Some Good News: New High Figures for Latino College Enrollment

In the midst of all the dismal economic news and crazy racism and sexism emanating from politicos, it's important to keep track of gains.

So here's one. Pew offers us new numbers on Latino enrollment in universities, and they're good (they use the term Hispanic as interchangeable, but we at AlterNet use Latino):

The nation’s Hispanic student population reached a number of milestones in 2011, according to an analysis of newly available U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

For the first time, the number of 18- to 24-year-old Hispanics enrolled in college exceeded 2 million and reached a record 16.5% share of all college enrollments.   Hispanics are the largest minority group on the nation’s college campuses, a milestone first achieved last year (Fry, 2011). But as their growth among all college-age students continues to outpace other groups, Hispanics are now, for the first time, the largest minority group among the nation’s four-year college and university students. And for the first time, Hispanics made up one-quarter (25.2%) of 18- to 24-year-old students enrolled in two-year colleges.

 Today, with the high school completion rate among young Hispanics at a new high, more young Hispanics than ever are eligible to attend college. According to the Pew Hispanic analysis, 76.3% of all Hispanics ages 18 to 24 had a high school diploma or a General Educational Development (GED) degree in 2011, up from 72.8% in 2010. And among these high school completers, a record share—nearly half (45.6%)—is enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges. Both demographic trends and greater eligibility have contributed to growth in the number of Hispanic young people enrolled in college in recent years.