Mexican-American High-School Students Perceive Many More Barriers to College Than Do Their White Peers

Chronicle of Higher Education 2/13/07

By Lauren Smith

While Mexican-American high-school students and their white peers desire equally to go to college, the former see many more obstacles in their path, according to a new study by researchers in Oregon that looked at "perceived barriers" to higher education.

The study focused on perceptions rather than actual hurdles. "Perceived barriers determine the likelihood someone will carry out their goals," said Ellen Hawley McWhirter, who is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Oregon's College of Education and one of the study's four authors.

The study's findings are described in an article, "Perceived Barriers and Postsecondary Plans in Mexican-American and White Adolescents," in this month's issue of the Journal of Career Assessment. The study focused on 28 potential barriers, both internal and external, and surveyed 140 Mexican-American and 296 white students at high schools in the Midwest and Southwest.

Over all, Mexican-American students anticipated encountering more barriers associated with ability, preparation, motivation, support, and separation from their families, friends, and teachers than did their white counterparts, and expected those barriers to be more difficult to overcome.

The study's most surprising finding, Ms. McWhirter said in an interview on Monday, was that sex was not generally a predictor of whether students would perceive pregnancy and gender discrimination as barriers. But girls, both Mexican-American and white, perceived financial issues as a barrier to higher education more often than boys did.

Among other results, the researchers found no correlation between the educational level of parents and students' perception of barriers. While the children of parents with higher educational levels were more likely to plan to attend four-year colleges, they did not anticipate fewer hurdles than did the children of less-educated parents.

The study cites figures from the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education, that show Latinos far behind whites and African Americans in their rates of degree completion. Latinos also have higher high-school dropout rates and lower high-school completion rates, compared with white and African-American students, according to federal data.

"These Mexican-American kids aren't doing something wrong," Ms. McWhirter said of the relatively low degree-completion rates. "The crux of the findings are that we as a society have to work to dismantle these barriers, and school systems have to work harder to, so that the wisdom and the value of Mexican-American families can be maximized for the benefit of their kids."

Ms. McWhirter's co-authors on the study were Danielle M. Torres, an assistant professor of school counseling at Lewis and Clark College, and Susana O. Salgado and Marina Valdez, both doctoral students in counseling psychology at the University of Oregon.