College Enrollments Drop Overall. What about Hispanics and HSIs?

In 2020 and 2021, when most colleges went to remote and virtual learning due to the pandemic, it was not surprising that higher education enrollment declined in the United States. But now, most colleges that survived the shutdown are fully open, charge full tuition and see most professors teaching almost all their classes in person. In Washington DC, Georgetown University – one of the mot cautious institutions - dropped its mask mandates in classrooms in late September 2022. According to the National Student Clearing House, a non-profit that released its annual college enrollment report on Thursday October 20, about 1.5 million fewer students are enrolled in college than before the pandemic. “It is particularly troubling that the numbers have not climbed back, especially among Freshmen,” according to the report. Figures for Hispanic students reflect the decrease. “From the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2021, there was a 6.9 percent drop in Latino undergraduate enrollment that continued in 2022,” according to the Clearing House. The drop in Hispanic students was 0.2 percent at public four-year universities in that period. But at public two-year colleges, where a large share of Latinos enrolls, the numbers fell 15.7 percent.”

Significantly, the drop in Hispanic enrollment overall caused a decline in the number of Hispanic Serving Institutions -- accredited public colleges and universities or private, not-for-profit degree-granting institutions with 25% or more full-time undergraduate students. A designated HSI can often qualify for hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra support from the Department of Education. New data from Excelencia in Education – a Latino higher education research and advocacy group in Washington DC – shows that the number of HSIs dropped from 569 in 2020-21 to 559 in 2021-22. This is the largest decline in HSIs since 1996-97.

Eighteen percent of colleges and universities are designated HSIs. They enroll 66 percent of the nation's Latino undergraduates. Among the colleges where Latino enrollment dropped, Excelencia named The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, St. Joseph's College-New York and the University of California at Santa Barbara; ironically, UCSB is one of the only universities in the country that offers a Ph.D. in Chicano Studies. Let us keep in mind that students of Hispanic heritage are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in the United States according to the PEW Center.            

Non-Citizens Voting (Including College Students) Infuriates Many Citizens

Washington DC’s liberal city council may have carried equity and inclusion too far on Wednesday, October 19. The council voted 12-1 to allow all non-citizens residing in the district for 30 days or more, to vote in local elections.  Allowing unauthorized (undocumented) migrants to vote is a historic, unique move in the USA. While a few cities, such as Takoma Park, Maryland, allow Permanent Legal Residents (i.e. green card holders) to vote in local elections, DC seems to be the first to allow all non-citizens, regardless of immigration status, to register and to vote after only 30 days of residency. Many citizens disapprove. It’s somewhat analogous to the brouhaha many college towns have experienced when allowing college students who live temporarily in campus dorms to vote in town elections.

“The intent is to give people who live here – whether citizens or not – more say over their lives,” Juan Ulloa, a board member of the DC Latino Caucus, said. “Non-citizens pay taxes and contribute to the economy and our way of life. Yet the decisions being made on the money, they have no say on it.” “We decided the right to vote should be expanded,” said Brooke Pinto (31), Georgetown’s city councilwoman, in the middle of her first term. Some 50,000 non-citizens would be eligible in DC. But that doesn’t count recent arrivals (approximately 7,000 mainly young men from Venezuela, bussed here from Texas this summer). It does include international students, visiting scholars, thousands of embassy representatives, businessmen, and the like who are temporarily residing in the district.

Thus, questions abound. Many elections include local and federal contests. How, in our messy registration and voter system, would any community distinguish between the non-citizen and the citizen voter at the ballot box? Even the US census is not allowed to collect information about how many undocumented citizens live in a district (only foreign born are counted). The only elected official to vote against the bill, DC Councilwoman Mary Cheh (Ward 3), expressed concerns that new arrivals should be eligible to vote after only 30 days. How many taxes have such recent arrivals paid? How much could they know about local issues in order to cast a vote rooted in attachment and engagement on issues where substantial local property and income taxpayer money is to be committed?

“Such questions are rooted in xenophobia and racism,” said Abel Amene, Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America. “Some progressives hope that reshaping the electorate will allow them to reshape local politics, prodding the city further to the left on issues such as rent control and spending on social programs,” wrote the Washington Post. “Sponsors of the bill are rushing to get it enacted so the 30-day review period for Congress to overturn the law will expire before the Republicans likely take over the House in January,” the Washington Post editorial claimed.

It might be better to encourage bipartisan government efforts to enable more migrants to come in legally on green cards and to become citizens so they can vote.

Frenzy Over Latino Vote Two Weeks Before Midterm Elections

The last frantic weeks before a major national election usually find the media focusing on a particular voting bloc that supposedly will determine the election results and the survival or not of the United States for the foreseeable future – mainly until the next election. As of October 15, 2022, the voting bloc the media focused on most was indisputably the Hispanic/Latino “bloc” – a group that was always considered to be reliably democratic until the press began to realize that Hispanics are highly diverse. The narrative in daily headlines suddenly became: Hispanics are turning right, going Republican, the Democrats are panicked.

At this time, two points come to mind: First: why are Hispanics turning Republican? Is it misinformation from conservative radio in Spanish, as some mainstream media proclaim? Is it voter manipulation? Is it isolation and confusion from the pandemic? Or is it demographic geography? After all, three of the possible Senate upsets could happen in Utah, Arizona and Colorado – states with significant Hispanic populations. Or is it over issues: Did Democrats go too far in pushing abortion over crime, the economy, and border control? •