The Hispanic Scholarship Fund is announcing a new effort today to increase college-going and college-completion rates among Hispanic Americans, with the goals of having a college graduate in every Hispanic household by 2025 and increasing the proportion of the U.S. Hispanic population with a college degree from 19 percent now to 60 percent by 2025. The scholarship fund, which is working to build college aspirations among Hispanic families through a public-service advertising campaign, estimates that reaching the 60-percent goal would result in a $13-trillion increase in earning power among the Hispanic population, leading to a $2.2-trillion increase in federal tax revenue.
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A college degree in every household regardless of race, color, creed, etc. is a foolish plan. Many careers do not require a college education and some of these careers pay extremely well. Admission stardards are already extremely low. Grade inflation is out of control. Many college graduates can not read or write at an acceptable level.A potential employer expects graduates to have the knowledge and skills the university promised. If the university can not deliver, the employer will go elsewhere to recruit qualified employees.PS: If the government needs increased tax revenues there are a multitude of ways in which to accomplish this goal.
@21wr12: You must be joking, right? This is a worthwhile goal. You remind me of the fools who advised me not to pursue my academic goals because the country needed more electricians and plumbers instead. I doubt many people in those other occupations have my standard of living right now, and the immense satisfaction that comes from deep intellectual engagement in a profession. Hispanics: Go for it!
This is fine, if they EARN it. But you can bet your bottom dollar that’s not what will happen. What will happen is to push to dumb down college even more so as to let more people get a “degree” who cannot get one if subject to honest, reasonable academic standards. This is like Obama’s push for many more degree-holding Americans. It is so stupid, it’s not the “degree”, it’s the knowledge. All they will do is push to dumb things down even further.
@softshellcrab: What makes you think that they won’t earn it? This is a scholarship fund, for God’s sake, and not the construction of a diploma mill. Scholarship funds have been around for ages. I don’t get the negativity here.
One of the things that a substantial number (a majority?) of American Hispanics–from working-class to quite well-off–do is speak two languages decently. In a country where the yahoos (e.g., Tea Partiers in the red states) speak only one and are often proud of the fact (the “English only” movement), this is an admirable trait and gives a good many Hispanics a leg up on one of the tenets of the liberal arts: a wide cultural perspective. Since Spanish will be the majority first language west of the Mississippi by the middle of the century, and since that fact is not likely to motivate our yahoos to become bilingual, it’s probably a good idea for there to be as many Hispanic college graduates as possible when that moment rolls around.Just curious: In how many languages is softshell crab fluent? (Tell the truth.)
Is this really the solution? This is a very aggressive goal in such a short period of time. How these students going to be prepared in high school to be able to enter the college of choice. Is government going to dictate lowering education level to accommodate certain race? Or raise the bar at the early stage to make sure they are prepared? I am all about education and earning higher degree, but most American Hispanics don’t even try to learn English.
I am from another country and when I came to US, it was my first priority to learn the language to be able to communicate with others. Why Hispanics don’t have the same priority?