas Story by Riley Blake

Ask your way to product market fit

The end of productivity

Setting Gift-Giving Guidelines for a Minimalist Holiday Season

[Electric Speed] Blind spots | Bluesky

The playbook that built a $360M empire

• Book Promo Super Package for Authors • FB Groups • Email Newsletter • Tweets • Pins

Grace and Typos

Prescription for Success

🎤 The SWIPES Email (Friday, November 22nd, 2024)