Fewer Hispanic Students Have Applied For College, Financial Aid In 2021
It’s only early August, so still too early to really assess the final impact that the past year of lockdowns due to the COVID19 pandemic has had on new college admissions, especially on Hispanic high school graduates. But a July report by the National College Attainment Network that tracks college attendance and completion of low income students reported that completed applications for financial aid submitted to FAFSE dropped by over 5 percent from 2020, that already had seen a historic drop. Applications for Pell Grants – the most usual form of tuition assistance for students attending over 1000 community colleges throughout the country -- were due in early summer. The number completed is often seen as a barometer for actual college attendance in the Fall. The NCAN attributes the drop in applications to economic uncertainty brought on by the pandemic. Many low-income students may not be sure they can afford college, even with financial aid.
But there might be some good news as well. Job opportunities are surging throughout the country. “More well-paying hourly jobs are available, in some cases with signing bonuses,” NCAN’s Director Bill DeBaun noted in the report. “Higher wages draw students from the margins.” For some students, securing a well-paying job just out of high school may be a priority this year. But it is bad news for many regional two and four-year colleges that have been struggling with falling enrollments, even before the pandemic.
Biden’s Historically Diverse Cabinet Includes 33% Immigrants
President Joe Biden’s Cabinet of 24 executive department and agency heads, the Vice President and the President’s Chief of Staff, is the most diverse in history. In addition, 33 percent are immigrants or children of immigrants. Here’s the demographic breakdown of the cabinet compared to the country’s population:
50% are non-Hispanic white compared to 61% of the U.S. population; 19% are black compared to 12%; 15% are Hispanic vs. 18%; 8% Asian vs. 6%; 4% native American vs -1%; and 4% are multiracial compared to 2%.
Proportionally there are slightly fewer women in Biden’s Cabinet than in the US as a whole: 54% male vs 46% female, compared to the U.S. population of 49% male and 51% female. Unsurprisingly, top officials in Biden’s Cabinet are older than the majority of the U.S. population: 8% are 35-44 years old compared to 13% in the US population; 31% are 45-54 compared to 13%; 35% are 55-65 years old vs. 13%; 27% are 65 and older compared to 16%. No one in Biden’s Cabinet is under 35 years old whereas some 46% of the overall population is.
Cabinet members include Vice President Kamala Harris and the heads of the 15 executive departments — the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs, and the Attorney General. In addition, the Cabinet includes the White House Chief of Staff, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Director of National Intelligence, U.S. Trade Representative, plus the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Management and Budget, Council of Economic Advisers, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Small Business Administration.
DACA/DREAMERS’ Window for Legalization Is Disappearing
On July 16, 2021, a federal court judge declared DACA to be illegal. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Obama created by executive memo in June 2012 gave some 900,000 initial successful applicants a waiver from deportation and a work permit. Now some 650,000 current DACA recipients may see the program end in 2022.
A large proportion of DACA recipients are Mexican nationals under the age of 30, who came into the country before 2007 and before they were age 16; at the time of application they had to be in “unauthorized” status and planning to attend college. “DACA did not legalize the grantees,” Obama constantly reminded people. “Only Congress can do that; Presidents can’t”. Obama intended DACA to be only a two-year protection program. He expected that, early in his second term, Congress would pass a law to legalize the DACA recipients. That didn’t happen.
Although the idea of DACA always has been popular with a small majority of Americans, it was increasingly marketed under a false premise (i.e.: beneficiaries were described as “little children brought in illegally by their parents at an early age,” whereas the real definition is “anyone who came into the United States before the age of 16” – a very different image). DACA soon became completely politicized. By 2013 it had become an open bait and switch in the never-ending duel by Democrats to pass ever-larger totally opaque comprehensive immigration reform bills; while Republicans dug in their heels to pass immigration reform only in small pieces. DACA and its corollary, the never-passed DREAM Act (that would legalize some 4-8 million unauthorized migrants who came into the U.S. before the age of 18) got caught in the middle.
DACA is now likely headed to the Supreme Court to determine its constitutionality. A positive ruling is increasingly unlikely. In May 2021, SCOTUS ruled that thousands of legal temporary permit holders (H1Bs, etc.) who came into the country illegally, could not constitutionally be legalized by Congress under current immigration laws. DACA recipients could fall under the same category. The ruling could impact the hundreds of universities and colleges that have been designated or are trying to become Hispanic Serving Institutions. Hispanic DACA recipients and DREAMERs are often recruited to fill the HSI 25% undergraduate requirement.
Immigration will be a prominent issue in the 2022 election battles to control Congress and the Senate, and probably in the 2024 presidential election as well. DACA is the tip of the iceberg. But the uncontrolled surge of tens of thousands of people, mainly teenagers, crossing the southern border illegally since January, is changing Americans’ tolerance for young undocumented immigrants.
