Latino males have some of the nation’s lowest college enrollment and completion rates. While their numbers at colleges and universities have increased in the last 20 years, they have failed to keep pace with other ethnic groups. 

The gender gap among Latinos on the nation’s campuses has also widened. Last month, the American Council on Education released a report that showed that while the gender gap in higher education has stabilized, it continues to expand among Latinos.

Dr. Victor Saenz, an assistant professor of higher education administration at The University of Texas at Austin, has been at the forefront of this issue and on a crusade to move policymakers to action before it’s too late. Latinos are the nation’s fastest-growing ethnic group. They account for 15.4 percent of the nation’s population—a figure that is expected to double in 40 years.

Saenz believes these low numbers could have dire consequences for the nation’s future and its prosperity.

“We have the possibility of developing a permanent underclass in this country,” if the trend continues, Saenz says. “We have the possibility of maybe even inflating the number of (incarcerated) Latinos.”

For much of his academic career, Saenz has had strong research interests in diversity, desegregation, border education issues and college access and readiness for all Latinos.

Saenz’s specific interest in higher education and Latino males began a few years ago when the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education commissioned him to write a paper about it. To carry out the project, he teamed with Dr. Luis Ponjuan, a colleague at the University of Florida.

“We were able to immerse ourselves in the topic and found that very little has been published on the subject of Latino males,” he says.

The paper, “The Vanishing Latino Male in Higher Education,” which examined the low number of Latinos in college campuses and investigated the reasons for the poor numbers, has been widely cited by educators around the country.