At the average college or university, only 51 percent of Hispanic students graduate within six years, while the typical six-year graduation rate for white students is 59 percent, says a new report that explores why some schools are more successful than others at graduating Hispanic students.
In the report, which was released this month by the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, researchers Andrew P. Kelly, Mark Schneider, and Kevin Carey focus on national data on four-year colleges, including Hispanic-serving institutions. They find that graduation rates for Hispanic students vary widely from school to school, and even among institutions that are rated to be equally selective. Among schools ranked “competitive” by Barron’s Profile of American Colleges, for instance, the 10 highest-performing schools graduate three times as many of their Hispanic students, on average, as the 10 lowest-performing schools, the report says.
It also recommends ways to improve school-completion rates for Hispanic students. They include building schools’ commitments to retaining and graduating all students at high levels, giving families better information on the actual cost of college and which schools their children are eligible to attend, and tying government aid to schools’ success at graduating high percentages of Hispanic students.