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Posts Tagged: higher education

Rapid Growth of Latinos in K-12, College Populations

Between 2010 and 2011, a surge in the population of 18- to 24-year-old Latino students attending U.S. colleges resulted in Hispanics becoming the largest minority group enrolled at four-year institutions.

In a College Board webinar entitled “Education Demographics with a Latino Focus,” Dr. Mark Hugo Lopez, the associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center analyzed the 2010-2011 surge and other demographic trends to paint a picture of the overall growth of Latinos in American education and society.

“The Hispanic population has grown; it’s grown quite rapidly in fact, and more than half of the growth in the United States between 2000 and 2010 in its population was driven by growth in the nation’s Hispanic population. Today, we estimate that there are actually about 52 million Hispanics in the country today,” Lopez told webinar participants.

“You’ve probably heard a lot about the nation becoming a majority-minority nation. A lot of those changes will be driven by Hispanic and Asian population growth over the course of the next few decades,” he said.

“What’s interesting here is that the United States is the nation in the world that has the most immigrants. There are more than 40 million people who were born in other countries who are living in the United States today,” he noted. The country with the next largest number of immigrants is Russia with 12.3 million, the report says.

Lopez presented data showing how U.S.-born Latinos will be driving growth in the nation’s general and student population. “The changes that we’re seeing are really changes occurring among young people first because most of the growth and most of the changes are coming from people born in the United States and for Latinos that’s a lot of young people today,” he said.

“In pre-K through 12th grade in public schools, you’ll find that Hispanics are approaching the one-in-four milestone. Today, about 24 percent of all people enrolled in public school pre-K through 12th grade [is] Hispanic,” Lopez said.

While Hispanic enrollment in elementary and secondary U.S. schools remain at higher levels than at postsecondary institutions, increased high school graduation rates and widened interest in attending college have led to a recent “surge in [Hispanic] college enrollment,” according to Lopez.

“That has happened so much so that Hispanics are changing the composition of the nation’s college campuses. Today, 16.5 percent of all young people enrolled in college between the ages of 18 and 24 are Hispanic. When it comes to college students some of the surge in enrollment in recent years have really been driven by Hispanic surges in enrollment.”

“In fact, between 2010 and 2011 it was Hispanic college enrollment, which increased more than any other group, up 15 percent. And you can see there are 2.1 million Hispanic young people enrolled in either two-year or four-year institutions,” he noted in the webinar presentation.

Source: Originally published in Diverse: Issues In Higher Education as Scholar’s Analysis Details Rapid Growth of Latinos in K-12, College Populations by Ronald Roach, January 30, 2013.

Posted on Monday, February 11, 2013 at 11:24 AM
  • Author: Ronald Roach - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Hispanic student enrollments reach new highs in 2011

The nation’s Hispanic student population reached a number of milestones in 2011, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center.

For the first time, the number of 18- to 24-year-old Hispanics enrolled in college exceeded 2 million and reached a record 16.5 percent share of all college enrollments.  For the first time, Hispanics are the largest minority group among the nation’s four-year college and university students.

In the nation’s public schools, for the first time, one-in-four public elementary school students were Hispanic. Among all pre-K through 12th grade public school students, a record 23.9 percent were Hispanic in 2011.

Today, with the high school completion rate among young Hispanics at a new high, more young Hispanics than ever are eligible to attend college. According to the Pew Hispanic analysis, 76.3 percent of all Hispanics ages 18 to 24 had a high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) degree in 2011. And a record share—nearly half (45.6%)—is enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges.

Over the past four decades, the number of Hispanics graduating with either an associate or a bachelor’s degree has increased seven-fold, with growth outpacing that of other groups. As a result, not only has the number of Hispanic degree recipients grown, so too has their share of all college degree recipients. Even so, the number of Hispanics awarded college degrees lags that of other groups, and their share of college graduates remains below that of all college student enrollments.

The Hispanic share among degree recipients from two-year and four-year colleges has also reached a record. In 2010, 8.5 percent of all bachelor’s recipients were Hispanic, up from 8.1% in 2009. Among all associate degree recipients, 13.2 percent were Hispanic, also a record. While the number of Hispanics receiving a college degree has grown, the number of degrees conferred on Hispanics trails other groups.

Source: Pew Hispanic Center, Hispanic Student Enrollments Reach New Highs in 2011, August 20, 2012.

Posted on Monday, September 10, 2012 at 10:39 AM

More Latinos obtain doctorates

Latinos are becoming better represented in every filed, from sports and entertainment to politics and the arts. Hispanics with a college degree increased to 13 percent in 2010 from 10 percent in 2000, according to Pew center.

