Despite attaining higher education levels in recent decades, many Latinos find themselves in a "fragile financial state," according to the study released Monday by the TIAA-CREF Institute, the research arm of the New York investment giant.
The report draws on data from the vast 2012 National Financial Capability Study, a national survey of 25,000 American adults, and examines in detail the personal finances of 1,553 respondents who described themselves as Hispanic and reported at least some college education.
"[W]hile growing in economic importance, Hispanics are set apart from the general U.S. population by gaps in wealth and income, as well as less integration with traditional financial institutions, differences that were only exacerbated by the 2008-2009 recession," the report said. "Such disparities affect even college-educated Hispanics, a growing sub-group."
The study, done in collaboration with Global Financial Literacy Center at George Washington University, adds to a growing body of research on the troubled state of Latino finances, including among the college educated, in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Among all U.S. ethnic groups, Latinos were the hardest hit by the crisis and subsequent Great Recession, researchers have found.
Earlier research cited by the TIAA-CREF study shows that from 2005 to 2009, Latino household wealth fell 66%, compared with 53% for African American and 16% for white households.
Unemployment among Latinos doubled from 2007 to 2011, and the poverty rate rose six percentage points from 2006 to 2010, both increasing faster than any other ethnic group, the study said.
The TIAA-CREF survey found that 59% of respondents said they have trouble covering monthly expenses.
It also found that more than half of respondents said they were unable to save at all, and 20% said they spent more than their income over the past year. One third of respondents said they spent as much as their income.
Homeownership among Latino households trails the broader population, with only 53% reporting owning a home compared to 71% for whites, according to the survey.
Illustrating both a cause and symptom of Latino financial difficulties, half of the respondents reported engaging in expensive credit-card practices that can run up interest charges and fees, including paying the minimum monthly balance only, using a card for a cash advance or incurring a late fee.
Source: Originally published on The Los Angeles Times as 59% of college-educated Latinos have trouble meeting monthly expenses, report says, byDean Starkman, May 18, 2015.
“I never really questioned the fact that I was going to go to college. I didn't really think there were other options.”
For Gaby Díaz Quiñones '17, the idea of attending college was always assumed and influenced a great deal by her mother's completion of a bachelor's degree, she told the HPR. Díaz Quiñones's circumstance—being a Latina in college with a mother who also went to college—may not seem out of the ordinary now. However, it is distinctly at odds with the realities facing Latinas several decades ago.
The story of the rise in Latina college enrollment rates is one that encompasses both the struggles of women and Hispanics generally to attend college. Latinas have benefited from American society's acceptance of women attending college as well as from shifting cultural norms within the Latino community. In more recent times, Hispanic women have also benefitted from the dismantling of barriers that have held back all Hispanics. The result has been a significant improvement in college enrollment rates.
On March 8, 1968, educational reformer Sal Castro led thousands of Latino and Latina students belonging to a handful of East Los Angeles public schools to walk out of class in protest of the unfair conditions hindering them from reaching their goals of attending college. These students demanded a restructuring of the public education system so that they could take college preparatory classes. Following these walkouts, reforms were initiated to place more Latinos on the college track. The walkouts proved to be a crucial first step in the movement to promote college education for Latinos as whole.
As America broadly opened up to the idea of women attending college, so did many Latino families. In 1976, women made up 47.25 percent of students in undergraduate programs across the nation. Hispanic women trailed slightly, making up 45.36 percent of all Hispanics in undergraduate programs. Only four years later, in 1980, the percentage of women had surpassed the percentage of men enrolled in undergraduate programs. The Latina/Latino ratio also flipped. The trend has persisted; data from 2013 indicates that women make up 56.51 percent of those enrolled in undergraduate programs, with Hispanic women representing 57.73 percent of all Hispanics in undergraduate programs. The comparison is striking. In the face of greater cultural obstacles, Latina women, after accounting for ethnicity, now matriculate at a proportion greater than their non-Hispanic peers.
