This winter, Jacobbie Watts, a young man from Lexington, Ky., enrolled at the College of New Rochelle School of New Resources to study business and education. “I want to get a ‘good’ job,” he said enthusiastically. “I have worked since graduation from high school, but only in low-paying jobs where I could not see a future beyond the position that I was in. Getting a college education means better living, success, higher self-esteem and probably relieves a little stress.”
Watts joins the ranks of hundreds of Black and Latino men who enrolled in college this term. Many are aware there will be challenges, but many of those who find those challenges daunting will also find supportive programs to help them reach their goals.
It is well documented that African-American and Hispanic/Latino males are underrepresented by crisis proportions on college campuses, but many determined efforts are being made to tackle the problems and reverse the trends.
“To address the problem, there are more and more culturally sensitive initiatives being established and institutionalized as a means of targeting issues germane to this population,” said Dr. Tyrone Bledsoe, founder and chief executive officer of the Student African American Brotherhood in Toledo, Ohio.
Launched in 1990, SAAB is one of the many organizations that aims to increase the number of African-American and Latino males who graduate from college by offering programs to provide financial need, personal development, mentoring, tutoring and behavioral help.
In 2010, the College Board’s Advocacy and Policy Center issued a report that showed that in 2008, 44.5 percent of African-American males between 15–24 were enrolled in a two-year or a four-year college or a vocational school. The figure for African-American females in that age bracket was 55.5 percent, according to “The Educational Experience of Young Men of Color: A Review of Research, Pathways and Progress.”
Among Hispanic males, the proportion was 45.7 percent, 54.3 percent for Hispanic females. For Asian males, the number was 46 percent; for females, it was 53.9 percent. That 2008 number for Native American males was 51.2 percent and 48.8 percent for females. In 2008, White males had a college enrollment figure of 48 percent, compared with 52 percent for women.
