Ensuring America's Future - Information

 

  • Lumina Foundation's big goal is for the nation to increase the number of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials from 39% to 60% by the year 2025. Read More
  • Gates Foundation's goal is to double the number of young people who, by the time they are 26, earn a postsecondary degree or certificate with marketplace value. Read More
  • Obama Administration aims to re-establish the United States by 2020 among the top ranking nations for college degree attainment. Read More

Given the size of the U.S. Latino community it impossible to meet these goals without a significant increase in Latino college completion by 2020. Excelencia in Education released two publications to inform and guide a policy roadmap to increase Latino college completion and grow America’s human capital.

This brief aligns a focus on Latino college degree completion with federal policy to address the emerging national agenda to accelerate degree completion, taking into account the current population projections, educational attainment levels, and economic reality.

 

As Excelencia builds the field of professionals focused on increasing American college completion and the role Latinos students play in meeting this goal, the Excelencia website will post pertinent research and public discussions:

These and other documents in the series deliver the measures to assess educational attainment of the Latino population in the United States, and provide approaches for integrating this community into the larger national context of educational attainment.

Report tracks more than a quarter of a million students who entered a California Community College in 2003‐04 over six years, analyzes their progress, and examines the outcomes by major racial/ethnic populations. The report highlights the urgent need to improve student outcomes in community colleges, particularly for blacks and Latinos.

The National Bureau of Economic Research "suggests that the growth in the length of time needed to earn bachelor's degrees is indeed real and cause for concern. The study finds that the shift, over recent decades, to longer time-to-degree rates is not uniform across colleges, but is concentrated among students who enroll at less competitive four-year public institutions and at community colleges. Further, the analysis finds likely links between longer time-to-degree rates and resources, both of institutions and of students."

Discussion of findings that state that, "Latino college students are less likely to graduate than their white classmates, according to a new study by the American Enterprise Institute. Guest host Allison Keyes speaks with study co-author Mark Schneider and Deborah Santiago, vice president for policy and research at Excelencia in Education, about what needs to be done to close this gap."

Referenced Material:  Rising to the Challenge: Raising Hispanic Graduation Rates as a National Priority

This brief reconciles what we know with what we hear to inform what we can do to address the realities facing Latino students in a manner integrated into the broader policy agenda and discussions in higher education. This brief takes stock of the current higher education environment and integrates the perspectives of elected officials, students, and service providers from interviews and focus groups with data to better understand the role of Latinos in the future access, persistence, and completion of higher education in the United States and puts this information together to articulate what we can do to address critical policy issues affecting Latino students in the current higher education context.

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