A student at Texas State University-San Marcos approached Dr. Jaime Chahin about 20 years ago and asked to borrow 20 dollars. Chahin offered directions to his house and instructed the young man to arrive early one Saturday morning. “I had him pick weeds from my yard and I paid him,” said Chahin, currently dean of the school’s College of Applied Arts. “I figured it was better than just giving him the money.”
Besides teaching a lesson on working for wants and needs, Chahin inspired the student to think beyond an undergraduate degree. The young man continued his studies at Michigan State and eventually earned a Ph.D. Now he’s a tenured professor at a Midwestern university, placing him among the sliver of Hispanic faculty members at U.S. institutions of higher education.
The burgeoning Hispanic population has been a popular topic among demographers in recent years, playing a key role in the last two presidential elections and projected to account for nearly one in three U.S. residents by 2060. Hispanics are graduating from high school at higher rates than a decade ago, and the number with either an associate’s or a bachelor’s degree has reached record levels.
But according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Department of Education, Hispanics represent about 4 percent of all faculty members at two- and four-year schools.
At this weekend’s eighth annual American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) conference, March 28-31, attendees will discuss solutions to raise the low numbers.
“Overall, that’s a big challenge,” said Dr. Anne-Marie Nunez, an associate professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio. “A lot of times people will say there aren’t enough people in the pipeline and they’ll use that as an excuse. But research shows that, even when there are qualified Latino candidates, they’re still not being given faculty opportunities.”
Despite the demographic trends (or, perhaps, because of them), Hispanics face a climate that’s arguably lukewarm. Latino studies have been prohibited in parts of the country. There also have been efforts to ban Spanish and enforce English-only policies in classrooms, which studies suggest could hurt Hispanic graduation rates. In addition, anti-immigration and anti-affirmative action sentiment has swelled among segments of Americans.
