More than half of minority college students in Colorado go to two-year colleges instead of four-year schools, hindering their earning potential and leading to a “permanent underclass,” a new study says.
By 2018, almost one-third of graduating high school students will be Hispanic, and only 11.4 percent of Hispanics in Colorado are going to college at all, said Spiros Protopsaltis, an analyst with the Bell Policy Center of Denver.
“Unless we take immediate action, we are basically creating a permanent underclass with minority and low-income students,” Protopsaltis said Tuesday.
The study also showed the number of minorities enrolling in private, for-profit colleges offering trade and technical training has doubled in 10 years.
That worries Protopsaltis because for-profit institutions have the highest loan default rates among students – 9 percent – compared with 6 percent for public colleges and 2 percent for private nonprofits.
Eleven for-profit colleges in Colorado had loan default rates above 10 percent, including In telliTec College in Grand Junction and Westwood College, which has schools across the country.
“The achievement gap that has attracted so much attention in the K-12 system continues throughout college,” Protopsaltis said. “It’s not just important to get students in college; it’s important that they stay in college and graduate with a degree.”
More than half of the state’s minority students are concentrated at 10 public colleges, the study shows. Emily Griffith Opportunity School educates twice as many minority undergraduates as the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Metropolitan State College of Denver was second in educating minorities.
Only 20 of every 100 ninth-graders in Colorado finish high school and graduate from a community college within three years or earn a bachelor’s degree within six years, the study says. That ranks the state 20th in the nation.
Many people are under the misconception Colorado is doing well at educating its students because the state is No. 2 in the nation for having adults with college degrees, said Wade Buchanan, president of the policy center. In reality, Colorado was the country’s No. 2 importer of college graduates from 1989 to 2001.
Staff writer Jennifer Brown can be reached at 303-820-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com.
