Students attending Hispanic-Serving Institutions are more likely to stick with their studies than students at all other colleges and universities, even though they may have to stop and start their college careers, a report released Wednesday finds.
¡Excelencia! In Education, a non-profit focused on education and Latinos, analyzed 20 years of funding and student data from institutions with high Latino student populations, also known as Hispanic Serving Institutions or HSIs.
Their findings suggest that Latinos may be doing better when it comes to getting college educations than completion rates suggest. Those who did the analysis also say their findings point to a need to adjust how student success is measured in higher education and how to provide higher educations.
About 60 percent of all Latino college students attend HSIs. An HSI is defined as a public or private not-for-profit, degree-granting institution with 25 percent or more undergraduate, full-time equivalent Hispanic enrollment.
Latino enrollment has been increasing at colleges and universities. But the graduation rate of Latinos from higher education institutions remains below those of white and black students.
In its report, ¡Excelencia! went beyond graduation rates and looked at what it calls persistence – how long the student stayed enrolled or continued studies.
Deborah Santiago, CEO and vice president for policy at !Excelencia, said many students at HSIs stop and start, attend more than one institution and take far more than the traditional four years to graduate.
She refers to such students as post-traditional students, to avoid the negativity of non-traditonal students.
“Latino students are the poster child of post-traditional students,” she said. “This is the new norm.”
Generally, student success is tracked based on….
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