Researchers studying “Why Hispanic Undergraduate Women Persist in Higher Education” in spite of intense cultural pressure have concluded that their major reason for going to school was to create a better life for themselves and their families.

The final report by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and University of Alabama at Birmingham will be published shortly. 

Dr. Brent Cejda, associate professor and Dr. Sheldon Stick, professor, both in educational administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and Dr. Nataliya Ivankova, associate professor in human studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, studied 63 Hispanic college students, both female and male and all U.S. citizens, at Texas Southmost College and the University of Texas at Brownsville.

Poverty, early motherhood and family bonds were some of the key themes that worked against Hispanic women getting and education. Fiercely independent and proud, the women referred to themselves as Hispanic, not Mexican American or American Mexican, the researchers noted.

“The culture in the lower Rio Grande Valley was for women to have a family and take care of it,” Stick told the journal Women in Higher Education. Many of the women had children while still in high school. Some might have married the father of the children later, while others had children with multiple fathers and boyfriends.

The “[Rio Grande] Valley attitude” with its “despised macho-ness” was one of the major motivators cited for postsecondary education. The women reported that the men in the Valley were living for the here-and-now with no future plans. Despite the strong patriarchal culture, many of the women had “surprisingly supportive husbands,” researchers said.

Unfortunately, the students reported a lack of support even from those instructors with a strong Hispanic background as well as from high school counselors who did not bother discussing their going on to college.