By Devin Browne, Fronteras Desk
Latino students lag their non-Latino counterparts in higher-educational attainment and "intentional" programs and services are needed to balance the equation, says a new report from Excelencia in Education.
The report, Latino College Completion in 50 States, was released last month and shows that about 19 percent of Latino adults have an associate degree or higher compared to 38 percent of all adults in the United States.
Questions about this discrepancy fueled the report from Washington D.C.-based Excelencia in Education.
One of the authors of the report, Deborah Santiago, says programs and support services that help all students are good, but that even more “intentional” ones are necessary for Latino students.
"They tend to be a smaller concentration of enrollment," Santiago said. "Because they might be the first in their family to go to college, availing themselves of the resources and support services available can be more challenging for them because they don’t know they exist."
The University of Arizona had programs such as those Excelencia's report referenced. But in 2010 Arizona voters passed a proposition banning such programs.
Maria Teresa Velez, associate dean at the university's graduate college, recalled: "They passed a law that specifically states that individuals cannot be privileged by the state on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or national origin."
Velez said she has been able to hold onto to a few programs for Latino students, but only those that receive federal - not state - funding.
Read the Latino College Completion in 50 States Executive Summary
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