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Nick Jimenez
Nick
Jimenez, Caller-Times editor, writes a weekly editorial column Sundays. He can
be reached at 361-886-3787 or
jimenezn@caller.com.
Sunday, October 1, 2000
How can we get more Hispanics into college?
October is a month of changes. The torrid days of summer are finally over. The leaves haven't fallen yet, but the trees are ready to give them up. The World Series is just days away. And October is the month that many families have been planning for since their children were infants. It is the beginning of the college admission season.
Between now and early spring, the top and most selective colleges in the nation will start receiving tons of admission applications from high-school seniors. For the colleges, it is the start of a long process that ends when acceptance or rejection letters go out in March or April. Other colleges have different methods, but generally the four-year colleges handle admissions in much the same general manner.
For families who have planned, dreamed and worked for this moment, the submission of the college application package is the target they've been aiming at for years. High-school graduation is exciting, but for families where nothing less than a college degree is acceptable, the high-school graduation diploma is a given.
I was thinking about this when I read earlier this week about the absolutely horrendous low numbers of Hispanics who have college degrees. And how few Hispanics are in college now, and that's not even mentioning those few in graduate and professional school. Across the nation, barely 9 percent of all undergraduates are Hispanics. In Texas, according to 1997 figures, 18 percent of all college students were Hispanics.
How are we going to raise those figures? And what are the obstacles?
"For the kids, money is the biggest issue," said Gayle Tisdale, a longtime teacher and counselor at Miller High School. "They see that it's going to cost $12,000 or $15,000 to go to Texas A&M or Texas, and they simply decide 'well, maybe college is not for me.' "
Money is actually the least of the problems, though a blue-collar family may find it hard to believe. Federal and state grants can cut deeply into the sticker price of college tuition and fees.
No, perhaps the biggest obstacle is a mindset.
It's the mindset that says the high-school diploma is the goal. It's the mindset that puts a student and his family on the target to graduate from high school, first, and think that then they can concentrate on college, maybe.
But more affluent families and families with college as their goal know that even thinking about college in the 10th or 11th grade is almost too late.
"You have to start thinking about college when you're in the sixth grade," says Annette Chambliss, who is coordinating a federally funded program to get more minority kids into college. The program links Driscoll Middle School and Miller.
The program, which started in January, is aiming to get Driscoll school students to take more math, more foreign-language courses and more English courses, preparing for a college curriculum. Taking tougher courses gets kids on the road to college, but there are barriers even beyond that. Minority kids put up those barriers themselves, in their own mindsets.
"We see so many who have the potential, but they don't have the confidence in their own abilities," says Tisdale.
How do you build that confidence, given that so many come from poverty, from broken homes, from homes that move every month or homes where putting bread on the table every week is a miracle in itself? Some have greater problems.
Tisdale remembers the student who, on the day his high-school career ended, found all his belongings packed and waiting on the front porch.
The successful ones, Tisdale says, have some inner drive that keeps them going despite the obstacles, and they have someone they can depend on to cheer them on, to pick them up when they're down and push them when they slow down. Maybe it's a parent and maybe it's not.
How can we get more Hispanic students into college? It's when we get hundreds and even thousands more to aim for October and not May.
(Nick Jimenez can be reached by phone at 886-3787 or by e-mail at jimenezn@caller.com.)
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