Changing student demographics may prove the most formidable ever for American colleges and universities as well as for public K-12 school systems, scholars say.
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“This is a profound demographic change, which provides a challenge for American education … . Like the Italians of the past, the Irish of the past, and the Jews of the past (who were immigrants), now you’ve got Asians and Hispanics overwhelmingly,” says Dr. Rodolfo de la Garza, vice president of research at the Tómas Rivera Policy Institute and a Columbia University political science professor.
“We are at the same percentage of immigrants in the nation that you had in 1920 and at that point they were 11 percent in the nation. And that’s about where they are now … . The question is going to be ‘are we going to take advantage of that opportunity or are we not?’ And if we do, the nation has a whole new pool of people to work with,” he adds.
To scholars, such as de la Garza, and education access advocates, the challenges ahead for U.S. higher education over the next quarter century raised by changing student demographics may prove the most formidable ever for American colleges and universities as well as for public K-12 school systems. Non- White immigration to the United States since the 1960s is a major reason why minorities have become an increasingly growing presence in the college-age pool.
