1 . Introduction
On February 24, 2009 President Barack Obama set the ambitious goal that the United States “should once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020” (U.S. Department of Education (!!!)). With the US currently only ranked 12th in the world in four-year degree attainment among 25-34-year olds this would require at least eight million more young adults to earn a postsecondary degree by 2020 (The White House; U.S. Department of Education (!!!)). The White House has announced that in order to achieve this goal “President Obama and his Administration are working to make college more accessible, affordable, and attainable for all American families”. However, many authors such as Andrew Kelly,
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Admittedly, Hispanics are neither the only nor the first minority facing educational difficulties: achievement differences among ethnic groups have existed before and Latinos are definitely not the only group that has been afflicted by race inequality in education. (!) However, right now Latinos are the lowest performing population group regarding educational achievement in the United States (Gándara, Contreras 18). While 90 percent of whites, 85 percent of African-Americans, and 89 percent of Asian-Americans between the age of 25 and 64 have finished high school, only about 64 percent of Latino 25- to 64-year-olds have earned a high school diploma (Maxwell 2). Their postsecondary attainment not only lags behind the attainment of white but also of black and Asian students (Adams 1). Moreover, the college completion rates of Latinos are considerably lower than those of most other ethnic groups: according to the U.S. Department of Education “in 2010, among Hispanic 25- to 29-year-olds, 14 percent had earned a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 19 percent for African-Americans, 39 percent for whites, and 53 percent for Asian-Americans” (qtd. in Maxwell 2) (!). For all other minority groups, the percentage of college degree holders has increased significantly over the past decade, yet for Latinos it has not increased for more than two decades (Gándara, Contreras 10). The fact that Latinos are not only the fastest-growing ethnic minority but also “the most undereducated major population group in the country” (Gándara, Contreras 18) should illustrate once more how much Latino education matters to everyone.