More than half of Latino students have family incomes of less than $25,000, and Latino youth enroll in college and complete college at lower rates than other students. (From Latino youth and the pathway to college.)

Sarita E. Brown, President, Excelencia in Education, thinks the high cost of college might be preventing the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population from gaining full access to college:

I attended the College Costs: Making Opportunity Affordable summit held in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 2, 2005. Lumina Foundation deserves kudos for taking on the issue of college costs and for deploying its resources to build a constituency willing to meet the challenge of making college affordable. Yet, for all that the summit accomplished, it failed to bring appropriate attention to one critical issue: how college costs and available aid affect Latino students.

The 2000 census initially caught many by surprise in announcing the growth of the Latino community. By now, most people are well acquainted with the data that the Latino community is young and a quickly growing proportion of society. Last year, 25 percent of all children born in America were Latino. Concurrent with the growth of the Latino community are the chronic lower academic achievement levels within the Latino community, particularly in postsecondary education. This creates intense workforce needs as baby boomers start retiring. Already states like Texas and California are linking long-term economic projections and sustainability based on the educational levels of their Latino community. Accelerating Latino educational achievement in higher education is a challenge that requires much more immediate attention from policy-makers, practitioners, funders and other stakeholders.

Binding two important strands – the growth of the Latino student population and their reaction to college costs and perceptions of affordability – is key to the progress and potential success of the College Costs campaign. Our research has already exposed some distinctive patterns in how Latino students pursue higher education and brought new questions to light about the impact of financial aid. For example, almost 60 percent of Latino students choose community colleges when beginning their studies, even while expressing interest in earning a bachelor’s degree. Could this be because Latino students do not find college affordable at four-year institutions? In our report, “How Latino Students Pay for College” we found that Latino applications to most financial-aid programs have increased since 1996. Yet the percentage of Latino students who receive aid from postsecondary institutions has not increased and remains low. Why? And the most driving question is: Why in 2003-04, did Latino students receive the lowest average financial-aid award of any racial or ethnic group?

The College Costs summit covered the right topics and certainly assembled an impressive group of people. What the meeting lacked was direct linkage between Latino students seeking higher education and rising college costs. More specifically, no one made the point that while the number of students of color (and particularly Latino students) entering college is increasing, financial support for their education is declining. No national campaign to make opportunity affordable can hope to have real impact without overt recognition of the demographics of today’s and tomorrow’s college students.

We look forward to working together in the future to make our collective investment in this important effort most effective.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 9th, 2006 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Aligning tuition, aid & appropriations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.