WASHINGTON — As the nation continues to see a rise in the Hispanic population, higher education institutions are looking to identify ways to better serve the students of this population.
But unlike with Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) were not historically designated as such and do not often state in their missions a commitment to serving Hispanic students. Outside of a mention of Title V grant eligibility—the federal program that funds Hispanic Serving Institutions—there is little to no acknowledgement of the status by many of the institutions. Most don’t even know what it means to be a Hispanic Serving Institution, making it inherently difficult to serve the students, leaders said at the Accelerating Latino Student Success workshop.
“None of us asked to be Hispanic Serving Institutions; none of us were created to be Hispanic Serving Institutions,” said Dr. Eloy Ortiz Oakley, superintendent-president of Long Beach City College in California.
“The people who work in Hispanic Serving Institutions really don’t understand how they became Hispanic-serving,” said Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon, a professor of Higher Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. “They don’t understand the immigration practices and who are the Hispanic students that they are serving.”
“The fact is that many Hispanic Serving Institutions were once proudly Predominantly White Institutions,” Bensimon continued.
So the challenge for these institutions is figuring out how to “be intentional, be explicit and be uncompromising” in their commitment to serving students who look different than those who enrolled decades ago, said Oakley.
“We have to be very specific about what that means, and the reality is that we haven’t been doing too well,” he said. “Even those of us who have been at this for a long time and have been thinking about these issues are having a difficult time closing the gaps in the ways we would like to see them close.”
