book cover 2

Maria, Teresa. "2/Historical Perspectives On Latino Access to Higher Education." The  Majority in the Minority: Expanding the Representation of Latina/o Faculty, Administrators, and Students in Higher Education. By Jeanett Castellanos, Lee Jones, and Victoria Maria MacDonald. Sterling, VA: Stylus Pub., 2003. Print.

This reading is about Latinos in Higher education and the issues that they encounter and have encountered in the past.  It not only shows the points of the students but also of the staff and faculty that work in this field. They even have graduate students, staff and faculty talk about their personal experiences as a Latino in Higher Education in order to have better insight into the issues that come with being a Latino.

Dr. Jeanett Castellanos s a professor in the University of California and she has her doctorate in Philosophy. Her specializations are “Latina/os students’ psychosociocultural college experiences, Racial ethnic minority persistence patterns and experiences in higher education, Cultural competence in higher education” (http://www.socsci.uci.edu/ssarc/castellj/webdocs/vita.pdf).

Dr. Lee Jones has a Doctorate in Organizational Development. He also “served as the Director for the Division of Multicultural Student Services and Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at Washington State University”. (http://bureau.espeakers.com/gbsp/speaker.php?sid=8074) This experience has made him knowledgeable in the area of diversity in Higher Education.  These are just two of the people but all of the contributors show great potential and experience in the idea of diversity in Higher Education.

La Familia is a term that is defined as the family in the literal sense. But it’s more than just mom, dad, sister, brother in the family.  Families are considered a huge part of our lives and include aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents and grandparents. The second term described is la comunidad, the community. Families reach out to many different organizations; many Hispanic families are religious and take the advice of the community of the church. They also talk to the neighbors and they are all interconnected somehow. From personal experience, it always seemed like one Spanish family had ties to the next Spanish family and this is because we are very bent on having a tight knit community.

“We recommend that academic deans and other hiring agents engage in dialogue with senior Latina/o faculty to learn more about how they can nurture and retain us” (280) I believe this to be important because the faculty should try their best to keep the dropout rate for Hispanic Students low. In fact, they should work on keeping any of the dropout rates low and this is important to every group and culture for them to have a sense of belonging in the environment where they are expected to learn.

“A second issue raised by research about Hispanic faculty concerns their number in higher education (Aguirre, 2000; Arce, 1976; Garza, 1988; Haro, 1989; Milem & Astin, 1993; Olivas 1988) (244). This is another interesting point that relates to my topic or could. My topic focuses on Latinos in Higher Education but I feel this quote is interesting because it discusses the faculty perspective instead of a student perspective which is what I’m focusing on. But this is an interesting topic as well.

“The pioneers of the pre-1960 era demonstrated that Latino youth could succeed in college if they attained access” (27) I particularly enjoy this quote because it helps to start off the topic that Latinos can be successful if given the opportunity and it’s a good transitional sentence to start the history of early higher education for the Latino community.

This material helped me think of new ways to expand my topic by not only looking at just the student perspective but by also talking about the faculty and staff positions and how Latinos are doing in those fields. Are they succeeding? Are they getting a lot of jobs? And if not, what is holding them back? All good questions to think about. These ties into the other book cover I did because it also explicitly talks about the Latino community in college and how to help them succeed and become better students as well provide them with access to learn about the opportunities.

Blog Argument

I feel like a potential argument to the argument that I made earlier in my blog is going against privatization.  I spoke about privatization and how it affects other people, especially Hispanics. But can the Hispanic community take some responsibility for their lack of success. America is a place where one must be persistent in order to succeed and must make lay out their own path to success. The quote “The cost of college is a chief concern. Many Latino families do not know the actual cost of a college education or the sources of financial aid and therefore conclude college is not affordable for their children" (Brown, Sarita E., Deborah Santiago, and Estela Lopez, p.42). In some ways yes it is true but that is not to say that college is not do-able. If a Latino had the drive to succeed he might be smart, by starting off in a community college and working full time saving money for the first two years before they transferred over to a four year university. There are many options that a school provides to help pay for an education and if the right career is picked it is easy to take up loans and pay them off like the rest of the people that are in attending college. It is common knowledge to say that most people know that the way to succeed in this nation is to work hard and do whatever it takes to step away from the negative statistics.  There are counselors and people whose jobs are dedicated to helping people find a way to pay for college, paying in increments, taking out loans, student work options all of these things can help make college a realistic goal. It’s not fair for people to sit and complain about the cost because the truth is that everyone has to deal with it and with a college degree it will not only benefit the person but it will also benefit the future generations. If we want something to change we need to change it not to sit around and complain and talk about how race and all these things affect how many people go to college because the truth is there is poverty in every nationality, race and ethnicity.

