Familism helps and hinders Hispanic college success

America’s preoccupation with illegal immigration and the growing Hispanic population has fueled anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic sentiment. Like African-American students, Hispanic students often face prejudice in school. But that raises the question: Why are Hispanic students’ college application rates so much lower than those of black students, even though both groups are affected by the racial climate?

Only 22 percent of Hispanics between the ages of 18 and 24 enrolled in a postsecondary institution in 2000, compared to 39 percent of whites and 31 percent of blacks in this age bracket.

Family income level, parental education, school quality, and immigrant status all affect Hispanic students’ educational success. But these cannot fully account for Hispanic underachievement, says

UW–Madison sociology professor Ruth López Turley.  Many studies have concluded that familism is especially pronounced in Hispanic culture, and that it both helps and hinders Hispanic students.

López Turley and co-author Matthew Desmond define familism as a social pattern whereby one’s individual interests, decisions, and actions are conditioned by a network of relatives that takes priority over the individual.

Hispanics, and Mexican-Americans in particular, live in larger and denser kinship networks than whites. Hispanic adults and adolescents value interdependence and family obligations more so than whites.

Some college-bound Hispanic students find themselves pulled in two directions: They want to cultivate themselves. They’re willing to leave home, if the best education requires it. At the same time, another impulse encourages them to stay at home and uphold family ties that help shape their identity.

In a study of high school seniors, López Turley found that Hispanics are the most likely to say it’s important to live at home during college, even those with college-educated parents. But students who say it is important to stay home are significantly less likely to apply to college, especially to selective institutions.

Her recent study used data from the Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project. The study sample included 13,803 seniors attending 96 Texas public high schools in spring 2002.

Compared to whites and blacks, Hispanic high school seniors were significantly less likely to apply to:

a selective college (14% versus 31% of whites and 19% of blacks).

a four-year college (42% versus 55% of whites and 56% of blacks) and

*any* college (54% versus 66% for whites and 70% of blacks).

More: http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/news/coverStories/2009/familism_helps_and_hinders.php