"Hopwood focuses on fighting over a handful of Blacks. We need to focus on taking a kid from not going to college to going to college," said Jones.
Those are often students who are the first in their families to attend college and for whom financial aid means the difference between going to school or working full time. Blacks comprise only 6 percent of Southwest Texas State's 21,000 students, he said, underscoring the need to increase minority enrollment in all state colleges and universities,
"It's a pipeline issue. The pool of college-bound African American students is what needs to be increased. That has to be done on a kindergarten through twelfth-grade level," said Jones.
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