Black colleges recruit Hispanics
Updated 8/5/2006 9:43 AM ET

By Dorie Turner, Associated Press

ATLANTA — Squeezed by stiff competition for their traditional students, historically black colleges are making a push to recruit Hispanics.
While the country's Hispanic population is booming, the number of blacks is growing at a much slower rate and other colleges are doing more to attract them. Black colleges that want to shore up enrollment numbers are revising recruitment strategies to include more members of the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority.

The campuses are hiring Hispanic recruiters, distributing brochures featuring Hispanic students, and establishing special scholarships for Hispanics. At the historically black Texas Southern University in Houston, the school has started five Hispanic student organizations, including fraternities and sororities, to help make the campus more inviting.

"I tell them 'There's a place for you and a need for Latinos to be present on (historically black) campuses," said Nelcon Santiago, a recruiter for the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C. A native of Puerto Rico, Santiago talks to students about his experiences as a student at Howard, where he graduated in 2001.

Recruiters like Santiago and from other schools including the all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta are visiting predominantly Hispanic high schools and setting up booths at college fairs geared toward Hispanic students. Morehouse sends recruiters to high schools in south Florida, New York, east Texas and Los Angeles — areas with large Hispanic populations.

"Considering Latinos and African-Americans share a lot of history together that they don't realize, I think it's a good idea," said John Miranda, of Silver Spring, Md., one of 15 Hispanics enrolled at the 2,800-student Morehouse.

Miranda, the 21-year-old son of Brazilian immigrants, said he picked Morehouse because he was offered a full-ride scholarship funded by an Atlanta foundation that promotes the education of Hispanics.

Morehouse's goal is for at least 5% of its student body to be made up of Hispanics within five years. If its current overall enrollment holds steady, the school will need 125 more Hispanic students by 2011 to reach that goal.

While the idea has been greeted with open arms by the college's administrators, some students and alumni said they are mixed about actively recruiting Hispanics to historically black colleges.

"I do have concerns," said Earl Nero, a retired Adlanta businessman who graduated from Morehouse in 1974. "Since the college has determined they want to stay the same size they are, that would take away space from qualified African-American students."

But having other minorities attending a historically black college will help them get "a real life view about what black people are all about," Nero added.

Student James Travis, who is black, said having other students of other races on a historically black campus bothers him "a little bit" because it challenges the college's mission.

"It's supposed to maintain the historically black tradition," said the 21-year-old student from the Atlanta suburb of College Park. "I'll have to see how it goes before I see if I want to change the situation or not."

Still, educators say the nation's two largest minority groups are a natural fit on a college campus.

"They are both underserved communities when it comes to higher education," said Michael Lomax, president and CEO of the United Nugro College Fund. "We have got to educate them so that we can have a competitive workforce in the 21st century."

The number of Hispanic students attending historically black colleges increased more than 60% from 1994 to 2004, while the number of black students grew by 35%, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the 1990s, Hispanics surpassed blacks as the nation's largest minority. The number of Hispanics in the United States grew by nearly 60% that decade, while the number of blacks only grew by about 15%.

At the same time, the competition for black students has increased as public colleges nationwide try to improve diversity by recruiting more minorities. Some state higher education systems, especially in the South, also have been forced by federal courts to meet specific black recruitment goals under desegregation lawsuits still lingering from the 1960s.

"All colleges want to have a presence of African-American male students on their campus. It makes the competition very tough," said Sterling Hudson, dean of admissions and records at Morehouse.

Five years ago, Texas Southern hired a Hispanic recruiter and began producing recruitment materials targeting Hispanics. Since then, Hispanic student enrollment has grown from 316 to almost 550. Right now, Hispanics make up about 5% of the 11,000-student body.

"We have the advantage as a HBCU to cater to the minority — small classroom, small family-type environment," said Hasan Jamil, assistant vice president for enrollment services.

Howard has about 170 Hispanic out of 11,500 students after several years of focused recruiting. Interim admissions director Linda Sanders-Hawkins said with the country's growing Hispanic population, recruiting is not as tough as it once was.

