Abstract
Dr. Elsa M. Núñez, president of Eastern Connecticut State University, describes her personal and professional journey to bring the promise of a college degree to underrepresented students. The chapter explores the academic achievement gap in Connecticut, the importance of a college degree in today's technological society, and the need to provide access to higher education to a growing minority population long denied access to college. Dr. Núñez then uses two programs at Eastern—the Dual College Enrollment Program and Eastern's participation in a national program for undocumented students—to demonstrate how this New England public university has been able to enroll students from marginalized communities and provide them with an engaged campus experience that leads to graduation. Even as Eastern has impacted the lives of underrepresented students, the university has maintained the quality of the education its students receive. U.S. News and World Report's 2022 rankings place Eastern #1 in New England among public regional universities for the third year in a row.
TopIntroduction
Educators become elementary school teachers, high school principals, college professors, and university presidents because they share a belief in the transformative power of education. In the days of ancient Greece, the Middle Ages of Europe, and more recently the colonies of America, “freeing the mind” was limited to the wealthy and privileged, usually men. Over the course of the past 200 years education in the United States has been redefined by a public education movement that has dramatically increased educational access and been the source of unprecedented individual self-sufficiency, economic growth, and social order. (Geiger, 2019)
In the early 1800s, visionaries such as Horace Mann, Henry Barnard, and others began to implement a model of public education in the United States, initially at the primary grade level. Reflecting his belief that an educated populace was necessary for the success of the American Democracy, Mann called education the “balancing wheel of social machinery . . . the great equalizer of the conditions of men.”
In 1862, the Morrill Act opened up the world of public higher education when it authorized land grants for each state to create its own public university. In 1887, the Hatch Act added agricultural research to the land grant mission, and the Smith-Lever Act of 1914 created cooperative extension services. Today there are 112 land grant institutions, of which 19 are HBCUs and 33 are tribal. (Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, 2021)
Following World War II, the GI Bill provided dramatic expansion of college enrollments of veterans returning from the war, while the President’s Commission on Higher Education in 1947 sparked the creation and development of community colleges well into the 1970s. These and other initiatives created unprecedented access to postsecondary education, with college enrollments soaring from 2.3 million students in 1950 to 12.1 million in 1980. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2022)
In fall 2010, full-time college enrollments peaked at more than 11.5 million students, with fall 2019 full-time enrollments at 10.2 million students. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2021)
Even as increasing college enrollments has been the focus of educational reformers, college completion rates continue to be the most important metric of success for institutions of higher learning. The percentage of U.S. adults with at least a four-year degree increased to 32% in 2019, with whites experiencing a 15% increase since 2005; African Americans a 25% increase; and Hispanics a 4% increase. (Nietzel, 2021). While encouraging, this report also noted that affluent counties saw a 3.8% increase in the percentage of adults with a four-year degree, while non-affluent counties experienced only a 3.0% increase. The tide may be rising, but the have nots continue to fall behind, at a time when a college degree has never been more essential for individuals seeking economic stability and social mobility.
The percentage of jobs requiring the technology-driven skills of the 21st century also continues to grow. From 1980-2014, there was a 68% growth in the number of jobs with higher level skills, opposed to only a 31% growth in lower-level positions. (Pew Research Center, 2016) Similarly the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a reversal of educational requirements for jobs from 1992 to 2016: while a high school diploma or less was all that was needed in 48% of the jobs in 1992, by 2016, that figure had fallen to 34%, while the percentage of jobs requiring a two- or four-year degree increased from 43% to 52%. (Brundage, V., 2017)
The earning potential of a college degree has also been firmly established. Using 30 years of data, the Pew Research Center reports that someone with a bachelor’s degree earns 68-80% more than someone with just a high school diploma. (Lopez, 2009)
Key Terms in this Chapter
Equity vs. Equality: The legal basis of “equality” in the United States finds its genesis in the “separate but equal” doctrine established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896. Even though Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 struck that doctrine down, we are still struggling as a nation to achieve true equity. The difference between equality and equity is fundamental to how educational institutions operate and how students succeed. An example of “equality” is where students from all backgrounds are given the same resources in school. In reality, affluent students have had privileged upbringings, complete with books at home, summer enrichment programs, private piano lessons and more. Low-income students, regardless of race, have had none of those privileges. Students of color also must deal with systemic racism, and Latino students may also have language barriers to overcome. True equity comes from providing additional supports, as needed, to marginalized students, so that they have the resources they need to succeed. Whether peer tutors, additional basic skills instruction, bilingual coursework, or other supports, such additional assistance can help bridge the “resource gap” necessary to achieve true equity.
