Lack of School SupportLimits Minority Teens' College Admissions
RSSJoan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 03/18/2008
Many high school students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) who aspire to attend four-year colleges short-change themselves by attending vocational schools and junior colleges because of a lack of administrative support, says a new study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago.
The findings for Latino students are particularly disturbing: only 46 percent of the Latino students studied applied to four-year colleges, and only 30 percent actually enrolled. Though the study looked solely at Chicago students, lead author Melissa Roderick says her results could apply to "any school system in the United States."
"From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College" focused intensively on 105 students from English classrooms of varying achievement levels at three Chicago high schools. The researchers have followed those students since 2005, and data for 5,100 public high school graduates in 2005 were also studied.
During 2005, the report says, 83 percent of Chicago Public Schools seniors stated on surveys that they hoped to earn a bachelor's degree or higher; an additional 13 percent said they hoped for a two-year or vocational degree.
But those hopes often were not realized because many students who aspired to complete four-year degrees did "not effectively participate in the college application process," the report states. Only 41 percent of the CPS seniors studied took the steps necessary during their senior year to apply and enroll.
What’s to blame? Many students simply never applied—and if accepted never enrolled. The study found that only 72 percent of students aspiring to attend four-year colleges stated their intention in the spring of their senior year; and only 59 percent actually applied to a four-year college. Another problem was that students with low GPAs and ACT scores didn’t bother to apply to four-year colleges, though a substantial number would have been accepted.. And only 76 percent of students qualified to attend selective colleges actually applied to them.
In terms of minority applicants, only 60 percent of aspiring Latino graduates planned to attend four-year colleges, versus 77 percent of African American students and 76 percent of white or "other ethnic" graduates. Fewer than half of aspiring Latino students actually did apply, compared to 65 percent of the members of the two other groups.
A frequent explanation was the Latino students' immigrant status, along with the fact that few had parents who had attended a four-year college. But, controlling for this factor, the researchers found that even nonimmigrant Latino students were still 13 percentage points behind the other groups.
A significant finding was that a strong "college-going culture" at a high school is a huge aid: the researchers called it "the single most consistent predictor of whether students took steps toward college." They added that the culture needs to include strong support for financial aid applications, stating: "Many CPS students may end up facing higher costs for college because they do not take the step of filing a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which is needed to maximize federal, state, and institutional support."