Not only has the ratio of women to men in college improved for Hispanic women, the absolute percentage of women that are Hispanic and enrolled in college has risen substantially. In 1980, Hispanic women constituted 4.1 percent of all women enrolled in college undergraduate programs at a time when Hispanics made up 6.4 percent of the U.S. population. Just over three decades later, in 2013, Hispanic women constituted 17.2 percent of all women enrolled in college undergraduate programs. Seeing as Hispanics constituted 17 percent of the nation's total population in 2013, this percentage indicates that Hispanic women have made impressive gains in college enrollment.
As the data above suggests, women have, for the past several decades, broken past the stereotypes that once put them behind men in terms of college enrollment. However, to say that Latina enrollment has risen simply because Latinas followed the national trend for women in general would be to overlook several key aspects in their progress and challenges that they still face.
Early Determination
Many of the factors that have raised Latina college enrollment have raised the overall Latino rate of college enrollment. Among the contributing factors, the role of lingual assimilation is still a highly debated topic. Some argue that the use of Spanish at home inhibits students from doing well in an English-based educational system. Others argue that bilingualism actually expands the lingual abilities of students and helps them perform better in school. Numerous studies have noted that children of all ethnicities have better educational outcomes when their parents promote literacy with them at young ages, through such activities as reading out loud or visiting libraries. A National Center for Biotechnology Information report found that Latino parents who spoke English at home were more likely to participate in these literacy activities with their children. However, children who were read to in Spanish were later able to employ the reading techniques they learned when reading in English. This casts doubt as to whether the use of the Spanish language at home is an inhibiting factor.
Claims that using Spanish in the household inhibit the ability of children to do well in school may be confounded with other variables. Latino families that speak Spanish at home are more likely to be recent immigrants, have lower levels of education and income, and/or live in disadvantaged communities with lower resources. These factors may play a larger role in influencing the educational success of Latinos and Latinas. According to one Pew Research Center study, 18 percent of U.S.-born Hispanics 25 years of age or older have obtained a college degree, whereas only 10.6 percent of foreign-born Hispanics 25 years of age or older have obtained a college degree. The gap may be attributed to the fact that native-born Hispanics may have a better cultural understanding of the United States and may be better able to navigate the educational system of the United States. Furthermore, the U.S.-born children of immigrants often tend to outperform their parents in terms of average income level, another significant factor in educational attainment. Altogether, these data indicate that the educational attainment of Hispanics will continue to improve as future generations of Hispanics continue the process of assimilation and build upon the success of their predecessors.
Another possible contributing factor to the educational success of children is parent-teacher communication. Harvard Professor María Luisa Parra studied such communication during her time at Tufts University. Dr. Parra told the HPR that as coordinator of a program that aided and analyzed Latino families transitioning their children into kindergarten called the Home-School Connection Program, “The main factor that I saw playing as a key to success for these children was the relationship between parents and teachers. Some of the parents and teachers could communicate in English, but there were some underlying cultural values and beliefs about education that were getting in the way of that communication.” Thus, there is an inherently important role to be played by the common understanding between parents and teachers of educational paths and goals.
Reaching Higher Ed
The financial resources of Latino parents have significant effects on their ability to support their children in their educational pursuits. Households with higher incomes tend to have more educated parents. This in turn means that parents from higher-income households may be better able to help their children navigate the educational system and college application process. Importantly, income level may play a role in how optimistically parents promote the idea of going to college. As Vanessa Cárdenas of the Center for American Progress told the HPR, “The financial aspect of [college] is a huge barrier . . . and even once people get into college, making sure you're not worried from semester to semester whether you can afford it [is another potential barrier].” Díaz Quiñones admitted to facing this challenge, noting that, “something that was really important to me was going somewhere that could fully cover my financial need. When I was making my list of colleges, a lot of them I took out just because they only offered 80 percent financial need.” Díaz Quiñones' story is just one of many highlighting how the lack of college affordability can be a deterrent to college enrollment. However, the steady rise in Latino and Latina college enrollment rates indicates that more Latinos and Latinas are being placed on the path to higher-paying jobs. This in turn will aid them in one day supporting their children in their educational pursuits.
