Between 2010 and 2011, a surge in the population of 18- to 24-year-old Latino students attending U.S. colleges resulted in Hispanics becoming the largest minority group enrolled at four-year institutions.
In a College Board webinar entitled “Education Demographics with a Latino Focus” on Tuesday, Dr. Mark Hugo Lopez, the associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center research organization, analyzed the 2010-2011 surge and other demographic trends to paint a picture of the overall growth of Latinos in American education and society. The presentation was drawn from three recent reports released by the Washington-based research center, which had documented “statistical portraits of Hispanics in the U.S., technology use among Hispanics, and unauthorized immigrants and the impact of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)” executive order.
“The Hispanic population has grown; it’s grown quite rapidly in fact, and more than half of the growth in the United States between 2000 and 2010 in its population was driven by growth in the nation’s Hispanic population. Today, we estimate that there are actually about 52 million Hispanics in the country today,” Lopez told webinar participants.
“You’ve probably heard a lot about the nation becoming a majority-minority nation. A lot of those changes will be driven by Hispanic and Asian population growth over the course of the next few decades,” he said.
