A study by the Education Trust says the graduation gap between Latino and White students is on a decline. But, how is that seen at Georgia State University?
A Look At Latino Student Success reports that in 2015, 53.6 percent of Latino students that enrolled at a four-year institution, graduated in six years with a bachelor’s degree. The development is an eight percent increase from 45.7 percent in 2002. It also closes the gap among Latinos and white students to 9.7 percentage points.
As of the Fall of 2017, Hispanic and Latino students at Georgia State University graduate at higher rates compared to white students in six years with a Bachelor’s Degree.
Dr. Jeffrey Coleman, director of the Multicultural Center at Georgia State University, says the drop is a result of a hands-on approach.
“Universities are saying, well, ‘we need to try to address that.’ And so now you’re seeing that a lot of universities are trying to be more inclusive,” Coleman said. “You hear that terminology inclusiveness and diversity and equity, and so they’re trying to address these things because you want to show that anybody can graduate at the same rate from your university regardless of race [or] ethnic background.”
Georgia State University also reported a 14 percent enrollment increase in Hispanic students for the Fall of 2017. However, the population of Hispanic/Latino students enrolled did not see an increase between the Fall of 2016 and 2017.
Support groups are helping to raise these percentages. When applying to universities, sophomore Geralmy Fernández had not only the support of his family but also the community he found at HoPe, the Hispanic Organization Promoting Education.
“[HoPe] was very motivating and very supporting of student’s decisions whether they would go or not go to college,” Fernández said. “My decision obviously was to come to college. And I feel like when I joined HoPe [and] when I would share my aspirations and my expectations for college, they would always support that and give me advice and things to look for and things to do, once I became a college student.”
The Latino Student Services and Outreach at Georgia State also offers opportunities to help advance students. Café Con LASSO is one of the many events sophomore Alyssa Brooke Cabrera leads.
“So we actually provide this office space here to allow students to come in and study. We facilitate our group activities, and we have different things going on like Café Con LASSO, or we have someone coming in to talk about professionalism and development of how we work as students how to better ourselves.” Brooke Cabrera said. “I’ve only been working here for a year, but what I can say is that I love it. I love the atmosphere that we provide here, and I love that students feel this is a safe place to come and talk about different things that are going on.”
For students like Chris Garcia, LASSO is a home away from home.
“It’s sort of like an environment where you can just come in and just sit down and really be yourself. You don’t have to worry about if people are going to judge you or anything like that. It’s just sort of nice to go in somewhere you know you’re at home, and this is sort of like a home away from home,” Garcia said.
The study states some argue white students should not be considered a standard. Director Coleman says the numbers keep universities honest.
“I don’t think there’s an issue because I think it keeps us honest. Right? I think it shows us that if this is the case, what do we need to do so that everybody is graduating at the same rate because we really ought to be striving to really get everybody to graduate at 100 percent,” Coleman said.
PRN will be following these percentages over the next few years.
Note: This article was written for PRN, the student-led news station at Georgia State University.
