State Leaders Must Focus on Latino College Completion to Ensure America’s Success

May 2011

Opinion

Sarita Brown (left) and Deborah Santiago

Leaders in state capitals across the nation increasingly understand that economic success and America’s continued global leadership depend on producing an educated workforce prepared to compete in the jobs and economy of tomorrow. That is why the College Board’s State Capitals Campaign seeks to mobilize policymakers, educators, and community and business leaders to help America become the world leader in college degrees. In a world of finite resources, policymakers need tools to help them choose where to invest most efficiently to achieve society’s goals. That’s especially true today, when the same factors causing several consecutive years of declining revenue for state and local governments have also increased demand for the very services those revenues support. The relative youth, growth and current levels of educational attainment among Latinos create a compelling case that America as a whole, as well as individual states with large or growing Latino populations, will continue to fall short without a tactical plan focused on increasing Latino degree attainment.

The Obama administration's goal is for America to achieve 51 percent degree attainment by 2020, and the College Board’s goal is for America to achieve 55 percent degree attainment by 2025. Statistically, the most efficient path to American leadership in college degrees is through a particular focus on Latino college completion, as Latinos nationally will have to almost triple the number of degrees earned currently to reach 51 percent attainment.

Excelencia in Education and its 60 national partners, including the College Board, are currently engaged in a collaborative initiative called Ensuring America’s Future by Increasing Latino College Completion, which is charting a path forward. Research from CEOs for Cities, another Ensuring America’s Future partner, shows that 58 percent of any city’s economic success (as measured by per-capita income) is explained by the proportion of college graduates. That means that a 1 percent increase in college degrees in Miami — or 38,000 additional degrees — would result in $4.1 billion annually in additional personal income. There are currently 234,000 Latinos in Miami with some college background who never received a degree. Therefore, focusing institutional, federal, state, local and community efforts on empowering just a fraction of those individuals to earn their degrees can make a dramatic difference.

To accomplish this, the College Board’s State Capitals Campaign recommends that institutions of higher education set out to dramatically increase college completion rates by improving retention, easing transfer among institutions, and implementing data-based strategies to identify retention and dropout challenges. Research produced through Ensuring America’s Future demonstrates that Latino students are more likely to be nontraditional students — enrolled part-time, later in life or at two-year institutions — and they tend to enroll where they live, so initiatives that focus on those students can make a big difference. That means colleges and universities should focus on policies that increase retention for working students in good standing, increase early college high schools and dual enrollment programs, and guarantee need-based aid for qualified students. For example, to increase student retention, the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón offers courses online as a backup system for students in good academic standing with unexpected work schedule changes during a semester. The University of Texas at El Paso Promise Plan covers all tuition and mandatory fees for students with family incomes of $30,000 or less who are Texas residents, complete 30 credits a year and earn a GPA of 2.0 or higher.

At the state level, this means leaders must simplify the transfer pathway between two-year and four-year colleges, make college accessible and affordable for students of all economic backgrounds, and ensure state higher education leaders specifically address strategies to expand college completion among underrepresented groups. For example, in California, students who successfully complete 60 units of transferrable course work at a community college will receive an associate degree and guaranteed admission with upper-division junior standing to a California State University system institution.

Collaborative efforts like the State Capitals Campaign and the Ensuring America’s Future initiative are beginning to inform and transform the conversation about how scarce resources can make the most difference in states and communities across the country. The data is clear that America’s continued success depends on Latinos, and a particular focus on Latino college completion will lead us to a stronger economic future not only for Latinos, but for all Americans.

Sarita E. Brown and Deborah A. Santiago are cofounders of Excelencia in Education, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit organization whose mission is to accelerate Latino student success in higher education. For more information, visit www.edexcelencia.org.