Campus Crusade : Colleges Redouble Efforts to Recruit Minority Students, Who Face Obstacles Including Rising Costs, Shrinking Financial Aid and Lack of Encouragement

Seeming more like a fired-up football coach than a college recruiter, Boris Lopez paced in front of a class of high school seniors, urging them not to fall into the traps that doom others to a lifetime of minimum-wage jobs.

“How many doctors, lawyers, scientists do you know of your own kind?” Lopez, an outreach coordinator at Cal State Los Angeles, asked the students from South Gate, Huntington Park, Bell, Bell Gardens, Jordan, Garfield and Fremont high schools.

“None,” said one student attending a recent college fair at South Gate High.

“How many times do you see people of your own kind flipping burgers at McDonald’s?” Lopez asked. “All the time,” the same student answered.

“That’s right, you walk into McDonald’s, see someone like you behind the counter and it’s like, ‘What’s up, homey?’ ” Lopez said. “That’s fine. Go work at McDonald’s if you want to make the minimum wage. But if you want to do better, you have to go to college.”

Although techniques vary, college recruiters across the country are united in their mission to increase the number of African-American, Latino and other minority students, who historically have been kept from college campuses by poverty and discrimination. But universities intent on diversifying are facing obstacles that include increased college costs, shrinking financial aid and, according to students, a lack of guidance and encouragement to pursue higher goals.

Starting in the mid-1970s and continuing through the 1980s, colleges throughout the country increased their African-American and Latino student populations by 28%, according to U.S. Department of Education figures. But the trend is not continuing in the 1990s, said Penny Edgert, assistant director of academic programs and policy at the California Postsecondary Education Commission in Sacramento.

At the start of the 1992-93 academic year, only 4% of the students attending schools in the University of California system were African-American; among the students in the Cal State system, 6% were African-American. Statewide, 7.4% of the population is black, according to U.S. Census figures. Enrollment of Latinos--11% at UC and 15% at Cal State--was even less representative of the state’s makeup, given that more than a quarter of California’s population is Latino.

“This is worrisome because it’s happening at a time when the state is becoming more diverse,” Edgert said.

The trend toward diversity is nationwide. In the next 20 years, 4.4 million minority youths will enter the nation’s schools; in that same period, the number of Anglo youths is expected to drop by 3.8 million, according to a 1992 report by the National Assn. of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges.

“Colleges and universities are faced with two possibilities: Diversify the campus or shrink,” the report states. “We do not believe the public will support a higher education system that appears to attend to the needs of the privileged while leaving the have-nots to defend for themselves.”

The key to diversifying, college officials say, is to avoid focusing recruitment efforts heavily on middle-class, suburban minority students who have been attending universities for many years. Colleges instead must work to attract inner-city youths--many of whom may be interested in continuing their education but are uncertain how or if they can.

Inner-city students say it is particularly difficult for them to set high goals for themselves because they live in environments where their ambition is often curbed by peer pressure, lower expectations or a combination of those and other factors.

“I think black and Hispanic people face a harder time because there’s an assumption out there that we’re not going to make it,” said Fernando DeSantiago, a senior at Wilson High School in East Los Angeles who hopes to attend Harvard University. “There’s a lot of pressures out there with gangs, money problems and people getting on your back. It’s easy to get discouraged.”

Bell High School senior Jessica Ramirez said girls particularly have a difficult time getting to college.

“It’s harder for girls because their families don’t want them to leave the house,” said Ramirez, who plans to be a pediatrician. “They’re often the first ones in their families to go to college, and they don’t have role models to follow.”

In 1991, only 19% of the African-American and 13% of the Latino graduates of the Los Angeles Unified School District went to a Cal State or UC school, according to the most recent district figures.

“The problem I encounter at inner-city schools is that students have not taken the classes they need to go to a four-year university,” said Gina Rodriguez, assistant director of admissions at Occidental College. “Because Los Angeles’ schools are so overwhelmed with needs, and (guidance) counselors have so many students to work with, students are not being advised to take college prep courses.”

