Hispanic Enrollment Short of Goal

TEXAS (By Patrick McGee, Fort Worth Star-Telegram)  July 15, 2004 - Texas universities are not meeting the state's goals for college enrollment of Hispanic students, according to a report scheduled to be released today.

In fall 2004, there were 291,959 Hispanic students enrolled in Texas colleges. The state's goal for Hispanic enrollment in 2004 is 340,000.

Increasing enrollment of Hispanic students is urgent because Hispanics are Texas' largest and fastest-growing minority group, said state demographer Steve Murdock.

In 2000, the state set five-, 10- and 15-year enrollment goals for blacks, Hispanics and Anglos attending Texas colleges and universities. Five-year enrollment goals for blacks and Anglos have already been reached, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

There were 626,201 Anglos enrolled in Texas colleges in fall 2004. The state's fall 2004 goal for Anglo students was 591,000. There were 132,211 black students enrolled in Texas colleges in fall 2004; the state's 2004 goal was 132,000.

David Gardner, the coordinating board's assistant commissioner for planning and information resources, will present the report to the board when it meets in Austin today and will suggest that the board come up with new strategies to reach more Hispanics.

The board has conducted outreach campaigns, and many community colleges and universities have developed their own campaigns.

Texas college enrollment has increased in recent years, with North Texas universities seeing more growth than those in other regions of the state. Enrollments for all ethnic groups have increased, but enrollment of Hispanic students hasn't increased enough to keep up with the group's rapid population growth.

In the 2000 Census, Hispanics made up 32 percent of the state population and 23 percent of the state college population.

Hispanic undergraduate students at the University of North Texas in Denton and the University of Texas at Arlington said outreach efforts need to be reinvigorated to get the word out about ways to afford college and to overcome many Hispanics' view that college is out of reach or unnecessary.

UNT senior Yazmin Vazquez said Hispanics need more information about college and access to financial aid.

"They don't know about the enrollment process; they think it's too difficult," said Vazquez, 23, who is president of UNT's Latino Student Association.

Vazquez said she helped UNT with outreach to high schools last year and was struck by different groups' attitudes toward higher education. She said Anglos seemed determined to go to college even if they didn't know what their major would be, while many Hispanic students seemed to view college as impossibly expensive.

"They don't see that they will be going [to college] not because they don't want to ... it's too expensive for them," she said. "They don't know that there is financial aid, there are scholarships, there are loans."

Karina Solorio, 18, a UT-Arlington sophomore and president of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, said college recruitment drives need to focus on the earning power a college degree will bring.

"A lot of the parents are more about 'You are here to work, you help your family, you sustain it, and that's it,' " she said. "That's not all Latino families, but that's a lot of it. They don't see all the opportunities that education can bring to their kid."

A Pew Hispanic Center study released late last month shows good news about enrollment of Hispanic students nationwide but disappointing data on graduation rates.

"Latinos are going to college in high numbers, but they're way behind in finishing," said Richard Fry, the report's author.

Fry said four out of five Hispanic high school graduates are going on to college by age 26. He said many don't earn degrees, however, partially because they enroll in universities with lower graduation rates and don't live on campus.