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Hispanic College Graduation Rates As a National Priority RISING TO THE CHALLENGE HISPANIC COLLEGE GRADUATION RATES AS A NATIONAL PRIORITY Andrew Kelly Mark Schneider Kevin Carey RISING TO THE CHALLENGE Hispanic College Graduation Rates as a National Priority Andrew P. Kelly American Enterprise Institute Mark Schneider American Institutes for Research American Enterprise Institute Kevin Carey Education Sector A Project of the American Enterprise Institute March 2010 Contents Foreword v Executive Summary 1 Introduction 3 National Findings 8 Rising to the Challenge? 14 Policy Implications 19 Appendix 23 Notes 41 About the Authors 43 Figures and Tables: Figure 1: Percentage of Students in Each Selectivity Category 6 Figure 2: Hispanic Graduation Gap, by Selectivity 8 Figure 3: Hispanic Graduation Rates and Ranges, by Selectivity 9 Figure 4: Average Hispanic Graduation Rates among Top Ten and Bottom Ten Schools, by Selectivity 9 Figure 5: H ispanic and White Graduation Rates at Hispanic-Serving Institutions, Overall and by Selectivity 12 Figure 6: H ispanic and White Graduation Rates at Non-Hispanic- Serving Institutions, Overall and by Selectivity 12 Figure 7: Graduation Rates of Hispanic and White Students in Each Selectivity Category, by Gender 13 iii Foreword igher education policy often focuses more on rates are one valuable measure of how quickly our Hcollege access than college completion. students are attaining degrees, and disaggregating Recently, however, the Obama administration, the graduation rates of students within and among sim - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Lumina ilar institutions can inform both institutional efforts Foundation for Education have articulated the goal and broader public policy. Knowing where students of increasing college completion. While we may enroll and, in turn, what institutions are doing to argue about the diverse pathways to meet this retain and graduate them are important compo - national goal, data are clear that raising the college nents to increasing college completion. completion rates of Hispanic students will be critical. At Excelencia in Education, we are working to This AEI report, Rising to the Challenge , acknowl - increase awareness and to identify promising prac - edges the reality that our success as a nation in tices to improve Latino college completion. How - meeting our college completion goals will be deter - ever, more work needs to be done to ensure our mined by how well we serve our Hispanic popula - youngest and fastest-growing population— tion. The authors document the fact that the status Latinos—earns college degrees. We must continue to quo will not get us there: though some institutions examine the pathways, choices, and graduation rates do an excellent job of helping their Hispanic stu - of Latino students in higher education. We must con - dents earn a degree, many more fail to keep pace. tinue to identify what is working to increase college The report offers policy recommendations at both completion and use this to inform what institutions the national and institutional levels that can and policymakers can do to increase our national lev - improve college completion, but, equally important, els of educational attainment. As students navigate the authors raise awareness of the need to better our complex higher education system, we must high - understand and serve Hispanic students in higher light the institutions that have proven they are grad - education. And serving the Hispanic population in uating Latino students, learn from them, and higher education means more than just enrolling replicate or scale up their effective practices. This them in colleges and universities—serving students report represents a productive step in the nation’s well also requires improving the chances that they quest to better understand this challenge. complete a degree. The current pace of degree completion is not suf - Deborah A. Santiago ficient to get us to our national goal. We must find Vice President for Policy and Research ways to accelerate college completion. Graduation Excelencia in Education v Executive Summary resident Barack Obama has called for the United however, to higher Hispanic graduation PStates to reclaim its position as the nation with rates at HSIs but to the tendency of these the highest concentration of adults with postsec - institutions to have below-average white ondary degrees in the world. Given the changing graduation rates. HSIs do about as well as demographics of the United States, this target can - non-HSIs with similar admissions criteria not be achieved without increasing the rate at which in graduating their Hispanic students. Hispanic* students obtain a college degree. In this report, we explore the dimensions of this challenge • Hispanic women graduate at consistently and identify steps that can be taken to help meet this higher rates than Hispanic men and often ambitious national goal. graduate at the same rate as white men in We show that: their schools. • At the average college or university, 51 percent We explore why some colleges are more success - of Hispanic students complete a bachelor’s ful than others in helping Hispanic students with degree in six years compared to 59 per cent similar academic backgrounds earn degrees, and we of white students at those same schools. identify some obstacles Hispanic students face in Even after accounting for the type of stu - completing a bachelor’s degree. Finally, we note spe - dents schools admit, Hispanic students cific conditions that seem to affect graduation rates graduate at lower rates than their white and discuss actions that can be taken to improve peers at all levels of admissions selectivity. them. Among the most important: • There is considerable variation in Hispanic A High Level of Institutional Commitment. The graduation rates across schools with simi - most consistent finding of our report is that an insti - lar admissions criteria. Among schools in tutional focus on and commitment to high levels of the “competitive” category, as defined by retention and completion for all students is a crucial Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges , the prerequisite to maintaining and improving the per - ten highest-performing schools graduate centage of Hispanic students who complete a bache - more than three times as many of their lor’s degree. Hispanic students, on average, as the ten lowest-performing schools. Better Consumer Information. Hispanic students and their families often suffer from a lack of infor - • The gaps between white and Hispanic mation about the true cost of college, the type of col - graduation rates are smaller at Hispanic- lege they are qualified to attend, and college practices Serving Institutions (HSIs). This is not due, and culture. Hispanic students are especially likely to * We use the term “Hispanic” throughout the report when referring to data from the National Center for Education Statis - tics and the Census Bureau because that is the term they use to categorize their data. 1 RISING TO THE CHALLENGE be “undermatched,” or to enroll at a college that is metrics. At the federal level, the criteria that desig - less selective than they are qualified to attend. Given nate a college or university as an HSI should be aug - the relationship between selectivity and graduation mented. Fulfilling the criteria to become an HSI rates, undermatched Hispanic students are more makes schools eligible to compete for federal Title V likely to leave college without completing their funding and marks the institution as being at the degrees than if they had attended more selective forefront of Hispanic higher education. At present, schools. Reforms that help to disseminate informa - the HSI designation does not reflect an institution’s tion about which schools are within students’ reach, performance on outcomes, such as student retention, both financially and academically, and which schools graduation, and labor-market success. Rather, have a successful track record with Hispanic students becoming an HSI is entirely a function of enrollment. could lead to a better match between the qualifica - Thus, there are incentives to enroll more Hispanic tions of Hispanic students and colleges and univer - students but few incentives to ensure that those stu - sities. This would in turn increase graduation rates. dents successfully complete a bachelor’s degree. We Better counseling about available financial aid also believe the HSI designation should be more tightly would likely lower the rate at which Hispanic stu - coupled to performance. At the state level, funding dents drop out of college for financial reasons. formulas should be revised to reward institutional performance rather than enrollment. Were state pol - A Focus on Retention and Graduation Rates. icymakers to structure funding formulas in a way Improving consumer information is unlikely to pro - that rewarded schools for successfully retaining and mote college completion in the absence of incentives graduating their students, and provided extra bene - for schools to focus on retention and graduation fits to those schools that serve underrepresented or rates. The undermatch argument largely ignores the at-risk individuals, institutions would have incen - role institutions play in ensuring that their students tives to improve their completion rates. remain enrolled, engaged, and moving toward a Without higher retention and graduation rates on degree. Put simply, all students should be encour - the part of Hispanic students—who will make up an aged to go to more selective
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