Title: More Hispanics are going to college and graduating, but disparity persists | PBS NewsHour
Headings: More Hispanics are going to college and graduating, but disparity persists
More Hispanics are going to college and graduating, but disparity persists
As the Hispanic student population grows, “you’re going to go from invisibility to pushback, to ultimately an acceptance.”

Content: Cultural expectations can create additional hurdles. Hispanic men, socialized to be providers, may feel pressure to drop out and work to support their families. Women, raised to be caregivers, can find themselves “caught between two sets of demands”: their families’ and their professors’, said Jennifer Morton, an assistant professor of philosophy at the City College of New York, who grew up in Peru. READ MORE: How failing to get more Hispanics to college could drag down all Americans’ income
But demographics are not destiny. What institutions do with the students they have matters deeply. Even institutions with similar student bodies can have dramatically different results. Take Massachusetts state colleges. From 2013 to 2015, the achievement gap between white and Hispanic students at Salem State averaged 1.5 percentage points, according to The Education Trust, which compared Hispanic outcomes at various colleges.