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HISPANIC NETWORK MAGAZINE www.hnmagazine.com
HIGHER EDUCATION
A
recent report from Third Way, a Washington-based think tank, has shown that while many famous best lists continue to rank top colleges and uni- versities based on their prestige and exclu- sivity, schools that prioritize inclusivity are achieving more desirable graduation out- comes. According to the report, Out with the Old, In with the New: Rating Higher Ed by Economic Mobility, Hispanic-serving insti- tutions (HSIs), or schools whose student pop- ulations are at least a quarter Hispanic, have had the greatest success at providing their stu- dents with economic mobility. Thus, the Third Way report asserts schools should not be judged by traditional factors of elitism, but rather through an Economic Mobility Index that measures an institutions ability to offer students, specifically those from low- to moderate-income backgrounds, a significant return on their educational investment. Third Ways goals to develop a
Hispanic-Serving Universities Outrank Others for Return on Investment
By Tawanah Reeves-Ligon
high-quality education agenda, influenced and informed the methodology of this report. They sought to answer the question, If the primary purpose of postsecondary education is supposed to be to catalyze an increase in economic mobility, which schools are suc- ceeding in that goal? Its interesting to note that the schools ranked as having the best economic mobility outcomes are heavily concentrated in three states - California, Texas and New York - which all happen to allocate significant fund- ing and resources to public higher education. The schools also matriculate larger popula- tions of low- to moderate-income students while offering them quicker returns on their investment than those colleges that focus on enrolling more affluent students. For example, the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, which ranks fourth in the Third Way report, enrolls over 60 percent of students who are Pell Grant eligible. Pell Grant is a federal, financial need-based schol- arship awarded to undergraduates. Recently, the school also increased its in-house tuition advantage grant that covers the costs of tuition and mandatory fees for students with family incomes of up to $125,000. For Magdalena Hinojosa, senior vice president for strategic enrollment and student affairs at Texas Rio Grande, the report offers the opportunity to look at our institutions in a different waybringing to light who we are as institutions. According to Hinojosa, You dont have to be what is known as a traditional elite institu- tion to really have successful students. Historically Black colleges and universi- ties (HBCUs) also did well in the ranking on the Third Way report. It states that, Beyond the overemphasis on institutional selectivity, other factors such as racial, economic and educational discriminatory practices have also systemically undervalued the accom- plishments of HBCUs across the U.S. but when accounting for the proportion of low- and moderate-income students that colleges enroll and the outcomes those schools pro- duce, HBCUs score much higher on the EMI than traditional rankings reflect. Thus, the best route for a return on ones educational investment, as shown in the report, would be a school that is in a state with significant funding for public higher educa- tion as well as an emphasis on enrollment that is inclusive across racial, ethnic and socioeco- nomic backgrounds. The report concludes that, The reach, will- ingness and ability to serve low- and moder- ate-income students will all combine to create the kind of socioeconomic mobility that insti- tutions of higher education were intended to produce.
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