PART TWO: Qualitative Characteristics of Latino Students aided by the WKBJ Foundation

Based on extensive interactions, my belief structure is that the Latino student has:

• A greater need for sheer information about higher education options
• An unclear understanding (like many of his peers for sure) of the link between individual actions and eventual consequences
• The tailwind of demographic change at his back
• An above-average probability that non-credit remedial and/or English language courses will be required in college

• A need for help on how to apply to, finance and graduate from college
• Reduced education options because of the high cost of attending a four-year college
• A struggle with respect to understanding the importance of self-advocacy
• A need, when college is either not feasible or not sought, to know that learning a marketable skill is a valid path to a sustainable economic life
• To be shown he can profit from more planning and less in-this-moment thinking when it comes to making decisions
• To better understand the education system, with its non-existent national standards
• To define a degree of individualism which is comfortable and rewarding
• A prospective advantage over peers as employers come to realize that hiring a bilingual person only helps them to understand language, whereas having a bilingual/bicultural person in an important position helps them to grasp how their customers or clients or patients think and make decisions

It is best to think of these beliefs as an “all other things being equal” listing as again, the impact of DOCUMENTATION ISSUES is not incorporated.

In any case, what is the Latino educational attainment comparison … on to Part Three.

PART THREE: Educational Attainment

According to the highly-respected Pew Research Center, Hispanic high school completions are now 86%, versus 67% twenty years ago, and the college headcount has tripled. Good news. Simultaneously, there is considerable room for improvement. Among Hispanics 25-29 years of age, 15% have a Bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 40% for their white counterparts.

Over the years, these are explanations which have been offered by various people for the lower rate of educational attainment, coupled with my brief comments on those reasons:

• Families do not care                            all the surveys contradict this slander
• Poverty of spirit                                    not sure what that means in real life
• Social readiness                                  cultural awareness is a challenge
• Documentation                                    obviously a critical factor
• Poor educational preparation                “an urban A is a suburban C”
• Lack of financial aid                              especially affecting undocumented students
• First in family issues                              nobody has direct knowledge of college
• Command of the language                     confuses analysis of the academic level
• No emphasis on reading                        a problem that hurts
• Single parent fatigue                              long hours cut the ability to help
• Quinceañera impact                             girls want to prove they are women
• Financial illiteracy                                  not unique to Hispanics
• Poverty of dollars                                 this is real in many instances
• No emphasis on writing                        another national issue, albeit quieter than reading

Each of these is worthy of a fairly lengthy analysis, although not here. Instead, I am proceeding to Part Four, which provides my own set of relevant questions.

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For over two decades, I have been Executive-Director, and sole staff, of a non-profit foundation seeking to advance the educational aspirations of students in and around the 20,000 population, predominantly Hispanic town of Dover, New Jersey. Located about 40 miles due west from midtown Manhattan, Dover has an urban rhythm to it, while economically it is the hole in the affluent donut of Morris County. My “Thoughts from Twenty Years in the Educational Trenches” are summarized in a book subtitled, “A Unique College Guide for Latino Students and Their Supporters.” In addition, there is a slimmed-down version, the Latino College Assistance Guide, in both English and Spanish.

The seven-part compilation of observations which follows, excerpted in part from the above, is the informational background which has led me to conclude that higher education aspiration levels for Hispanic students would be more fully actualized with a more proactive approach and a deeper examination of the “I” factor, individual responsibility.

I say this while fully recognizing that external factors — the challenges and functional vagaries of the immigration system and the institutional obtuseness of many colleges, to name two – are valid constraints. They are not amenable to being changed by or for a lone individual.

However, the clear existence of said impediments should not prevent personal follow-through on those components of the educational picture where individual commitment can prove successful.

On to Part One.

PART ONE: Educational Characteristics of Latino Students aided by the WKBJ Foundation

When I think of the Latino student in my office, I see a young person who, in no order of importance, is more likely than the average student seeking higher education to:

• Have attended a subpar public high school
• Be the first in his/her family to attend college
• Be in a situation where the use of debt has been shunned
• Have a family involved in most decisions of each of its members
• Attend a two-year college if going on to higher education
• Attend a university close to home, if enrolling in a four-year school
• Be relatively new to the United States
• Be surrounded by people who have a strong belief in fate
• Have an innate advantage in being both bilingual and bicultural
• Have parents who grew up in a country with a national education system
• Have “DNA” skewed more toward collaboration than American individualism
• Find, upon visiting his home country after a decade away, that his psyche has shifted to    that of being more like an American
• Be fully conversant with every new iDevice, but not equally likely to have non-school reading material at home
• Revere futbol, a fascinating game long on process but short on closure
• Be Catholic
• Experience family health problems which hurt the student’s ability to stay in school
• Be in a family with below-average income
• Understand that if he or she succeeds educationally, the benefits accrue to themselves first, but to their family and future generations as well
• Wonder on dark days whether returning to their home country, which they may no longer know well, is the more comfortable place to live
• Be with people who have come to the United States with an inadequate understanding of its many financial and educational challenges
• Ponder the pros and cons of a “business” marriage when the years go by, with no immigration reform, and falling in love with a documented spouse wanes in probability
• Come from a culture where the Ps—priests, parents, police, politicians—are more important to an individual’s daily life
• Have inexpensive cars with big mechanic bills that can hurt college affordability

Obviously excluded from the above list are DOCUMENTATION ISSUES, which “simply” affect every aspect of the Hispanic student’s life: education, aspiration level, language acquisition, career path, role in the family, relationship to friends, self-identity. The subject of “papers” is best treated separately, with an in-depth analysis of all the variables.

Part Two will delineate qualitative characteristics of Latino students.

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