Research Blog 10

 For my rough draft I think I am going to switch things up from my original proposal and discuss how Hispanic Culture and money affect how many Latinos graduate college. Also without doubt, I would leave privatization as the main backdrop to these two key ideas that I mentioned above but I feel like exploring these options will surely have great relevance to why Latinos graduate so infrequently from a university. I think one example to use some of the articles that I have found, “Hunger of Memory”, “The Majority in the Minority” etc. Also one of the main things that will be very helpful to my case is my personal experience as a Latina that is currently attending a four year university I have faced and overcome many of the struggles that Latinos face when making a decision to go to a four year university, community college or find a job. I am also going to email one of the professors that I took about Latinos in Higher Education to get some more information about this topic. https://sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/0a86f7f4-91da-486d-a7d2-e8b7a13ec43b/MacDonald_Garc%C3%ADa-Historical_perspectives.pdf

https://sakai.rutgers.edu/access/content/group/0a86f7f4-91da-486d-a7d2-e8b7a13ec43b/Rodriguez-1982-Hunger_of_Memory.pdf

Disussion 9

This graph shows how much the median earnings for Hispanics based on women and men and their educational levels. This is something that is of importance to my paper because it really shows how much education can affect how much someone will get paid. Considering these statistics, it makes me question. Does it really make sense for someone to pay over a hundred thousand dollars for an education when based on these statistics the median income for men is $50,000 and for women is about $45,000. It would take years to pay something like that off especially when its collecting interest! Its quite insane in my opinion!

BOOK REVIEW

The reading is about Latinos in Higher Education and how the statistics for graduating or enrolling in a four year university is so low. The authors all have a good idea about what they are talking about, there are 3 authors. Sarita E Brown is the president of her own not-for-profit organization where she tries to work on improving the overall success of Latinos in Higher Education, the name of the company is Excelencia in Educations. Deborah Santiago another author, is the Vice President of Policy and Research of Excelencia in Education. This company studies the problems,issues and strengths with Latinos in Higher Education. Estela Lopez is also an employee of Excelencia in Educations, her position is a Senior Associate.The article discusses recommendations for how these astonishing statistics should be acted upon and how they can get the Latino community and their low numbers in enrolling. It also focuses on the importance of Higher Education and why Latinos should be reached out to. Two terms that are explicitly spoken about and defined are "Hispanic" and "Latino". "The terms 'Hispanic' and 'Latino' are used interchangeably in this article and refer to a group of Americans who share a language and common cultural origins but who come from diverse nations and backgrounds with distinctive histories and socio-economic and political experiences." (Brown, Sarita E., Deborah Santiago, and Estela Lopez, p.41) This really clears up some confusion between what people might mean or what the authors mean when they reference Latinos or Hispanics. One point that I found interesting was, "[m]any are first-generation college students, are low-income, have a less academic high school education than their peers, and enroll in community colleges. They are concentrated geographically in a small number of states and institutions of higher education" (Brown, Sarita E., Deborah Santiago, and Estela Lopez, p.41)  This really stood out to me for my paper because it really explains why many of the Latino population inst receiving the same education as everyone else or the same opportunities. Another point that was mentioned that caught my attention was, "The cost of college is a chief concern. Many Latino families do not know the actual cost of a college education or the sources of financial aid and therefore conclude college is not affordable for their children" (Brown, Sarita E., Deborah Santiago, and Estela Lopez, p.42) This really makes me think about how privatization has affected not just any student but specifically those that are misinformed and don't have all the information like the Latino population. The material found in this article helps me realize all the different types of aspects that contribute to the low rate of Latino students found in higher education. It makes me more interested in my topic to find out why is it that these statistics are so low. Some of the other readings I have read pertaining to my topic all bring a unique idea to the table. All thinking differently as to why the rate is so low. Many agree it has to do with money, but some articles emphasize more religion than others where as many other articles only refer to the money aspect or the lack of information being provided to these communities.