Every high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District has just one college counselor. Many counselors say they encourage all students to continue their education, but they said they do not have the time or resources to monitor each student’s plans.

Students, however, say some counselors not only are too busy to advise them, but actually steer them away from college.

UCLA senior Michael Buttler, who lived in Inglewood but attended Taft High School in the San Fernando Valley, said his guidance counselor told him during his freshman year of high school that he would never qualify for a UC school, so he should start making alternative plans.

Charles Espalin, the district’s director of counseling, said all district counselors are advised to tell everyone to at least consider college.

“I think that’s a stereotype of the ‘60s, when people were angry at institutions,” Espalin said of the accusation that counselors steer students away from college. “I have difficulty believing that, because that’s not in our training.”

Buttler, 24, who now advises high school students through UCLA’s Early Academic Outreach Program, said counselors need to encourage everyone to go to college because they are often the only ones students talk to about career goals.

“The general attitude of minority students is just stay in class and as long as you get through high school, you’ll deal with your future after graduation,” he said. “College is just not something you do.”

But even if counselors push college on everyone, students also must receive support from home.

“In our inner city, a lot of kids aren’t college-bound because they aren’t getting the support from their parents,” said Betty Menzies, college counselor at Washington High School in South-Central. “Parents have said to me, ‘This one is not going to college’ when they talk about their kids. Parents need to be educated that high school is not the end.”

During recent interviews with several Wilson High School students, most said they planned to find jobs or attend community colleges after graduation. Some said they wanted to attend two-year community colleges and then transfer to four-year schools.

“Going to a four-year college is too much school,” said Albert Perez, a junior who plans to attend East Los Angeles College and study business. “My teachers here encourage us to go to college, but I don’t want to go” for more than two years.

Wilson senior Joseph Lannen said, “It’s always been a dream to graduate from high school and then go to college.” But he admits he’s not yet prepared to go to a four-year school.

“Some say I should go, but I think going to a community college is better for me right now,” he said. “Maybe I’ll go to a four-year school after two years.”

In 1992, about 9% of the incoming freshmen in community colleges statewide were black, and about 26% were Latino, according to community college figures.

At Jordan and Jefferson high schools, only about half of the students encountered by Jose Guzman, a representative from Cal State Dominguez Hills, plan to continue their education.

“The other half are thinking of getting a job,” Guzman said. “A lot of these students are first-generation immigrants and they feel obligated to bring money home to their families.”

Rising college costs and shrinking financial aid also are discouraging some students from attending four-year universities.

“When the federal government eliminated home equity from the financial aid formula, it opened up a lot of people to financial aid who didn’t qualify before,” said Ray Kirk, Wilson High School’s college counselor. “But what that did was provide less aid to more students. As a result, many students are looking at two-year schools instead of four-year schools.”

The average UC fees per year rose from $3,044 last fall to $3,727 this fall, while Cal State fees rose from $1,308 to $1,440 during the same period, according to university figures. Fees at community colleges also have jumped to $13 per unit per semester from $6 per unit last fall.

More bad news came earlier this month, when UC and Cal State officials announced that fees are likely to increase again next year--by at least 24% at Cal State schools.

Despite these financial barriers, college officials believe they can attract more black and Latino students if their schools are willing to make more of an effort to get them.

Alarmed by their findings that only 3.9% of the state’s Latino high school graduates--compared with 12.3% of all students--are eligible to attend a UC school, UC officials in 1992 established a task force of faculty and administrative staff from each campus to study the problem.

Although the task force was commissioned for three years, the group published a list of recommendations earlier this year because members believed the problem was critical and required immediate action, said Robert Jorgensen, assistant dean of social sciences at UC Santa Cruz and an adviser to the task force.

The group’s recommendations include: providing grants and scholarships, rather than loans, to needy students; providing information to Latino parents in Spanish and English; coordinating efforts with schools, community colleges and civic organizations to recruit promising Latino students, and allowing English as a Second Language and bilingual courses to meet the course requirements necessary for admission to the university.

