Bennett: 'There's no further place from schools than the Capitol'

Congressman Joaquin Castro, D-TX, explained one of the biggest challenges with meeting the needs of students from underserved backgrounds is recognizing that many of the processes involved in getting to college are simply not that accessible to students whose parents perhaps didn't go to college — an issue that may not have been as prominent in the past few decades.Sen. Michael Bennet, D-CO, said during a recent Capitol Hill event that higher education must focus on "thinking about the ways for people to get the skills and knowledge they need without going through the same 19th century education many in Congress ... still believe kids or young people get their education," suggesting that while policies like Higher Education Act re-authorization legislation are being debated, "people out in America are actually innovating."

Bennet was one of several higher education and policy leaders who spoke during The Hill and Excelencia in Education's event, Latinos in College: Closing the Graduation Gap, all of whom focused in on the goal of closing achievement gaps for not only Latino students, but all those coming from underserved communities. While every speaker brought his or her own perspective to the table, the consensus was that more work needs to be done to get legislators and institutional leaders on the same page, because as Bennet said during the event, "There is no place in the universe that's further from schools than the Capitol."

"When we think about people struggling with their plans after high school, you have different challenges. A lot of folks are coming form households where they are essentially aspiring to something their parents did not do [...] where they aren't getting the advice or help they necessarily need at home to achieve what they want to achieve," said Castro. "And then in school we are simply missing the infrastructure for it. So people are really grappling with things that are really not that intuitive. A FAFSA form, for example, is not an intuitive thing. It's not something you can guess your way through. [...] The structures we have in place in the American education system are not adequate to do a great job of helping students get where they want to go."

Congressman Will Hurd, R-Tex, explained one of the ways policy can catch up is recognizing that a lot of students at Hispanic serving institutions (HSIs) go back and forth between part-time and full-time status and take classes in the summer, but in the last year or two the Pell Grant wasn't being offered in the summer to offset their costs. Addressing modern day challenges in the sector means policymakers need to overall consider the evolved nature of the workforce and student body. Today's institutional leaders are trying to prepare students for jobs that don't exist today — solving pipeline issues in a sustainable way requires looking ahead at the future job market and focusing on student success, he said.

"The key is making sure people are prepared when they get to college to be successful," said Hurd, referencing programs like Gear Up, in which students get coaching and mentoring advice from 7th grade to their first year of college. "There's a lot of conversations going around about how we can make [the PROSPER Act] a better bill that ensures we are helping our higher ed institutions [...] we have to prepare our kids for jobs that do not exist today, as the technological change we are going to see in the next 30 years is going to make the last 30 years look insignificant."

The need for a consensus around what higher education leaders say is necessary and what congressional leaders are observing as necessary is fundamental, concluded Bennet. Updating these goals are a prerequisite to actionable change.

"If you think about what the typical urban campus looks like in the U.S., it's not kids going to school between the ages of 18 and 22 anymore, it's a lot of people returning to finish schools. I think we need a much broader view of what Pell Grants are for, so we can think about things like apprenticeships so we can consider what else it takes for people to move along the income scale," he said.

"You have to adjust your leadership to the institution that you're guiding," said Queens College President Félix Matos Rodríguez. "For example we had some things that the CUNY system was doing [...] and we looked at how we could tweak some of those things to support our Latino students better. We ended up creating a student success coaching program modeled around data," so that "we could be very supportive of them in their academic and personal journey."

"When you're the president, you're able to have a comprehensive view," which means you need to know "where the points of pressure are to be able to make a difference," he added.

Carlos Santiago, Commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, echoed these sentiments on the role of the president, explaining that when policy lags in helping underserved students complete, leaders simply have to get ahead and create mechanisms of success on their own.

"There's no magic formula for Latino student success. We know what helps students succeed, and we know what helps Latino students succeed, it's not different from what helps other students. What they need are the support structures they don't have," said Santiago.

Madeline Pumariega, Chancellor of the Florida College System, suggested universities can get ahead by making an impact at the K-12 level.

"There's a lot of work, you know cradle to career [...] to find that pathway, students being exposed to good education in early Pre-K matters," said Pumariega. "I think an area we really need to look at as a country is dual enrollment. The reality is that high school credential was your ticket to the middle class 20 years ago. It's your ticket to poverty today [...] We know that credential is no longer that path, so how do we build with our K-12 partners accelerated mechanisms? How do we go to scale on dual enrollment if we know it's working? For example, students can take their gateway courses during junior and senior year so they don't need remediation."

"So, how do we build our business model to do that," she asked. "We can look at those pathways in technology and those in advanced manufacturing and areas that are leading to high wage jobs, and then we can tie those to internship opportunities as well."