Study Says Hispanics
More Likely to Drop Out of College
LOS ANGELES (AP) June 24, 2007 — Hispanic students are far more likely than whites to
drop out of four-year colleges and half as likely to obtain a
bachelor's degree, a national study concluded.
Only about 23 percent of Hispanic freshmen earned their degrees by
age 26 while the figure for white students topped 47 percent,
according to the study released Wednesday by the USC-affiliated
Pew Hispanic Center in Washington.
Black and Asian-American college freshman also were more likely
than Hispanics to earn degrees, with graduation rates of about 31
percent and 51 percent, respectively, the study said.
Richard Fry, the report's author, said a number of factors hurt
the Hispanic graduation rate: they are more likely than whites to
enroll only part-time in college, to contribute financially to
their families and to live at home rather than on campus.
Living on campus, "you're probably much more likely to be socially
and academically engaged, with school as your first priority," Fry
said.
Hispanics also were likelier to attend community colleges and
less-selective four-year schools where the overall graduation rate
is lower, Fry said.
The graduation gap between Hispanics and whites was 7 percent at
top colleges, such as UCLA and the University of California,
Berkeley. It widened to 24 percent at "non-selective
institutions," including many California State University
campuses.
The findings were drawn from a national sampling of 13,000
students who were tracked from 1988, when they were in eighth
grade, until 2000.
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