Education Law

College gaps

So much attention lately has been about the health care reform effort, and after last night’s passage in the House of Representatives, another bill was passed that will greatly alter the way college students get loans.  The new bill takes the money out of the hands of private lenders and puts it with the government, who hope to waste less and give college students more money for college.  So while we’re thinking about college students, a Dallas Morning News article surfaced that got BoardBuzz thinking.

According to a new report from the American Enterprise Institute, the national college graduation rate for Hispanic students is 51%, while for white students it is 59%.  So just a little over half of all Hispanic students who enroll in college graduate, and many of these students reside in urban areas of the nation.

In Texas, where the number of Hispanic college students is larger than many other states, the number drops to 40% of students graduating.  And if you break it down by gender as well, the number of male Hispanic students graduating is just 37%.  But what was interesting to us is that one of the primary problems students gave for dropping out of college is financial reasons.  The report said that many Hispanic students weren’t aware of loan and scholarship opportunities.

This brings us back to the new bill passed yesterday.  We spend a great deal of time, energy, blogspace, and Twitterverse discussing “college readiness” and hope that all students in K-12 America will someday go to college.  The reasons this is important are clear, and in many cases schools are preparing students adequately for college.

We also need to prepare those same students about the business of college and how to stay in school once they’re enrolled.  The likelihood of them re-enrolling once they drop out of college is low, and it would be shameful for so much effort to go into students during their K-12 years and not have them live up to their potential.  What is your district doing to follow through once high school students get to college?  Do you track how many actually graduate?

Full post as published by BoardBuzz: NSBA's Daily Weblog on March 22, 2010 (boomark / email).