Latino Students: Engaging America’s Fastest Growing Minority Group.

This article explores the best practices according to recent literature for recruitment and retention/support of Latino/a students at postsecondary institutions in the United States. The authors seek to provide a simple framework for the cultivation of a campus climate that is welcoming to all varieties of student populations. Recruitment of a diverse student body is a top priority in the strategic plans of colleges and universities across the country. As u.s. society continues to become more diverse, proportionate diversity is not being realized in the classrooms of the nations higher education institutions. Much attention has been paid to the recruitment of African-American students and their access to higher education opportunities. This is appropriate given the history of social activism and resulting civil rights legislation regarding equal access. However, more recent changes in the population of the United States suggest that another group should also be considered. Recruitment In 2000, Latino/as became the largest minority group in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau 2004). The U.S. Census Bureau projects that over the next 30 years, Latino/as will have the second largest growth rate of any population subgroup, following Asians. It also is estimated that by 2050, Latino/as will comprise 24.4 percent of the nation’s total population, accounting for 48.5 percent of the nations population growth during that time period (United States 2004). It is critical that colleges and universities act now to prepare to recruit and retain members of this group. When colleges began to target minority groups for recruitment, many institutions attempted to recruit all minority groups as a single group. Although this method may be more cost-effective, it is counterproductive in that it does not allow for personalized and segmented marketing efforts that often prove much more effective overall. Just as colleges would not attempt to recruit a talented artist and a gifted scientist in the same way, they should not attempt to recruit members of different minority groups in the same way. This begs the question: How should colleges recruit Latino/a students? To understand how to recruit Latino/a students, it is critical to also understand the role of the family. According to Zarate and Pachon (2006), parents of Latino/a students are acutely aware of the need to attend college: fully 96 percent of parents in a nationwide study wanted their children to attend college. By mixing marketing and outreach efforts that target parents and students, institutions can leverage the influence of the family. With parents already desirous of their children attending college, encouragement and information from institutions can only boost student recruitment efforts. Parents are important factors in the recruitment process, but they also present a challenge. One of the barriers to entry for some Latino/a students and their families is language. Given that many Latino/as are first-generation college students and also may be naturalized, first-, or second-generation citizens of the United States, the availability of recruitment information in Spanish – particularly as such information relates to financial aid – is critical (Ortiz 2004; Zarate and Pachon 2006). Translation of materials into Spanish should not be viewed as preventing mastery of English by recent immigrant families (Love 2003). Rather, it serves a functional as well as a symbolic purpose. Understanding admission requirements, financial aid policies, and other first-year college issues is difficult enough for those who speak English. The addition of a language barrier only increases frustration (Love 2003). General financial aid knowledge is important in the recruitment of Latino/a students. However, the effort to educate Latino/a families about financial aid should not end with translation of pertinent information. Rather, it should extend to include defining those terms specific to the process in the United States, for example, guaranteed loans, grants, and scholarships (Zarate and Pachon 2006).