November 6, 1998
By Anthony P. Carnevale
(Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of a speech given by Mr. Carnevale before the 12th Annual Conference of Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities [HACU] held in San Diego on September 30, 1998.)
I want to thank HACU for inviting me to speak to you today.
What bring us here is a single fact, a common commitment, and an inescapable reality.
The single fact that unites us is this: If you are going anywhere in the new global economy, you have to go to college first.
And the common commitment that unites us is reflected in the HACU mission statement:
Bringing together colleges and universities, schools, corporations, government agencies, and individuals to establish partnerships for:
Promoting the development of Hispanic-serving colleges and universities;
Improving access to and the quality of postsecondary education opportunities for Hispanic students; and
Meeting the needs of business, industry and government through the development and sharing of resources, information, and expertise.
The inescapable reality that brings us together is reflected in the last lines of the HACU mission statement that refer to meeting the needs of business and industry. We will know we have achieved our goal of Hispanic inclusion when Hispanic college graduates turn their educational accomplishments into good jobs and can take advantage of promising career opportunities.
And what would happen if we actually achieved our goal?
What would happen as a result of this increase in the nation's human capital is that it would add $118 billion in new wealth to American society. And that new taxable wealth would add another $41 billion in revenues to our federal, state, and local coffers.
This new earnings power would also do a lot of good for Hispanic families, reducing the proportion of Hispanic families who earn less than $28,00 per year, the "adequate" family income as designated by the U.S. Department of Labor, from 41 percent to 21 percent.
Now don't get me wrong. None of us believe that the purpose of education is merely to train foot soldiers for big business and make the rest of us more money. Our education system needs to prepare good neighbors and good citizens as well as good workers.
The Hispanic community knows better than any other that education matters. Hispanic adults see college as even more important than non-Hispanics, as the California Higher Education Policy Center reported last year. Seventy-eight percent of Hispanic adult Californians surveyed said that a college education is necessary for almost everyone. And 65 percent of Hispanic adults believe that many people who are qualified to go to college do not have the opportunity to do so—compared to 50 percent of the non-Hispanic adults.
Despite recent progress in the education of Latinos, daunting challenges overshadows future educational success:
The challenge of getting more Latinos through high school;
The challenge of increasing college attendance by students who have the academic ability to continue their education … but don't;
The challenge of making sure more Hispanic students use community colleges as a springboard to bachelor's, graduate, and professional degrees—and to the top jobs for which those degrees prepare students; and
The challenge of increasing retention and graduation in all postsecondary programs.
More than that, there is a growing need to increase access to postsecondary institutions for nontraditional Latino students.
Postsecondary institutions must redouble their efforts to include young people who have dropped out of the educational system and need to find their way back in. They must serve adult immigrants who have basic educational needs not because they dropped out but because they never dropped in. And they must help welfare mothers and mainstream Hispanic workers who need education and training to get jobs, keep their jobs, and move on to better ones.
How can we achieve these goals? Depending on who is giving them, the usual answers tend to focus on more or less money, more or less affirmative action, more or less tests, and more or less bilingual education.
I will argue that these easy solutions are unlikely to live up to their billing.
I believe the evidence supports another set of more difficult solutions with greater promise.
The prologue to the HACU mission statement points the way toward these more difficult solutions when it says:
"For some, education is a privilege taken for granted. Urged by family and friends to explore our potential as unique, gifted human beings, we moved forward, sure-footed and confident, toward the riches that awaited us in our achievements.
"Setbacks and misgivings were temporary.
"And as we look back upon the roads we travel, we believe that it was our right and our destiny to have traveled so far. We forget that we were supported. That there was encouragement. That there was an ever-present expectation that we would succeed. That time was the only barrier. For many, however, it is much harder."
Bottom line, the most difficult challenge of all is the fundamental problem with academic achievement among Hispanics. Our progress on Hispanic achievement is laudable, but there is more to do.
If you are going to go to college, you need to get through high school first and Hispanic students are still about 10 percentage points below White students in receiving a high school diploma—84 percent for Whites versus 73 percent for Hispanics.
And it's not just getting the degree. It's also what you know. Hispanic students are significantly behind more privileged non-Hispanic Whites by the 4th grade. White 4th graders are about twice as likely as Latino 4th graders to be at or above basic math proficiencies. And limited evidence shows that gap doesn't shrink as students commence to the 8th grade.
Institutions will also have to change. This is especially true in the case of dealing with nontraditional students. Welfare clients and other educationally disadvantaged students will need remediation. When K-12 fails, higher education has to pick up the slack. We can't just have colleges for the best students any more than we can have hospitals for only healthy people.
One of the most significant challenges facing students, faculty, and higher education policy makers is ensuring the smooth transition of students between community colleges and four-year colleges and universities.
To ensure access to college and success once a student gets there, parents and students also need actionable information on everything from academic performance and how to improve it, to the characteristics, costs, financial aid sources and entrance requirements of colleges and universities.
But information alone will not be enough. We can make institutions change, but we have a tougher mission as well: we really need to help people change.
We need to take advantage of our cultural assets. The bottom line is that we need to marshal our social capital—the capacity of families and social institutions like churches and schools to engage with children to build their self-esteem—in support of strengthening our collective human capital—the sum total of individuals' knowledge and skills.
How do we tackle this daunting task? Through better information and counseling, a new push for parental involvement, and aggressive outreach.
When Latino families, like any other families, are properly included and connected to school activities, their participation is overwhelmingly beneficial for their children, themselves, and the school.
Traditionally, schools and school systems have seldom offered staff any formal training in collaborating with parents or in understanding cultural differences among various kinds of families. Progressive schools of education and leading-edge school districts are demonstrating that training can help teachers and other school staff change the traditional images of engaging parents only when a student is in trouble or when the school needs help with a bake sale. The new model: parents as partners and fellow learners with their children, as well as with teachers and staff.
Preparing Hispanic teachers and non-Hispanic teachers who can work effectively with Hispanic students is a major challenge. Of particular importance to Hispanic communities, there is a chronic shortage of bilingual and English as a Second Language teachers—175,000 additional bilingual teachers are needed just to meet current demand.
To achieve effective partnerships between colleges and local communities, faculty incentives—merit awards, promotion, tenure—should emphasize real service to the community and region, and applied research to synthesize lessons learned. An integrated and complimentary mix of teaching, research, and community service should be the core of faculty members' contribution to the educational enterprise.
Perhaps the most important affect of increasing social capital in support of more access to college is to create positive expectations among parents, teachers, and students for high levels of achievement. Young people tend to become who they expect to be. Students with high expectations perform well; students with low expectations perform poorly.
In sum, supportive strategies to empower and involve students, parents, and teachers can play a crucial role in helping students complete their high school program successfully, make the transition from high school to college, and finish college.
None of what needs to be done to improve Hispanic access to college can be done easily. But to the extent we can improve Hispanic access to college, we also guarantee Hispanic access to leadership roles in our culture, our political system, and our economy. And to the extent we fail we deny that access.
(Anthony P. Carnevale is an internationally recognized authority on education, training, and employment. He currently serves as vice president for Public Leadership at Educational Testing Service.)
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