Low-Income: Poverty is currently defined in the United States as families living below $26,500 in annual income for a family of four. Approximately 34 million Americans are living in these conditions, or about 10.5% of the population.
Underrepresented, Marginalized, and At-Risk Students: These terms are not interchangeable. Nor are “minority” students, “urban” students, “low-income students” and “first-generation students.” Not all African American students live in cities, not all Latino students are from low-income households, and not all low-income students are first-generation. Using such terminology without context invites stereotypes and a “deficit” model. However, students who come from underrepresented populations have been marginalized — left at or outside the margins — for too long. The gap in resources available to them has put them at risk to succeed in our schools and colleges. At the same time that each of these students deserves to be treated with respect as an individual, educators can craft interventions that address the needs of students with similar backgrounds to enhance their success in college.
Latino/Hispanic: As the author notes, there is no such thing as a Latino or Hispanic, nor an “Asian” or “African” for that matter. “Latinx” and “Hispanic” are labels created for the convenience of demographers and census analysts. More than 20 nations comprise Central and South America, all of which have multiple ethnicities. One of the nations in Latin America — Brazil — is not “Hispanic,” as its official language is Portuguese. There are 62 tribes in Mexico alone, while the island of Puerto Rico is a mixture of African, Spanish and Taino cultures. Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and others identify with their homelands, perhaps even at a tribal or regional level. People deserve to be respected for their personal identity, and not grouped into a cohort without meaning to them personally.
Achievement Gap: For more than 30 years, the 50 states and the District of Columbia have participated in annual testing that is submitted to the U.S. Department of Education to create state-level and national aggregate data around reading, writing, mathematics and science achievement in the fourth, eighth, and twelfth grades. Historically students of Color, urban students, and low-income students have had lower test scores than White students, those in suburban schools, and students from higher income families. Educators continue to develop strategies to impact this gap at the same time social scientists have articulated that educational achievement is not a “deficit gap” but rather a “resource gap.” In addition to innovative practices in school districts and on college campuses, educational attainment must be tied to social strategies that include employment, nutrition, and other related life conditions.
First-Generation Students: First-generation students are the first in their immediate families to attend college. While issues such as poverty, nutrition, employment, and academic performance can be measured, it is difficult to measure the positive impact of having someone in your family who has attended college, or the negative impact of not having a college graduate in the family you can turn to. Whether it is filling out the FAFSA form, guiding a student through the college selection process, encouraging good study habits, or being able to recount similar campus experiences, families with college graduates in their midst provide immeasurable support and counsel to college students, especially those attending college in their first year. First-generation students, on the other hand, struggle with unfamiliar experiences that no one “back home” can counsel them about.
“Dreamers”: This term comes from the “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act,” a legislative proposal originally introduced in Congress in 2001 but never passed. “Dreamers” immigrate to the United States with their families as young children, legally undocumented yet knowing no home but this country. As many as 20 states have made going to college at a public institution next to impossible for these students. In these “locked-out” states, undocumented students are denied access at all to public colleges and universities in those states or charging out-of-state tuition despite the fact they and their families pay taxes. In addition, undocumented students are not eligible for Pell grants or other federal aid. In 2012, President Obama signed the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” executive order to provide some legal protections to undocumented students. TheDream.US foundation, created by former Washington Post publisher Donald Graham, funds hundreds of Dreamers annually to attend colleges outside their home state. With more than 200 Dreamers, Eastern is the foundation’s largest higher education partner.