Skip to main content. Political Science. About the Author s :. Interested in this topic? Stay updated with our newsletters: History and Political Science. In contrast, the percentages for faculty of color are as follows: Asian 9.
Recent data indicate that the portion of Latinx presidents stayed roughly steady—rising to 3. With these data in mind, we assigned great import upon the value of support via mentorship.
Thusly, as co-editors we present the work of knowledgeable and productive scholars who represent a spectrum of voices inclusive of graduate students, junior and senior professors, and HSI administrators who are conducting research on the increasingly critical role HSIs serve in American higher education.
The U. Department of Education defines Hispanic-Serving Institutions HSIs as those serving large numbers of first-generation, low-income Hispanic students, i. Initially, the significance of the federal designation was that it enabled eligible institutions to apply for federal monies under Title III in P. Valdez, So why is the HSI designation important now and why will it remain such well into the future? Student enrollment and demographic trends suggest the number of HSIs will only increase in the future.
Similarly, forecasts suggest that Latinx students will be disproportionately enrolled in them. Thus, HSIs as an institutional sector of higher education represent an essential conduit for Latinx college student success, and one that must be increasingly examined and understood. Herein lies the purpose of this special issue. Valdez urges scholars to critically consider the past, present, and future trends of the HSI designation, but to likewise attempt to understand the contentious political strategies proponents of Hispanic higher education were required to employ to codify this into federal statute.
If we as scholars of HSIs better understand the contentious past regarding how this designation came to exist, we will be more effectively position to understand its future.
The authors in the special issue offer stimulating starting points for this critical dialogue from a variety of perspectives. The Work Featured in this Special Issue Collectively, the work presented in this volume seeks to deepen our understanding of the organizational mission and future of HSIs as this nation struggles with how to maintain an equity agenda and how to promote access to opportunity for all people, while redefining excellence in a way that promotes justice for Latinx communities.
The following provides a brief overview of each unique contribution included in this special issue. The authors demonstrate how local contexts shaped the paths of these institutions before and regardless of the federal designation of HSIs. Moreover, they show us the unique paths and individualized institutional struggles to meet student needs characterized by setbacks, persistence, and differential means to achieve success.
Doran and Medina inform us regarding how HSIs are often community- based organizations in which a key distinguishing feature is their commitment to community versus the racial or ethnic makeup of the student population. The authors fill gaps in our understanding of HSI identities and their evolution over time by describing 1 an intentional organizational type, created to serve a particular region already inhabited by predominantly Latinx students, and 2 the grassroots, an organizational context in which demographic shifts evolved over time and changes were made in reaction to student and faculty activism.
The authors remind us that the majority of HSIs do not overtly express a mission focused on serving Latinx students and that many are emerging in states that do not have historically significant Latinx populations. Through the theoretical lens of transformational change, Doran and Medina teach us that institutional commitments and values embedded in the organizational fabric at multiple levels and over time, are indicative of their commitment to the surrounding community.
Certain structural elements that reveal attitudinal change via transformational change in organizational structures are highlighted, including: curriculum, funding, space allocations, and policies. The authors simultaneously demonstrate that HSIs are not immune to struggle for access and representation by and for Latinx students in higher education. Support is not a given, and opportunities to bolster it are sometimes met with resistance and counter-resistance. The authors show us that HSIs represent a diverse set of institutions that are simultaneously embodied by the Latinx population and remind us that scholars must consider the history, context, and localized response by stakeholders in their discourse.
Maritza De La Trinidad, Francisco Guajardo, Peter Kranz, and Miguel Guajardo employ methodological and theoretical frameworks that align inquiry, pedagogy, and meaning- making processes to provide us with a unique conceptual case study analysis that offers contrast between the curricular choices of a historical institution with those of a new institution in a state of genesis.
De La Trinidad et al. Importantly, they remind us that curricula, teaching and research practices, and service must be reflective of and responsive to the institutions they serve. In other words, we must promote the development of HSIs within localized ecological contexts. Cuellar et al. For example, they underscore the reality that the IEO framework is often applied to traditional students who are enrolled on a full-time basis on residential campuses, when that often does not reflect the reality of students attending HSIs.
They call on scholars to consider and name additional metrics that might be used to measure enhancement of student experience. Adhering to certain principles that 1 Latinx students are racialized producers of knowledge; 2 HSIs have the potential to intentionally serve through empowering environments and experiences; and 3 Institutions and scholars must move beyond conventional measures of success toward more tailored notions of empowerment for Latinx students.
They further call for a more nuanced account of background characteristics to be considered as input variables, including: the racial heterogeneity of Latinx students, gender differences, socioeconomic background, first-generation status, generational status, immigrant status, academic skills and self-efficacy, and community cultural wealth.
In terms of environments, they encourage scholars to consider: campus climate, curriculum, and co-curricular considerations. What Does it Mean to be Latinx-Serving? Using IPEDS data and analysis of institutional websites, Garcia examines how institutions serve Latinx students beyond superficial enrollment.
Garcia posits that the HSI organizational identity might be viewed politically, i. Institutions may lack extensive histories or organizational identities because they function as Predominantly White Institutions.
Thusly, the author questions: How is the HSI identity to be measured? Garcia suggests we move beyond the ontological understanding of a Latinx-serving identity to greater practical implications using a clearly defined typology that tells us what the Latinx-serving organization looks like in practice. She suggests that a more robust analysis considers positive academic and non-academic outcomes, campus culture, improved sense of belonging, culturally relevant pedagogy and advising, and validating support programs.
