With only about 9 percent of Hispanic men in Colorado completing a four-year degree, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education kicked off a task force Wednesday charged with improving minority graduation and retention.
The Minority Success Task Force, made up of CCHE commissioners and state legislators, heard from three national experts who offered various reasons why minorities forgo college.
They also suggested some ways to encourage Hispanics, blacks and others to get a degree.
Vincent Tinto, a Syracuse University professor who studies higher education, said students have to work hard long before coming to college.
“If we don’t properly prepare students at elementary and high school, the results will be less grand than we hoped for,” he said.
Other experts said a strong support system – tutoring struggling students and teaching students to start thinking about college as early as possible – improves the chances that they will be successful and graduate.
Nationwide, blacks and Hispanics drop out at slightly higher rates than whites in the first two years of school. In Colorado, minority graduation rates do not compare well with those of whites.
None of the experts explained the disparity.
For example, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, about 70 percent of white students graduate, while 57 percent of Latino, 55 percent of black and 37.5 percent of American Indian students completed a degree program, according to CCHE statistics.
But committee members already had disagreements about what will keep students in school.
State Sen. Ed Jones, R-Colorado Springs, complained that too many students stick with their own ethnic groups instead of exploring other cultures.
“How do they ever assimilate and become part of the university culture of all students” if students stick with their own race? he said.
CCHE Commissioner Richard Garcia said it is important that students have classes about their culture and that those classes attract all cultures.
“If you’re going to take ethnic studies away, you’re going to lose a lot of students,” he said.
The task-force members will visit a half-dozen area campuses in the next three months to view programs designed to retain minority students. They are expected to issue recommendations in December.
Staff writer Arthur Kane can be reached at 303-820-1626 or akane@denverpost.com.