Even if Latino families are able to overcome financial barriers and support their children in their educational pursuits, a myriad other obstacles face Latinos and Latinas once they enter college. As Cárdenas mentioned, “Figuring out how to succeed in college, having the support network, and figuring out the college culture” are all challenges that college students face. These obstacles are even further magnified for those Latinos and Latinas that are first-generation college students, as these students often lack the same guidance and support that non first-generation students receive from their parents. The struggle of adjusting to the college culture has contributed to a push at many colleges, including Harvard, to set up support networks and mentorship programs for Latinos and Latinas. While these programs help bridge the gap between enrollment and graduation, according to one study, only 41 percent of Latino students graduated within 150 percent of program time for first-time, full-time freshmen, as compared to 50 percent of all students.
While Hispanics in general face a number of barriers to college entrance and graduation, perhaps the most distinct barrier Latinas have specifically encountered is the barrier presented by cultural beliefs. Decades ago, many traditional Hispanic families believed that women should stay at home and act as homemakers until finding a husband. In contrast, the idea of leaving home to stay at a residential college was often seen as a “dangerous” idea to traditional Latino families. At best, some Latinas were able to attend junior college because it offered them the opportunity to still live at home. While it is true that more Hispanics are now attending colleges with four-year bachelors programs, research has shown that Hispanic students are still more likely to enroll in associate-level college programs that are located close their families. Furthermore, studies have shown that Hispanics in general prefer to live at home while attending college as compared to students of other ethnicities. These reports indicate that while cultural barriers have been lowered, some Latinas still face pressures to stay close to their families. However, as the aforementioned data suggests, the gradual lowering of this cultural barrier has already had significant effects on improving Latina college enrollment rates. This steady rise in Latina college enrollment rates is promising, yet at the moment only 13.9 percent of all U.S. Hispanics age 25 or older can attest to being college graduates. Thus, while Hispanics, especially female Hispanics, have made impressive gains in terms of college enrollment and graduation rates, much remains to be done if more Latinos and Latinas are to attain college degrees.
Source: Published originally on Harvard Political Review as Latinas Leading the Way by Christopher Cruz May 16, 2015.
The report finds that more Latinos are earning high school diplomas and entering college, but remain underrepresented in every segment of higher education and have significantly lower levels of college degree attainment than other racial/ethnic groups. In fact, only 12% of Latino working-age adults (between 25- and 64-years old) have a bachelor's degree compared with 42% of White adults.
The report asserts that statewide public policies and college and university practices are major barriers to Latino students completing college. A broken college remedial education system, admissions policies that bar the consideration of race/ethnicity, state disinvestment in higher education, and the absence of a statewide plan for higher education are several of the factors contributing to low degree attainment rates for Latinos.
The good news is that Latinos are now more likely to have a high school diploma and complete the college preparatory A-G courses than in years past. They are enrolling in college in larger numbers and are more likely to graduate with a college degree than two decades ago. Each new generation of Latino Californians is more educated than previous ones.
But overall, the educational attainment of the Latino population lags other racial/ethnic groups. Too few Latino students are being prepared to enter college when less than one in three (29%) Latino high school graduates complete the coursework necessary to be eligible applicants to the California State University (CSU) and University of California (UC) systems. Even when prepared, eligible applicants are still finding it challenging to secure a spot at some of the state's public universities. At the UC, for example, admission rates for Latinos have declined by 28 points since 1994. Once on a college campus, Latino students, many of whom are first in their families to go to college, do not receive the supports and guidance to transfer and earn a degree on time. The six-year completion rates for Latinos at the California Community Colleges and the California State University, where 76% of Latinos are enrolled, are 39% and 45%, respectively.
The results of the study come as the California economy is facing a shortage of college graduates. “Workforce preparedness continues to be one of the top concerns for the business community. “The State of Higher Education in California – Latino Report” demonstrates the critical need to better prepare Latino students to achieve academic success that meets the demands of our global economy,” said Rob Lapsley, President of the California Business Roundtable. “If we are going to remain competitive, our colleges and universities must do better to address the ongoing barriers that jeopardize Latino students' ability to complete their education and succeed in our 21st Century workplace.”