Garcia evaluated six institutions using two major measurement areas, including: 1 graduation and completion rates, and 2 the number of programs and services deemed culturally engaging for Latinx, low-income, first-generation, and Students of Color. Garcia found a lower percentage of faculty and administrators that identify as Latinx and People of Color, as well as lower rates of Latinx and Students of Color graduate students in HSIs.
Moreover, these measures are useful for classifying institutions, measuring institutional effectiveness, basing funding decisions, and engaging in the practice of campus culture improvement. The authors begin by sounding the alarm regarding the disparate achievement levels found in low- and high-Latinx enrolling institutions, with particular focus on California and Texas as high-Latinx enrolling states.
Calling for improved practices that promote completion rates in light of decades of research that have pointed to gaps in Latinx student achievement, the authors describe in detail the group-process of institutional-level program design and evaluation. Specifically, the intervention sought to mediate lagging graduation rates that correlated with the critical first year of college at a small, private, religiously-affiliated HSI in a large, metropolitan city in Texas.
Their assessment and evaluation process drew from four sources of evidence that shaped the re-design of an intervention program, including: 1 longitudinal institutional cohort data, 2 extant scholarly literature on Latinx student success, 3 student focus group data, and 4 syllabi content analysis data.
The team conducted five focus groups with first-year, first-term students to achieve a contextualized understanding of the barriers to success they faced.
The authors describe how the diverse interdisciplinary team noted the interconnected nature of the barriers students faced and that they were thusly prompted to answer a deeper question related to student workload. Gonzalez and Meling then describe the academic workload content analysis the team conducted which uncovered a stark and alarming contrast between the sheer volume of assignments that were expected of first-term students compared with third-year students.
Through a contextualized and local team-based approach, the high- volume task-based assignments that were intended to scaffold student learning were exposed as a potential barrier to success.
The authors reveal how the data-driven assessment and evaluation approach used in this case study led to options that would address the unintended consequences of course design at this HSI. The authors present post-redesign assessment data that suggest changes to the intervention program led increased mid-term grade point average GPA , end of first-term GPA, and fall-to-fall persistence.
In this piece, Gonzalez and Meling offer a tangible example of a case study that demonstrates the great promise HSIs hold to go beyond being merely Hispanic-enrolling. Rather, HSIs can to be conduits for Latinx student success when locally informed policy and practice decisions are made and implemented.
They also highlight the diversity of identities carried by HSIs generally, and the diversity of the students served specifically. This approach provides a compelling rationale for focusing on graduate students within the context of a research institution that is actively seeking and on the threshold of achieving the HSI designation.
As the uproar over remarks of Harvard president Lawrence Summers suggests, any possible shortage of science students would be easier to solve by encouraging more middle-class women already attending college to choose science majors. And the scientist shortage may itself be exaggerated. Although scientific fields are growing, this high-percentage growth starts from such a small base that we should have little difficulty filling the relatively few new positions created.
Bowen and his coauthors make much of the substantial pay premium for college graduates, but the professionals whose compensation growth is mostly responsible for this advantage have been managers and sales workers. Pay of scientists and engineers has been stagnant, suggesting no skills shortage of the sort the authors fear. The U. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by only 28 percent of U. Credential inflation is a more likely consequence of expanded college enrollment than elimination of nonexistent skills shortages.
Increasing the share of lower-class children who attend elite colleges is a good idea. With growing income inequality, there is now more awareness that upward mobility—the share of adults who occupy a higher relative place in the income distribution than their parents did at a similar age—is no greater here than in other industrialized nations.
Can class-based affirmative action loosen the barriers? Credential inflation is a more likely consequence of expanded college enrollment than elimination of nonexistent skills shortages. Increasing the share of lower-class children who attend elite colleges is a good idea. With growing income inequality, there is now more awareness that upward mobility—the share of adults who occupy a higher relative place in the income distribution than their parents did at a similar age—is no greater here than in other industrialized nations.
Can class-based affirmative action loosen the barriers? The authors note that affirmative action can be only a stopgap, because children from lowerclass families are less likely to prepare for college and take the SAT, and if they do take it, they have lower scores.
The authors properly observe that overcoming these problems requires reform of the social and economic context like health and neighborhood environments in which lower-class families raise children, provision of adequate early childhood care and instruction, and improvement in the quality of elementary and secondary schools. Unfortunately, having described the need for both socioeconomic and school reform, the authors discuss mostly the latter, reinforcing the flawed conventional view that schools, if only run properly, could generate classless outcomes even when students come from highly stratified backgrounds.
After all, for every child from the bottom income quartile who rises to the middle or even top quartile, there must be a child from the upper classes who falls. This logical outcome can be modified a little by differential fertility or by immigration—for example, if the upper classes produce too few children to replace themselves in the occupational structure, while the lower classes produce too ma ny, or if immigrants fill slots at the bottom while economic growth creates more slots overall—but, for the most part, mobility must have losers as well as winners.
Expanding the number of low-income students attending elite colleges requires displacing some high-income students who currently get those spaces. Consider, for example, the frenetic competition among better-off children for access to the very elite colleges to which Bowen, Kurzweil, and Tobin want to increase lower-class access.
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