Provocative New Brief Calls for Increased Accountability in Title V Funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions

"(Re)Constructing Hispanic-Serving Institutions: Moving Beyond the Numbers Toward Student Success" is a provocative new brief written by Dr. Lindsey E. Malcom, assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside; Dr. Estela Mara Bensimon, CUE's co-director and USC professor of higher education; and Brianne Davila, former CUE research assistant. 

The brief calls upon federal and higher education policymakers, as well as the leaders of Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs), to take a critical look at how well they are doing in graduating Latino and Latina students and develop outcome measures for Title V funding as a way to improve their effectiveness. 

Based on a keynote address by Dr. Bensimon at The American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) conference earlier this year, her remarks were incorporated into a policy brief that was just released by Iowa State University in collaboration with AAHHE. 

While there are now 265 degree-granting HSIs that educate over half of all Latinos in college, they do not perform as well as they should for this segment of the student population. For example, the six-year graduation rate at four-year public HSIs is only 31%, compared to 39% for four-year public non-HSIs. 

Among private nonprofit institutions, private HSIs graduate fewer Latino students than their private non-HSI counterparts, 44% versus 47%. To reverse these statistics, the brief recommends that HSI leaders require all institutional data to be disaggregated by race and ethnicity and that they commit to measurable goals in such basic indicators of success as degree completion, retention and transfer from community colleges. 

To be authentically Hispanic-serving, these institutions should demonstrate the direct benefits they confer on Latino and Latina students as a result of Title V funding. 

For more details about our recommendations, click here to read the brief.