“The future of our economy and the state will rise or fall on the educational success of Latinos,” said Michele Siqueiros, President of the Campaign for College Opportunity. “When you realize that one in two children under 18 is Latino and that California is going to face a shortage of 2.3 million college educated workers in the next ten years, then you have to care about increasing the number of Latino students who are prepared for, enroll in and graduate from college.”
California's colleges and universities are not adapting to serve the students in their classrooms. Today's students tend to be first in their families to go to college, work more hours, may be older and may have already started families, and are typically low-income or financially independent. Today's students and the workforce they will enter are different from students and the workforce fifty years ago, but the state's public colleges and universities are taking the same approach to delivering course material and supports which do not meet the needs of today's students or California's economy.
“Simply hoping more Latinos will earn college credentials is not a strategy for meeting California's serious workforce crisis. We need a plan with resources behind it to fix the points at which our colleges and universities are letting promising Latino students fall out of the system,” said Siqueiros.
The report highlights that although Latinos have the greatest graduation success at the University of California relative to their graduation rates at the California Community Colleges and California State University, they are significantly underrepresented in the system. The data suggests this is partly a result of Proposition 209, the 1996 measure that prohibits the state from considering race, sex or ethnicity in employment, contracting and education. An examination of two decades of data revealed that admission rates for Latinos have declined by 28 points overall, 45 points at UC Berkeley and 46 points at UCLA -- far in excess of the drops in admission rates of other racial/ethnic groups.
“The disparities highlighted in this report are critical as we plan the future of the state of California,” stated Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF President and General Counsel and Chair of the board of the Campaign for College Opportunity. “The report should lead to immediate legislative and administrative efforts to address the serious education gaps identified, which threaten our state's continued leadership nationally and globally.”
The report first and foremost calls on the Governor, legislature and college leaders for an overarching plan to close opportunity gaps between Latinos and their White and Asian peers and address the looming workforce crisis.
The report outlines a series of recommendations to help increase college access and success:
- Ensure all colleges successfully move students through pre-college level courses, quickly and with improved retention rates
- Provide students with clear transfer pathways to four-year degrees
- Expand college knowledge in middle and high school and invest in support services students need to succeed
- Fund colleges for both enrollment growth and successful outcomes
- Strengthen financial support options for low-to moderate-income college students Allow California's public universities to use race/ethnicity as one of many factors in weighing an applicant's qualifications for admission.
California is undergoing one of the largest demographic, cultural and economic transformations in its history,” said Siqueiros. “Whether we address or ignore the challenges and opportunities of strengthening educational success for the burgeoning Latino population will define our economic and democratic success as a state and nation for decades to come.”
Source: College Campaign.org press release, Report Finds California Failing to Produce Enough Latino College Grads: Future of State Economy in Jeopardy, by Audrey Dow, April 29, 2015
The report, "In the Shadows of the Ivory Tower: Undocumented Undergraduates and the Liminal State of Immigration Reform," is based on a yearlong survey of 909 undergraduate students from 55 countries. Participants attended a range of two- and four-year public and private colleges.
Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, dean of UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, and Robert T. Teranishi, a professor of education there, were two of the principal investigators on the study. Mr. Suárez-Orozco said the survey was significant because such students are often stigmatized, making it "very difficult to get good-quality research" on the challenges they face. The amount of data collected through the study makes it the first and largest of its kind, he said.
The researchers tracked such factors as age upon arrival in the United States, household income, and areas of study. Eighty-eight percent of participants were under 12 before they immigrated to the United States with their families. Sixty-one percent said they had come from families living on annual household incomes of below $30,000.
Financial barriers leave these students constantly thinking about paying for college. A significant share of participants in UCLA's study—56 percent—said they were "extremely concerned" about financing their education (such students are ineligible to receive federal aid). Of the respondents who "stopped out" of college, more than 70 percent cited money concerns as the reason.
But the sources of anxiety don't end there. In addition to feeling weighed down by financial burdens, respondents also spoke about a lack of acceptance on their respective campuses. Almost half of respondents reported being treated unfairly by financial-aid officers. Fifty-five percent reported being mistreated by fellow students.