Miranda, one of only 15 Hispanics at Morehouse, said it has not bothered him being on a majority black campus.

"Since I've been at Morehouse, I've gotten a different perspective on a lot of things," Miranda said, referring to black history. "I learned a lot that was left out of the schooling I got."

Find this article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2006-08-05-blackcolleges_x.htm

been saying this for about 4 years. I know docb is steamin' right now


Moving this to a more appropriate forum, since no iota of Sports is mentioned.

quote:

Originally posted by decatur g:


Moving this to a more appropriate forum, since no iota of Sports is mentioned.

I think that we should open our arms to Hispanic students,but we need to keep it at or below a certain percentage.
Fort Valley State is making a special effort to recruit Hispanic students in the middle Georgia area as well.
I wonder how successful the effort will be because Hispanics are wont to hang together even more than we do.Maybe some attractive scholarship money will minimize that tendency.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: SHOT CALLER,

http://www.tallahassee.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2...FSU01/608100319/1010

Originally published August 10, 2006
Hispanic student numbers grow
FSU's Hispanic enrollment numbers triple in 15 years

By Diane Hirth
DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER
An explosive growth in Hispanic students is happening at Florida's universities.

One of every 10 students wearing Florida State University garnet and gold is Hispanic. FSU's 3,756 Hispanic students in 2005 were more than triple the number 15 years ago.

"Probably the biggest thing is everybody in Tallahassee and at FSU is just so friendly," said 22-year-old Kevin Bally of Miami, director of the FSU Hispanic/Latin Student Union. "A lot of the kids coming from South Florida or even Orlando, it catches them off guard."

Mark Rosenberg, the state universities' chancellor, welcomes the climb in Hispanics from 9.4 percent of Florida university enrollment in 1990 to 16.2 percent in 2005. Hispanics' presence on campus is approaching their 19-percent share of the overall state population.

"Florida graduates today are the captains of industry and the political system tomorrow," said Rosenberg, who will present Hispanic student trends today to the Board of Governors that oversees the university system. "The growing diversity of our system means the leadership of tomorrow will reflect that diversity."

Another reason Hispanic students choose FSU is the chance to stretch their wings beyond their close-knit Latino families and experience a college community that's not a commuter campus, Bally said.

"Probably the biggest thing within the Latin culture is the need to grow. Being away from home, you're on your own and can make your own decisions," said the political-science and criminology major.

The word is getting out. FSU's College of Law recently was ranked in the top 10 of U.S. law schools for Hispanics by Hispanic Business magazine for the second year in a row.

"Hispanic students are comfortable at almost all of our universities around the state," Rosenberg said. "Traditionally FIU was the dominant Hispanic-serving institution. Now you can see even upstate institutions are home to an awful lot of Hispanic students."

True, more Hispanic students attend Florida International University than anywhere else in the state. There were 20,859 Hispanic students at this Miami-based university in 2005, more than double the 9,631 in 1990.

Yet the percentage growth in Hispanic students was huge during this period at four institutions of higher education: Florida Atlantic University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida and University of South Florida. At each of the universities the increase in Hispanics from 1990 to 2005 topped 300 percent.

Educating minority students is critical to the U.S. economy, where at least one of three workers will be a minority as of 2020. Yet nationally, only half of black and Hispanic students finish high school in four years and are eligible for college, according to a 2005 report from The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Hardly touched by the Hispanic trend was the state's historically black public university, Florida A&M University. Its 144 Hispanic students in 1990 expanded to 185 students in 2005.

The Board of Governors, under the guidance of Vice Chairwoman Sheila McDevitt, is studying how to enhance access, retention and graduation of minority students. This year's Legislature initiated a new grant for students who seek to be first in their families to earn a college diploma. It was proposed by Gov. Jeb Bush after FAMU students lobbied for more help for minority students.

Contact Diane Hirth at (850) 671-6546 or dhirth@tallahassee.com