Excelencia: What works for Latino college success

At Miami Dade College, pass-Math is boosting Latino pass rates in gatekeeper math courses, improving retention and reducing math anxiety. A program at LaGuardia Community College strengthens counseling to help Latino and other low-income students move from remedial to college-level courses. San Diego State’s peer Mentoring program (pMp) helps community college transfers handle the transition.

Small programs produced real gains for first-generation Latino students, concludes Excelencia in Education’s Growing What Works report.

Only 21 percent of Latino adults 25 and older have completed an associate degree or higher, compared to 40 percent of all U.S. adults.  More Latinos are enrolling in college — especially community college — but success rates are low.

The report spotlights a variety of programs.

The Mother-Daughter Program at Knox College (Illinois) counseled families on the importance of completing a degree. “Latino families make decisions together and an informed family is more supportive,” says Deborah Santiago, Excelencia’s vice president of policy. Some mothers decided to enroll in college after participating with their daughters.

Some programs target male Latinos, who have higher dropout rates. At Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, Doorway to Success focused on improving male students’ study habits, engagement and retention. The Clave Latino Male Empowerment program at Union County College in New Jersey includes learning communities, a monthly lecture series, professional development opportunities and a social and professional support network for business and economics students.

Where Latinos are likely to graduate

Latino college completion rates average 14 percentage points below the national average, but Latinos do better in some states, concludes Excelencia in Education.

Road map to Hispanic success

Excelencia in Education‘s policy road map is designed to increase Hispanic college-graduation rates, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The road map recommends that colleges focus their policy work on increasing retention for working students, growing early-college high schools and dual-enrollment programs, and guaranteeing need-based aid for qualified students.

By 2025, Hispanics will make up one quarter of the college-age population, Excelencia predicts. Fulfilling President Obama’s college-completion goal is impossible without improving Hispanic success rates.

The road map includes examples of initiatives that are “moving the needle” on degree attainment.

For example, to increase student retention, the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Puerto Rico offers general-education 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’s 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 grade-point average of 2.0 or higher.

Sixty groups,  including Jobs for the Future and Project Grad USA, joined Excelencia in the project, called Ensuring America’s Future by Increasing Latino College Completion. The Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation for Education,and the Kresge Foundation funded the effort.

The road map urges better “training and materials for loan-default management and financial literacy . . .  to better serve low-income students.”  

Contrary to common perceptions, close to 90 percent of Hispanic students were born in the U.S., according to a 2009 Excelencia report . More than 80 percent of Hispanic school-age children speak English with no difficulty. Despite low graduation rates, 2008 Census data showed than 67 percent of Hispanics ages 18 to 24 had completed high school.

Excelencia targets Latino graduation rate

Excelencia in Education’s Ensuring America’s Future will look for ways to increase Latino college completion rates.  The Gates Foundation, which hopes to double the number of young people earning a degree or job certificate by age 26, is providing funding.

President Obama’s goal of making the U.S. first in the world in college completion can’t be achieved without Latinos, argues Excelencia.

The group has issued two reports. Ensuring America’s Future: Benchmarking Latino College Completion to Meet National Goals: 2010 to 2020 reports that only 21.7 of 18- to 29-year-old Latinos had earned associate or bachelor’s degrees in 2007-08, versus 49.1 percent of whites. The second report is Ensuring America’s Future: Federal Policy and Latino College Completion.