HSI, eHSI, HBCU, and MSI are tossed about in boardrooms, conferences, keynote addresses, and publications. Some stakeholders, even those at the grassroots level of higher education, don’t give these designations a second thought and are unaware of their origins, history, and data behind them.

The US Department of Education set the criteria for Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) through 1992 and 1998 amendments to the Higher Education Act of 1965, although the Hispanic community had identified a concentration of institutions enrolling a disproportionate number of Hispanics as early as the 1980s. The 1998 amendment defines HSIs as accredited, degree-granting, public or private, nonprofit colleges and universities with 25 percent or more total undergraduate, full-time equivalent, Hispanic student enrollment.

Excelencia in Education, which promotes Latino student achievement, has a mission of making those schools that are eligible for HSI status aware of their eligibility. “We generate the list and share it with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). It’s been 27 years tracking the list and the changes,” says Deborah A. Santiago, co-founder and chief executive officer of Excelencia in Education. Although not designated in federal legislation, the emerging HSI designation is a construct developed by Excelencia in Education. Schools with this designation have a Hispanic undergraduate enrollment of between 15-24.9 percent. “We wanted to track the growth of potential HSIs,” says Santiago. “It was an approach to anticipate and better prepare for the growing set of institutions based on enrollment.”

Institutions that meet the enrollment criteria and achieve HSI designation can apply for competitive grant funding. Jinann Bitar, director of higher education research and data analytics at the Education Trust, who advocates for underserved minorities, calls the process a “hard pill to swallow” and says “that’s where equity goes south.” “It usually takes teams of people to fill (out the application). They’ll reject you on technical aspects. It’s a very meticulous process,” says Bitar. Data show that schools with high levels of appropriations, federal research dollars, or significant endowments get these grants because they can gather staff to tackle the rigorous application process. According to HACU there are currently 559 HSIs in the US and Puerto Rico and 393 eHSIs.

Although HSIs, eHSIs, and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), HSIs and eHSIs don’t share a history with HBCUs. HBCUs were established – some as long ago as the nineteenth century – with the sole mission of educating African Americans, who were not welcome at most American colleges and universities. Unlike HBCUs, HSIs and eHSIs didn’t set out to become institutions with this designation; rather, they are the product of their geographic location and the organic growth of the Hispanic population in a specific region and the US in general.  Unlike HBCUs, HSIs are defined by enrollment statistics.     

HSIs and eHSIs by the Numbers

According to HACU, HSIs enroll an estimated two-thirds of today’s 3.8 million Hispanic college students, and more African Americans (482,211) than all HBCUs combined. In 2018 the Education Trust found that one in seven Latino undergraduates at public and private degree-granting colleges attend an eHSI and they accounted for about one-fifth of all Latino bachelor’s degree recipients in 2014-15. 

The Education Trust looked at the six-year bachelor’s graduation rate between Latino and White students with similar levels of academic preparation by calculating the average difference in this rate between both groups of students attending HSIs, emerging HSIs and other institutions (See chart 1). The Education Trust wrote, “at less selective and moderately selective colleges (where institutions tend to have lower completion rates for Latino students), emerging HSIs typically have smaller gaps in graduation rates between Latino and White students than schools with relatively few Latino students — suggesting that higher Latino enrollment on campus may lead to more equitable student outcomes.”

These gaps are most significant among the moderately selective schools (average SATs between 1010 and 1192), but eHSI completion gaps decrease at the more selective institutions. “I find it interesting that the gap between eHSIs and other institutions is actually smaller than the current HSIs,” says Bitar. This may be, she suggests, because schools with an HSI designation are predominantly institutions that had the resources to go through the government process and just happen to have met the HSI threshold. Bitar is eager to study current HSIs to determine which ones apply their funding to current student success initiatives as opposed to creating intentional and specific student support for Latinos. Because eHSIs are institutions with fewer resources, they are forced to focus on rising student populations to stay competitive. “The HSIs that have been around, we know them...They’re long-standing institutions and I don’t think their focus on getting the designation was a committed and intentional effort towards specific support for Latino students,” says Bitar.   

Data vs. Culture

The data shows that MSIs, like HSIs, eHSIs, and HBCUs, are better at graduating minority students than schools that are not MSIs. When researchers compare MSIs within the same higher education sectors, they find that MSIs graduate more minorities across the board. Bitar calls MSIs, and in particular HSIs and eHSIs, equity powerhouses. “They enroll, retain, and graduate more Latino students than their non-MSI counterparts,” says Bitar.

When considering graduation rates and gaps, one can’t dismiss the culture of a school as a determining factor in the equation. Critical Mass Theory claims that once a group reaches a certain size at a college or university, its presence on campus alters the culture, norms, and values to benefit that group. Although researchers can’t agree on the exact point at which critical mass is achieved, some argue that the tipping point is somewhere between 15 and 40 percent of the total student body. Institutional culture, according to Santiago, is extremely important. When institutions are inclusive and leverage their students’ strengths rather than requiring them to adapt to a traditional structure and format, students are more apt to engage in their learning and feel as though they belong, says Santiago.   

Bitar, and others in higher education, find the HSI 25 percent cutoff interesting. “What’s the difference between an institution that has 24 percent or 26 percent? And does it matter if they’re in Michigan or in San Antonio, Texas? Would that impact the culture?” says Bitar. “It’s the constitution of the student body that changes the culture of the campus, not necessarily the designation or whether the school is an emerging HSI or a current HSI,” says Bitar.

Since HSI and eHSI designations are products of enrollment, it then becomes a function of demographics and regional population, says Bitar. “That begs the question, do Latina students in states where they don’t have a critical mass need less support to overcome the achievement gap?” asks Bitar.

In recent years MSIs have enjoyed a resurgence of bipartisan funding support, but still, they are woefully underfunded. Bitar, however, is encouraged that more money is being allocated to HSIs. “People are finally ready to start having a conversation. (They’re asking) ‘what are these designations, do they work, are they incentivizing the type of interventions we want to see to close completion and enrollment gaps and access gaps?’ No one was having this conversation 10 years ago,” says Bitar. “People had no idea what an MSI was. They didn’t know what an HSI was. This was not common language.”