“It would help if schools would increase the academic content of ESL courses so that they can meet the university’s course requirements,” Jorgensen said. “Clearly, language is a problem, but we believe there are ways to overcome that.”

Many colleges and universities also are working with black and Latino students at the junior high and high school levels to increase the pool of minority applicants.

In the 1970s, UCLA created the Early Academic Outreach Program to increase the number of underrepresented students at UC schools and other four-year colleges by helping students at local high schools and junior high schools meet college admission requirements.

“One of the problems I’m seeing is that academic performance drops from the ninth grade first semester to the 11th grade second semester,” said Forrest Brigham, a field services coordinator of the program. “The work gets harder, and the peer pressure that’s evident today pulls people away from schoolwork. We try to see that students stay focused and get prepared for college.”

When Brigham first met Leslie Callum, she was a sophomore at Muir High School in Pasadena with a 2.6 grade-point average. After graduating with a 3.0 grade-point average, she enrolled at UCLA this fall.

“During the 10th grade, I was interested in going to college, but I wasn’t getting any information,” Callum said. “The program made me aware of what’s out there, and I learned about the importance of getting good grades and getting involved in school.”

More important, Callum said, she gained confidence in herself and started focusing on her future.

“It was my own self-motivation that was stopping me,” she said. “I wasn’t sure I had the ability to go on to college, and I didn’t think my grades were good enough. But being Afro-American, I’ve realized college is the only way I can make it.”

Application Deadlines

Here are the application deadlines for fall, 1994, semesters at some local schools:

* California State University: Applications accepted beginning Nov. 1. Each campus accepts applications until capacity is reached. Early filing strongly recommended.

* University of California: Applications accepted Nov. 1 through Nov. 30.

* Occidental College: Feb. 1.

* USC: Rolling admissions policy. All applicants who want to be considered for scholarships should submit their applications by Dec. 15. Applications will be accepted through the spring.

* Loyola Marymount University: Feb. 1.

* Mount St. Mary’s College: Rolling admissions, but priority deadline is March 1.

* Community colleges: Most colleges will accept applications starting in the spring and continuing until the fall semester begins.

How You Can Cash In on the Financial Aid System

Eligibility for financial aid is determined by a student’s “expected family contribution,” which is based on family income and the value of assets such as savings accounts, stocks and real estate. (The federal government no longer asks for home value or the amount of a mortgage.) Colleges subtract this number from the costs of tuition, books and living expenses when determining how much aid a student gets.

Assistance comes in a variety of forms, including scholarships, grants, loans and work-study programs. Ordinarily, students receive a combination of these.

TYPES OF AID

Federal--Government programs include Pell grants, Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, and three types of low-interest loans: Stafford loans, Parent PLUS loans and Supplemental Loans for Students. There are also federally administered college work-study programs. Congress recently approved the Clinton Administration’s community-service program, which provides students who perform 1,700 hours of service per year in a community project with $4,725 annually for up to two years.

State--California offers several aid programs, including Cal Grants, a state-administered work-study program, special aid for students pursuing teaching careers, awards to assist economically and educationally disadvantaged students and other scholarship and student loans.

Colleges--Individual schools provide aid in the form of scholarships, grants, employment and loans.

HOW TO APPLY

* When applying for admission to a college or university, write to the school’s financial aid office and ask for any information the office can forward about expenses and student aid.

* Pick up the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) packet from a high school counselor. The packet will be available starting in December.

* Fill out and return the FAFSA form, which asks for financial information based on your family’s federal tax return, as soon as possible after Jan. 1. To apply for a Cal Grant, a student must complete the state information on the FAFSA.

* When processing is completed, you will receive a Student Aid Report that details your estimated family contribution, which is used to determine eligibility for federal student aid. You will also receive notices from state and private programs to which you have applied. Make sure everything is correct and promptly respond to requests for more information.

For questions on federal aid, contact the Federal Student Financial Aid Information Center, (800) 433-3243. For questions on state aid, contact the Student Aid Commission Central Inquiry Unit, (916) 445-0880.