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By Adalyn Hixson

May 4, 2009

The Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine is happy once again to publish lists of the 100 four-year colleges and universities in the United States that conferred the most bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees on Hispanic students. Information cited is the latest available – as we go to print – and is derived from the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) program.

These figures are for July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2008. State budget cuts had certainly hit by then, but not the economic meltdown of more recent months. Top 100 results are mixed. Total bachelor’s degrees awarded by the Top 100 are up 10 percent, around 6,000 students, over those of the previous year; master’s degrees are down, but by less than 1 percent; and doctorates are down close to three dozen. There’s a mounting awareness of what institutions can and must do to ensure student engagement, retention and graduation. But do they now have the resolve and resources to act upon it?

Six institutions between them captured the three top spots on each list: FIU, Nova Southeastern, UT-Pan American, UT-El Paso, USC and UCLA. We salute them!

Bravo!
Each degree granted represents a success story preceded by hard work – yours and theirs. Some institutions have been building their numbers incrementally, over many years. A few others plunged into the arena with both guns blazing, and their rapid gains are nothing short of phenomenal.

Unsurprisingly, the lists are again dominated by public and private schools in California, Florida, New York and Texas, but there are gains too in some less likely places. Ten years ago, our Top 100 lists included schools from 20 states and the District of Columbia. This year, 28 states plus Washington, D.C.

Unsung Heroes
More than half of college-bound Hispanics begin their higher education at a community college. Those colleges are not named herein, but their contributions to these lists are enormous. Let us praise, too, the visionaries who pioneered articulation agreements and those among you still working to ease the path from two-year to four-year institutions.

The Ivy League Schools
A look at the Ivies offers a fast, if limited, index to how Hispanics are faring at some of the most highly selective and hotly desired schools between our borders. No Ivy League School is found among the top 100 in granting bachelor’s degrees to Hispanics, where the number of awardees is 3,365 in first place and 236 in 100th place. Undergraduate enrollment at the Ivies ranges from about 4,100 at Dartmouth to just under 14,000 at Cornell. The Hispanic population at present is a little more than 15 percent of the U.S. total – and climbing. All things being equal – Dartmouth would have 615 Hispanic undergraduates. Cornell would have 2,100. They don’t have anything like those numbers.

The real-life situation improves a bit at the master’s level, with Columbia University reporting 209 degrees earned by Hispanics, Harvard reporting 141, and the University of Pennsylvania reporting 93.

And five of the eight Ivies appear on the Top 100 list of doctorates granted to Hispanics: Columbia with 13 awardees; Cornell, 12; Yale, 11; Penn, 10; and Brown, six. That leaves only Princeton and Dartmouth missing in action vis a vis the Top 100 lists.

Flagship Universities
“Flagship’ institutions are the ones that get the bulk of the research funds, the schools that can offer paid lab work and paid internships to budding science students our country is deemed to need so desperately, the institutions that major corporations in STEM fields go to in search of potential leaders.

Of the 75 public universities nationwide deemed “flagships” by USA Today, only about a dozen show up on the Top 100 list for bachelor’s degrees conferred on Hispanics. That is a poor record and one that needs remediation if we want to meet our STEM field needs with homegrown talent.

For-Profits
The University of Phoenix, superstar of the accredited for-profit schools, set its sights on working adults 33 years ago and rapidly filled what now seems too large to be called a “niche.” Its parent company, the Apollo group, calls it “the nation’s largest regionally accredited private university.” Its online campus ranks 16th on the Top 100 list of bachelor’s degrees. Its Southern California and New Mexico schools are on the list too, as are the for-profits DeVry-California and DeVry-Illinois.

For-profit institutions can cost less than elite, private schools but more than public ones. How will they fare in the current economic crisis, when more out-of-work adults are expected to look for retraining and recredentialing – but with less money to pay for it?

HSIs
Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), which number about 200 stateside, are defined by the federal government as accredited higher education institutions with an FTE enrollment 25 percent or more Hispanic. About a fifth to a quarter of the bachelor’s granting Top 100s are HSIs; a third of those granting the most master’s; and one in 10 on the doctorates list.

Federal funding of HSIs has grown from $12 million in 1995 to $93.2 million in Title V for 2008, thanks in large part to HACU, the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities.

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