The Obama administration has articulated a goal to return to the top of the international rankings for degree completion by 2020. Due to Latinos’ youth and projected growth, the U.S. cannot reach its goals for international rankings without a tactical plan that includes Latino students. To reach this goal, higher education will have to do more than just offer access to Latino students — it will have to serve Latino students in much more effective ways than in the past.
It is important to make a distinction between enrolling and serving Latino students in policy conversations about Latino student success. While many policymakers would like to assume enrolling and serving are equivalent, they are not. Enrollment is a prerequisite for serving students, just as serving students is a prerequisite for success (degree completion). Enrollment is about access, while serving students is about retention and completion.
Serving Latino students goes beyond enrolling them. It is generally assumed that the growth and concentration of Latino students at an institution will trigger efforts by the institution to adapt its practices to better serve the Latino students enrolled, and that alone makes these institutions Hispanic “serving.” In fact, the federal definition of a Hispanic-serving institution (HSI) is predicated on the concentrated enrollment of Latino students, rather than on a specific mission to serve these students (as with historically Black colleges and universities and tribal colleges and universities for their respective populations).
Federal legislation defines HSIs as degree-granting, nonprofit institutions of higher education with 25 percent or more undergraduate full-time equivalent Hispanic enrollment. However, it is a poorly kept secret that there are institutions of higher education that meet the enrollment criteria to be identified as an HSI but whose leaders cannot articulate what it means to “serve” Latino students. Conversely, there are also institutions that do not meet the enrollment criteria to be an HSI but are leading effective efforts to serve Latino students. If a concentrated enrollment of Latino students does not explicitly mean an institution is serving Latino students, then what does it mean to serve Latino students?
Serving Latino students is about intentionality. It means knowing the profile of the Latino population at your institution and in your community. It means knowing the performance of your Latino students and identifying their strengths and needs. It means considering adaptations to curricular design, academic, and support services to increase retention or promote persistence for your Latino students. Serving Latino students means graduating your Latino students. Serving Latino students does not mean institutions serve them at the expense of other students. This is not an either/or proposition. Rather, institutions can build on what works in serving Latino students to better serve other students as well.
