Most selective private colleges and universities in the U.S. still have disproportionately low enrollment numbers for Latino first-time, full-time undergraduate students, according to a recent report from The Education Trust.
Sandra Perez
The sequel to a 2020 report on Black and Latino enrollment at selective U.S. public institutions, the report turns its attention to the nation’s private schools, namely the 122 most selective private four-year colleges and universities in the nation.
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike-down of Affirmative Action last year, it was important to examine how much access Black and Latino students have to these elite schools, said report author Sandra Perez, a higher education research analyst for Ed Trust.
“We know that over 50% of our nation's leaders come from these elite institutions,” Perez said. “If we're not getting Latinos into these institutions, how are we going to have leaders that are also representative of our demographics?”
The report compares enrollment of first-time, full-time, Latino undergrads from the years 2000 and 2020, grading and scoring each school based on “how well an institution’s share of Latino undergraduates represents the Latino population ages 18-24 in the states from which these first-time students came,” according to the report. Scores of 90 or higher were given A’s, 80 or higher B’s, and so forth.
For 2020, Harvard University scored 52, an F. Yale University received a 62, a D. Stanford University also got an F, with an access score of 53. And Duke University saw an F as well, with a dismal score of 48.
Despite general growth in Latino undergrad enrollment compared to 2000 – the average score for all 122 schools increased by 25 points since then – progress has still been insufficient, the report noted.
