Colleges Need to Recognize, and Serve, the 3 Kinds of Latino Students

Tue Mar 25 15:31:42 UTC 2008

Colleges Need to Recognize, and Serve, the 3 Kinds of Latino Students

Serving 3 Kinds of Latino Students

By MARGARITA MOONEY and DEBORAH RIVAS-DRAKE

What comes to mind when you think of a Latino student attending
college in the United States? Do you think of the Chicana who made it,
despite the odds, and now leads her campus chapter of the Chicano
Caucus? The Latino student who started at his local community college
but dropped out after a semester? Or do you think of the child of
suburban doctors who attended a mostly white private school and is
enrolled in an elite university?

Because of the achievement gap between white and Latino students, most
of our knowledge about Latinos in higher education comes from studies
of low-achieving students. Consider that, with a dropout rate of 22.4
percent, Latino students age 16 to 24 are less likely to complete high
school than not only white students but also African-Americans.

Moreover, the gap between the rate at which Latinos and white students
earn bachelor's degrees continues to be large. While 86.4 percent of
Americans age 15 to 29 have completed high school, and 28.4 percent
have earned bachelor's degrees, only 63.2 percent and 9.5 percent,
respectively, of Latinos have done so.

Despite much-warranted concern over those figures, not all Latino
students are underachievers. However, we know far less about the
cultural and psychological profiles of Latino students who succeed in
American higher education than we do about their peers who do not
achieve highly.

For that reason, the two of us chose to examine the pathways to
success taken by Latino students at 27 elite institutions, comprising
13 private research universities, like Princeton University; nine
liberal-arts colleges, like Swarthmore College; and five public
research universities, like the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

In addition to educational credentials, Latinos who graduate from such
institutions come away with cultural capital, the formal and informal
knowledge that they can use to influence their ethnic communities
through their careers as newspaper editors, doctors, politicians, and
the like. Thus we feel it important to ask not just about their
academic achievement but also about how their college experiences
shape their views of society.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen — a study
of nearly 4,000 students who entered elite colleges in 1999,
approximately 1,000 of whom were Latino — we first examined
differences among Latinos in the sample in how much they perceived
barriers to their educational and occupational opportunities. We also
drew from in-depth interviews with Latino students at one of the
colleges. From responses to questions about minority experience in the
United States — encountering discrimination, feeling distant from
white people — we identified three distinct sociopsychological
profiles among Latinos: assimilation, accommodation, and resistance.

The first group (26 percent of the study sample) did not feel
different from their white peers, and they saw the path to achievement
as colorblind. For example, they did not think that members of
minority groups faced a lot of discrimination; nor did they believe
that minority students needed to earn extra credentials to compete in
the job market. Because their attitudes about achievement resembled
those of non-Latino students, we call them assimilationists. Were
these students among the most economically privileged in the sample?
Many were, but not all. A prototypical Latino in this group might be
someone from a middle-class family who went to a predominantly white
school and who had no qualms about achieving his or her dream.

Slightly more Latino students (32 percent) fit the pattern that we
call accommodationist. Although students in this group perceived
discrimination against members of minority groups, they also believed
more strongly than those in the other two categories that minority
students who work hard and earn educational credentials will have
success in finding good jobs. These students realized that Latinos
faced barriers yet had no doubt that they themselves would succeed.
They may, indeed, have contrasted their opportunities with those of
relatives in Latin America: The immigrant experience provided a source
of optimism along with an awareness of discrimination. "I just want to
take advantage of the opportunities that I have been given," one
student said. "I would just be a fool to sit back and … work in a
factory."

The third group (43 percent) was the most critical of the mainstream
ideology that individual effort is sufficient to get ahead. To
highlight how their perceptions differed from those of the other two
groups, we called these students resisters. Resisters perceived high
levels of discrimination against members of minority groups and they
said they felt more distant from white students than the other two
groups did. Many, but not all, of these students chose a
Hispanic-black racial label, and they frequently had attended high
schools that were more than 70 percent minority (Latino and
African-American combined).

Educators concerned with Latino achievement and with the campus
climate for Latinos would do well to pay attention to these three
distinct psychological profiles. Some college administrators have
remarked to us that diversity programs — although clearly needed —
often select people based on their ethnic category, without
considering differences in perceptions about ethnicity. For example,
some Latinos might feel strange about participating in a diversity
program that presumed they perceived a discriminatory environment. At
the same time, other Latinos might feel uncomfortable in their college
setting. The important point to remember is that the ways in which
individuals experience their minority status and perceive blocked
opportunity vary enormously among high-achieving Latino college
students.

In addition, we found strong evidence that our profiles relate to the
social engagement of Latino students but not necessarily to their
academic progress. Take resisters. Clearly they felt the most
uncomfortable on their campuses. Yet we found that even those Latino
students who were most aware of the barriers between themselves and
the selective institutions they attended spent as much time on
academic activities — six to seven hours a day — as the assimilators
and accommodators did. Although there were some differences in the
GPA's earned by members of the three groups — ranging from an average
of 3.08 for the resisters to 3.13 for the assimilators, such
differences were not statistically significant.

Equally striking, statistical differences appeared in a comparison of
time spent on extracurricular activities. By their junior year,
resisters were spending about two more hours a week in volunteer work
and clubs than assimilators were. Many of the Latino students
interviewed indicated that they wanted to persist in college out of a
sense of obligation to ameliorate some of the disparities they
perceived. As one student said, "I think that me being here can help
contribute to some other person down the road."

Taken together, our results suggest that — contrary to oppositional
culture theory, which posits that students will underachieve for fear
of being accused of "acting white" — a strong minority identity and
high perception of discrimination can be associated with high academic
achievement.

It is also significant that Latino students with a strong minority
identity, relative to their Latino peers at the same institutions,
spend more time on extracurricular activities. That suggests that one
way a Latino might be able to counteract perceived threats or
hostility is by becoming part of a smaller community on the campus. At
the same time, the nature of those small groups varies. Some actively
recruit members by appealing to their ethnic or minority
sensibilities; others adopt a colorblind approach to recruiting,
emphasizing opportunities to be creative or focusing on helping others
as tutors or volunteers.

Our research suggests that the issue of "fit" between a Latino student
and a college campus is not only a matter of immigrant background,
national origin, or socioeconomic status. Given that Latino students
enter college divided into three distinct profiles, it is not
surprising that they will differ in their comfort at different
institutions. Not thinking about the complex ways in which students
make sense of their ethnic heritage and status may lead to investing
in campus resources erroneously based on stereotypes.

If the mind-set of young Latinos at elite colleges can vary as much as
we have described, would we not expect the psychological profiles
among those at other types of colleges to vary as well? As more
Latinos enter college, we would all do well to be attuned not just to
how they may be different from white, black, or Asian students, but
also to what important cultural and psychological differences exist
among Latinos themselves.

Although the white-Latino achievement gap still exists, Latinos are
nonetheless entering the top rungs of higher education in increasing
numbers. Among the elite colleges in the sample we used, student
populations ranged from 1 percent to 13 percent Latino, with an
average of 5 percent. In our continuing work, we hope to show how
Latinos' class, regional, racial, and psychological diversity
influences their educational choices and social engagement in college.
We hope to contribute both to identifying factors that help explain
the achievement gap between Latinos and whites, and to understanding
how the college experiences of high-achieving Latinos prepare them to
be cultural agents in their own communities and the nation.

Margarita Mooney is an assistant professor of sociology at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Deborah Rivas-Drake is an
assistant professor of education and human development at Brown
University.

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http://chronicle.com Section: Commentary Volume 54, Issue 29, Page A37

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