Temporary Reprieve
A 2012 executive action known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, granted a temporary reprieve from deportation to students who had been brought to the United States illegally as children. That action also made it easier for those students to get scholarships, internships, and work permits. Eighty-five percent of survey respondents who qualified for deferred action said the program had had a positive impact on their education, but concerns about its limitations remain.
For one, a large portion of deferred-action students—nearly 90 percent—reported anxiety over the possible deportation of their friends and families. Only 70 percent of non-DACA students reported the same.
"Once they themselves feel some of the protections that are afforded by DACA," said Mr. Suárez-Orozco, "there is a skyrocketing awareness of the threat of deportation to those around them."
Mr. Suárez-Orozco called it "college survival guilt." Once the students realize they're protected, they wonder about the future of their family members.
On paper, deferred-action students seem to be reaping the benefits of being spared deportation. But beneath the hard work is a constant mental strain that the researchers think educators should combat by being more involved. Those results should challenge how college educators, employers, and policy makers help these "Americans in waiting" by first informing them of the obstacles immigrant students face.
"There are efforts that can exist to better support these students," said Mr. Teranishi. "If these institutions are going to admit these students, then they should find ways to support them and help them succeed."
Source: Originally published on The Chronicle of Higher Educations as Undergraduates in the U.S. Illegally Face a Wide Array of Challenges, by Maddy Berner, January 26, 2015.
Talk to anyone who studies demographics for a living, however, and they'll tell you those images are rooted in the past. Young people seeking higher education these days, they say, are less likely to be white or male, more likely to be Hispanic, may be the first person in their family to continue an education past high school, and will likely need help paying for it.
The demographic shifts mean big changes for colleges, too, analysts say – perhaps including restructuring admissions requirements, boosting financial aid and providing remediation to bring students from under-performing schools up to speed.
“‘Traditional student' – that's becoming such a hard thing to speak to,” says Peace Bransberger, a senior research analyst at Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education, a Boulder, Colorado-based education policy center. Because of the rapid diversification already underway, she said, the definition of a “traditional” student has become obsolete.
“We'll need some new language,” Bransberger adds.
For years, the Census Bureau has forecast that the U.S. will have a majority-minority population by 2043. Whites remain the nation's largest racial group, but their birth rate is declining; meanwhile, non-white Latinos have already surpassed African-Americans as the nation's largest minority.
But the future may already be here.
In August, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that, for the first time, the total percentage of minority students – Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans combined – is larger than the percentage of whites in public grade-school classrooms this year.
Meanwhile, in California, the state's flagship, nine-school University of California system announced an eye-opening milestone: that it has admitted more Latino students (29 percent) than whites (27 percent) for the 2014 academic year. Thirty-nine percent of the Golden State's population is non-white Hispanic.
“We were perhaps even a little bit surprised in the uptick,” Bransberger says. This year, she adds, more minorities than whites will graduate from high school in several states, evidence of “a faster rate of change in the population overall than what was known before.”
The gender gap is widening, too, with women now making up about 57 percent of all college students, an exponential gain compared to around 40 percent in the 1970s, according to the NCES. Among African-Americans, however, the gap is more of a chasm: just 37 percent of black undergraduates are males.
Bransberger and others, however, say the anticipated boom in students of color carries some troubling echoes of long-standing, systemic problems that the higher education industry has not yet completely solved.
“The shift is most definitely happening. I think there's lots that can document that,” said Scott Jenkins, the education program director for the National Board of Governors. “I think it means a lot, and in particular, to colleges and universities themselves. They need to be thinking about the needs of these students.”
In its most recent survey, “Knocking At The College Door,” released in 2013, the WIHC reports that “20 to 45 percent of the nation's public high school graduates are projected to be non-White, up by more than 7 percent over the class of 2009.” At the same time, according to the report, the number of black, non-Hispanic high school graduates is expected to decline overall within the next few years before rebounding in the middle of the next decade.
The forecast is worse for whites, whose high school graduation numbers will continue to fall, and may not recover. “Meanwhile, the number of Hispanic high school graduates will increase in every region of the country by large magnitudes,” the report states.
Source: Published originally on U.S. News & World Report as College of Tomorrow: The Changing Demographics of the Student Body by Joseph P. Williams, September 22, 2014.