Published By The Dallas Morning News Published On February 17, 2022 (continued) The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board intends to study how trends have shifted for the state’s top students since the pandemic started in 2020. Keller noted that preliminary data has already shown sharper enrollment declines for Black and Latino students as well as those from low-income families. Those communities were hit particularly hard — both financially and healthwise — when COVID-19 swept across the country. The labor shortage has complicated the issue as many young adults are opting to go straight to work as industries are desperate for help. The labor market saw an increase this past year for Texans age 16 to 19, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. But often these young adults are going into jobs with low wages and slim chances of upward mobility. “It suggests that there’s tremendous, tremendous pressure on many students to put off going to college and go directly into the workforce,” Keller said. And the longer students are out of school, he said, the lower the chances they will ever enroll in college. But keeping more students on track for higher education is key to addressing Texas’ workforce needs, Keller said. Officials also worry about cultivating enough talent to attract new businesses and support the state’s growth and development. “There’s much more technology incorporated into how people work,” Keller said. “That means that we’re going to have to educate more Texans to higher standards than we’ve ever successfully achieved before.” Supporting students Texas adopted what is commonly known as the “top 10% plan” in 1997 after the Legislature required state universities and colleges to offer automatic admission to students who graduated in that top tier of their high school classes. The move was meant to diversify the state’s schools. And generally, more students of color have enrolled across Texas since then. But undergraduate enrollment for Black students peaked in 2011 at 296,413 and has been declining ever since to 246,342 in 2019, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Enrollment for white students also decreased in that time from 784,382 to 628,916. Meanwhile, Latino enrollment climbed from 633,660 to 803,716. Undergraduate enrollment in Texas As the Latino population grows in Texas, that’s reflected in the state’s colleges as well, said Deborah Santiago, the co-founder and CEO of Excelencia in Education, an organization that aims to accelerate Latino students’ success in higher education. About 40% of Latino students are the first in their family to go to college, which is more than any other ethnic group, she said. That means these students often don’t have someone who can help them “work the system.” Even the top 10% students who get automatic admission may need more help than just being at the top of the class. “Latinos are very economically vulnerable as a population,” Santiago said. “We have data that shows Latinos are less likely to take debt to go to college than others.” Paola Herrera’s mother brought her family to the United States from El Salvador nearly 15 years ago. As a first-generation student that doesn’t have legal status yet — which further complicated her situation — finances were a big stress since she could not apply for federal aid. Herrera obtained her associate’s degree before graduating from Terrell High School last year through dual-credit courses and started classes as a junior business student at Texas A&M University-Commerce. She struggled navigating the transition into higher education. Her family had little experience since her older brothers ultimately decided against college. But she said the pressure is worth it as she works for a more secure future. “I owe it to my mom,” Herrera said. “The struggles she had to go through having three kids and being a single mother.” She added that she also wants to serve as an example, because some Latinos she knows who skipped college did so because “they don’t feel like they’re enough, they feel like it’s not for them.” Santiago said institutions in Texas — and across the country — could do more to help Latinos and embrace the opportunity of that growing student population. Texas has 96 Hispanic-Serving Institutions — a federal designation for schools with at least 25% of its undergraduates who are Latino — according to the latest federal data. Many universities become HSIs because of changing demographics, not because of intentionality, Santiago said. So her organization created the Seal of Excelencia, or Seal of Excellence, to recognize campuses that serve Latino students through specific strategies, such as by increasing courses offered in Spanish or bilingually and by making transfers easier. Texas has eight of the 24 institutions with the seal, including El Paso Community College, the University of Texas at El Paso, Austin Community College, South Texas College, UT-Austin, UT-San Antonio, UT-Rio Grande Valley & Texas A&M University-San Antonio. However, the certification doesn’t mean that the institution is “perfect and has it all figured out,” but that it’s being intentional, Santiago said. Publication URL Read the full article