And now a recent study by the University of California, Berkeley shows that the number of Latinos holding a doctorate degree rose 161 percent from 1990 to 2010, outpacing the non-Hispanic rate by almost double.

While white students seeking Ph.D.s at Berkeley outnumber Hispanics almost 7 to 1, their numbers are going in opposite directions. There were 385 Latino students pursuing doctoral degrees in the fall of 2011, a 46 percent increase in 20 years, according to Berkeley data. White doctoral students fell 25 percent to 2,529 in the same period.

Second-generation Hispanic-Americans are more likely than their immigrant parents to have college degrees, higher-paying jobs, and be homeowners, according to a 2010 report by the Center for American Progress.

Latino students credit teachers and counselors with steering them toward higher education by helping them find fellowships and scholarships.

Source: Fox News Latino, Latinos with Doctorates on the Rise, July 25, 2012, and Bloomberg, Hispanic Ph.D.s Jump as Fastest-Growing Minority Gains, July 23, 2012.

Posted on Monday, August 13, 2012 at 10:11 AM

Latinos in California want to go to college, worry about cost

Seven of every 10 California Hispanics say that success in life depends on getting a university education, but the majority of Latino parents are concerned about the cost of their children's college schooling, according to a story by EFE.

According to the report "Californians and Higher Education," released by the Public Policy Institute of California, 70 percent of state residents think that qualified and motivated students cannot enter a university because of the high tuition prices.

"Most Californians say budget cuts have hurt public colleges and universities a lot," Mark Baldassare, PPIC president and CEO, said. "Their concerns about where the system is headed are reflected in the low grades they give their leaders for handling higher education."

Hispanics are the most positive about financial aid: 67 percent of them feel that there is available financial aid, compared with 61 percent of Asian Americans, 44 percent of blacks and 48 percent of whites.

Moreover, 73 percent of Latinos believe in the importance of higher education to achieve success, above Asian Americans with 63 percent, African Americans with 53 percent and whites with 46 percent.

However, 66 percent of Hispanic parents are "very concerned" about not being able to afford a university education for their children, higher than the state average of 52 percent and quite a bit higher than the 37 percent of whites who expressed such concerns.

The telephone survey was conducted among more than 2,500 California residents in different languages between Oct. 25 and Nov. 8 and has an error margin of +/- 3.1 percent.

Source: EFE, Latinos in California want to go to college, worry about cost, November 18, 2011.

Posted on Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 12:19 PM
  • Posted By: Myriam Grajales-Hall
  • Written by: EFE

Is college worth it?

In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans (57 percent) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend. An even larger majority (75 percent) says college is too expensive for most Americans to afford. At the same time, however, an overwhelming majority of college graduates (86 percent) say that college has been a good investment for them personally.

 

Here are some of the findings:

 

College completion - In 2010, more than 60 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds had finished at least some college education (at a two-year or four-year institution), an increase from about 25 percent in the early 1960s. In 2010, 32 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds completed at least a bachelor’s degree (up from 13 percent in 1962) and an additional 9 percent had an associate degree as their highest degree completed. More young women (36 percent) than men (28 percent) complete at least a bachelor’s degree, and young whites (39 percent) continue to be more likely than young blacks (19 percent) or Hispanics (13 percent) to have at least a bachelor’s degree.

 

The value of college education – Opinion on this matter is consistent across racial and ethnic groups as well. Majorities of whites, blacks and Hispanics say the higher education system is doing only a fair or poor job in terms of providing value for the money spent by students and their families.

Whites (53 percent) are more satisfied with their education than are blacks (42 percent) or Hispanics (42 percent). Hispanic women are among the least satisfied (15 percent are very dissatisfied). But overall, men and women are equally satisfied with their education.

 

Reasons for not going to college - The young people who are not on the college track are disproportionately Hispanic. Among Hispanics ages 18-34, roughly two-thirds (65 percent) do not have a college degree and are not currently in school. This compares with 47 percent of blacks and 45 percent of whites in the same age group. Those not on the college track are also more likely to come from low-income households.

 

Getting ahead – Women place more importance than men on having a good work ethic and knowing how to get along with people. However, men and women do not differ over the importance of having a college degree. Whites and blacks place more importance than Hispanics on having a good work ethic, knowing how to get along with people and work skills learned on the job. Blacks stand out in terms of the value they place on higher education. More than half (55 percent) say having a college degree is extremely important in helping a young person succeed in the world today. This compares with 41 percent of whites and 39 percent of Hispanics.

 

Source: Pew Research Center, “Is College Worth it?” May 16, 2011,

Posted on Wednesday, September 21, 2011 at 4:19 PM

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