Hostos Community College: Elevating Justice in the South Bronx

Introduction

Every morning, waves of commuters converge at the 149^th Street subway station on the Grand Concourse. The packed trains screech to a stop, doors open, and people shoulder through the crowd on the platform. Three levels down, the station is dimly lit, and people move with determination up the stairs, slowing down to accommodate a mother lugging a stroller, or a father shepherding small kids to school. Hospital workers heading to nearby Lincoln Memorial wear scrubs and sneakers. Teens travel in small pods, cell phones glued to their palms. The churros lady is unperturbed by the rush; the cops keep their eyes on the scene, watchful yet relaxed. Push through the turnstiles, one more short flight of stairs, and you are here, on the Grand Concourse, at Hostos Community College.

This corner of the South Bronx is visually and audibly chaotic, and it pulses with aspiration, optimism and determination. The odds faced by its residents are sobering. Social justice is a concrete reality; the fight for equity is a fight necessitated by persistent structural inequities that have conspired to keep the South Bronx the poorest congressional district in the United States where >40% of children live in poverty (compared to 20% statewide) and median household income is $32K (compared to $71K citywide).¹ Hostos students remain among the most disenfranchised and among those for whom a college credential remains the most elusive.

Hostos’ commitment to the advance of social justice is a moral imperative and has been since its founding.

Hostos Community College, one of 25 colleges within the City University of New York (CUNY), was created to address the under-education of South Bronx residents. In 1968, the Board of Higher Education, in response to community activists, recognized residents of this community – typically Hispanic or Black, first- or second-generation immigrants who are poor and lack academic readiness for college – deserved to benefit from the CUNY mission to provide a public, first-rate education for all New Yorkers. More than fifty years later, Hostos remains rooted in the social justice and equity priorities that led to its founding: providing education to unlock a world of opportunities for students who predominantly come from the Bronx, where so many immigrants arrive to make their American dreams come true. Students come to Hostos for that value. Students come to Hostos for that value; they know Hostos as the college where even though systems and structures stand in their way, this is an institution that opens doors and creates access.

As its mission states, Hostos goes beyond academics and learning. It recognizes the powerful role it can play as an educational provider to facilitate socio-economic mobility for all its students and, in turn, for their families and the diverse, multicultural communities from which they come. This recognition distinguishes Hostos’ intergenerational approach, as noted by nationally recognized researchers examining which community colleges stand out as engines of intergenerational social mobility and help lift low-income students into the middle class. Hostos’ social-justice and equity-focused mission, alongside notable improvements in student-success outcomes over the last decade, contributed to Hostos being nominated three times for the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, and to its selection as a top 10 finalist in 2015 and in 2023. These factors contributed to Hostos receiving its largest philanthropy gift ever in 2021: $15 million from author and philanthropist Ms. MacKenzie Scott.

The narrative below tells the story of Hostos Community College as an institutional leader among community colleges. It situates Hostos within a national context and in relation to its distinct and ever-evolving role as an anchor institution in the South Bronx. It reflects on Hostos’ identity as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) of and for the underserved residents of who remain, more than 55 years after its founding, primarily Hispanic and Black. This identity as a Hispanic Serving Institution is grounded in Hostos’ history, and in its federal designation as an institution that serves a minimum 25% Hispanic students (in Fall 2023, 53% of Hostos students were Hispanic). Hostos’ identity as a community college intersects with its roles as a minority serving institution: a place of open access, of the community – which is itself a dynamic (re-)production of culture, geography and stubbornly persistent socio-economic conditions sustained by systemic inequities. It is, to quote Dr. Martin Luther King, a place of “second chance[s]” (King & King, 1967:209).