As Hispanic women balance family values and responsibilities with the ambition to attend college, admissions counselors are providing them with culturally sensitive retention tools.
For the past three years, Rosa Hernandez, an admissions counselor at the University of California, San Diego, has traveled to college fairs all over the nation to recruit students. As a Latina she feels she can connect with young Hispanic women and convince them of the importance of a college degree. But there are pockets of the country, particularly rural areas, where she encounters cultural resistance to higher education for young Hispanic women from immigrant families.
Hernandez asks the students where they see themselves studying and going to school. It doesn’t take long for Hispanic students’ hopeful dispositions to be dashed by the excuses pouring out of parents’ mouths like concrete to create a mental barrier to their academic pursuits.
“I hear: ‘Oh, I don’t want to leave home. Oh, I can’t afford it; I might as well just work,’” says Hernandez, recounting what the students tell her. From the parents she hears: “‘It costs too much dinero. I can’t afford for my child to live in the dorms.’ Financially, parents do not see it as an investment but as a cost. I really have to work hard at breaking those myths.”
“That stereotype is still there for Latinas in those areas,” she adds. “It’s that machista attitude that if you let the daughter go, she will end up pregnant. It does happen, but not just to Latinas.”
While the number of Hispanic women enrolling in college continues to increase, these cultural barriers still exist.
In a comprehensive study published in 2001 by the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, entitled “¡Si, Se Puede! Yes We Can, Latinas in School,” Dr. Angela Ginorio, associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Washington, and researcher Michelle Huston use national data to explore the experiences of Hispanic women in the U.S. educational system.
