The Latino College Graduation Gap: What Some Schools are Doing Right

I have a daughter that will graduate from college this year.

According to a recent report she’s beaten the odds. I’m not referring to the odds that say that Latinos are less likely to go to college. That, sadly, is part and parcel of the Latino US experience, and we’ve got to change it. The subset of that truth is the one my daughter will beat next summer. US  colleges and universities are graduating a dismal percentage of the Latino students they admit.

I know there’s reason enough for this to be shared in many places and by many people. But that doesn’t change the fact. Latinos will soon be 30 percent of the nation’s workforce. 13 percent of young adult Latinos have bachelors degrees (in contrast, 39 percent of whites, and 21 percent of blacks have bachelors degrees). And, “fewer than half of Hispanic students who enter four-year colleges and universities graduate within six years.”

That last statistic was taken directly from a study published by Collegeresults.org, titled Big Gaps, Small Gaps: Some Colleges and Universities Do Better Than Others in Graduating Hispanic Students.

The first thing that came to mind when I read the report is that now we have another gap to contend with and think about. Add it to the Latino literacy rate, high school graduation rate, teen pregnancy rate, the digital divide and any and all other gaps, ditches and sags you can think of. So, as the report says “Why focus on gaps?”

The interesting thing about the report is that is ranks private and public colleges and universities by their ability to retain Latino students through graduation. Again from the report: Many institutions cited in this brief have demonstrated an ability to graduate relatively high proportions of white students—regardless of institutional resources or students’ academic preparation.

The idea is that some schools are getting it right. The challenge is to find out what that thing is and to find a way to replicate it across the board. Here’s the basic story: “Among the colleges and universities in our analysis, private institutions graduate higher proportions of Hispanic students on average than public institutions—65.7 percent to 47.6 percent. However, the vast majority of Hispanic students in this study—about 80 percent—attend public colleges and universities. Among these public institutions, more than 60 percent graduate fewer than half of their Hispanic students within six years. More troubling still, almost one-quarter of public institutions graduate fewer than 35 percent of these students within six years.”

The study goes on to cite the schools that are doing well and analyzes what they are doing to succeed.  For example “St. Edward’s (University in Austin, TX) identifies struggling students early. Three weeks into the fi rst semester of freshman year—around the time of the first exam—professors send progress reports to students’ advisers. The advisers then reach out to students who could benefit from academic support services such as tutoring or visits to the writing center. Staff in these centers subsequently report back to faculty members about student progress.”

The report includes a series of graphs that list private and public colleges and universities by their percentage of Latino graduations. I’ll give you a short list, taken from the report, of the things that some schools are doing right (We need to start a list of these things, to counter the gaps and ditches…).

LEADING BY EXAMPLE

Other colleges and universities can learn from the promising practices that St. Edward’s University, Loyola Marymount University, and UC-Riverside use to narrow their white-Hispanic graduation-rate gaps and promote equally strong results for students of all ethnic backgrounds:

• Committed leadership. Strong leadership from the president and other high-level administrators is important in driving student success efforts and creating a campus culture in which all faculty and staff take responsibility for helping students succeed.

• Intentional recruiting. With clear intentionality, these institutions recruit Hispanic students from local, predominately Latino areas in order to foster a diverse student body that is representative of their communities.

• Early intervention. These institutions closely monitor data to identify struggling students early and intervene to help them get back on track.