CHALLENGES OF HISPANIC / LATINO FACULTY IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Challenges of Hispanic / Latino faculty in higher education

Challenges of Hispanic / Latino faculty in higher education

 

            By the year 2000, up to 80 per hundred of occupations in the United States are anticipated to need cognitive, other than manual, abilities, and 52 per hundred of occupations are anticipated to need not less than some postsecondary education. The lack of employees with high grades of connection, numbers, computer, and other technological abilities currently a difficulty for employers will become more critical, if the Hispanic community extends to be deprived of a value education. Educational attainment has a direct and affirmative influence on paid work, profits, investments, and savings. (Leon 2007)

This report illustrates that Hispanic American students are at risk. According to every informative sign, Hispanic Americans are producing advancement at alarmingly reduced rates from preschool through degree school, from juvenile high through high school, and on into higher education. The cumulative result of such neglect is conspicuously detrimental not only to Hispanics i, but to the nation. (Moody 2004)

           There is a movement towards excellence in all public schools. This movement is intended to increase student achievement and decrease the number of dropout students. Goal 2 of the National Goals for Education addresses school completion (OERI, 1993). It states that by the year 2000, the high school graduation rate will increase to at least 90 percent. This goal spotlights a problem which has persisted for over two decades-- the dropout student. Americans are attending colleges in numerous record but discrepancies still exist especially with low-income students from all ethnic and social backgrounds. This is more so with the Hispanic/Latino population. Dropping out is a complex, social problem that has no simple answers. This problem affects everyone-the student, the school, the school district, the families, the community, and our future generations.

The literature also indicates that 70.0 percent of all dropouts are either Hispanic or African Americans (TEA, 1999). Dropout rates for both of these two cultures remain higher than the state average of 1.6 percent. The number of Hispanics who drop out of high school or never attended high school has risen past the 50 percent mark in the 90s. In 2000, approximately 1.56 million U.S. residents ages 16 to 19 had not graduated nor were enrolled in school. Of the total, nearly 34 percent were Hispanic. According to the United States Census Bureau, the Hispanic/Latino population in 1990 rivaled the African American group in becoming the nations largest minority group by 35.3 million.

By 2020, about one in three Americans will come from a minority background (Ingram, 2002). We need to target this population with affective strategies that will keep the Hispanic student in school, to be able to graduate, to attend post-secondary universities, and to attain an educational career. What can we do? Where are the answers? Who can assist? How are we to achieve this? The literature research indicates that many measures for continuous improvement in handling this dropout dilemma ...