Old College Try Not Enough : Major Obstacles Stand in Way of Increasing Diversity on Campus

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?” asked Lopez, who recruits for Cal State Los Angeles, at a college fair at South Gate High attended by students from South Gate, Huntington Park, Bell, Bell Gardens and three Los Angeles schools.

“None,” said one student.

“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 going to college by poverty and discrimination. But although universities are intent on diversifying, students face obstacles that include increased college costs, shrinking financial aid and, they say, a lack of guidance and encouragement to pursue higher goals.

Between 1976 and 1990, 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 165,804 students attending schools in the University of California system were African American; among the 305,080 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, where more than 25% of the 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 white 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.

Some low-income minority students say it is particularly difficult for them to set high goals because of social and financial obstacles.

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

Other minority groups such as Asian Americans are not underrepresented on university campuses, officials said. But 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.

Figures were unavailable for Long Beach and Compton school districts, but counselors and administrators agree that many of their minority students are less likely to attend college than their white classmates.

“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.”

Most high schools in the Southeast area have at least one guidance counselor. Many counselors say they encourage all students to continue their education but do not have the time or resources to monitor each student’s plans.

“Each counselor has a load of approximately 500 students. It’s difficult,” said Dave Beard, head counselor at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach. “We’re quite proud of the number of minority students we’re able to get into the university. But we’re always working to get more of them in.”

Students, however, say some counselors not only are too busy to advise them, they 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 a 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.

“I think that’s a stereotype of the ‘60s, when people were angry at institutions,” said Charles Espalin, the district’s director of counseling. “I have difficulty believing that, because that’s not in our training.”

He said all district counselors are advised to tell everyone to consider college.

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, students also must receive support from home.

“Most students in high school wait until their junior year to decide what to do. And in this district, many wait until their senior year,” said Compton’s Centennial High School Principal Jesse Jones. “Parents have to help. This school and this district are no stronger than the backbone of parents.”

In recent interviews, some Centennial students said they planned to find jobs after graduation. Others said they wanted to attend two-year community colleges and then transfer to four-year schools.

“I’m going to work first and then go to college,” said freshman Laniesha Brooks, 14. “But sometimes it seems like people who stop and work first end up not going to college.”

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 in Los Angeles, 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 discourage 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, a counselor at Wilson High School. “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. UC and Cal State officials say fees are likely to increase again next year--by at least 24% at Cal State schools.

Fees at community colleges also have jumped to $13 per unit per semester from $6 per unit last fall.

“In talking to kids, a lot of them felt they couldn’t go to a community college because they didn’t have the money,” said LaDawn Law, an assistant superintendent in the Compton Unified School District. “It’s just real expensive.”

And private schools are completely out of reach for many students, Law said, unless they get scholarships. Tuition at USC rose from $16,020 to $16,810 this fall, and at Stanford University from $16,536 to $17,775.

Jasmine Hamlett, 16, a senior at Centennial High School in Compton, dreams of attending Spelman College in Atlanta or Howard University near Washington, both private schools. A student body president with a 3.83 grade-point average, she wants to study politics, but wonders how she will scrape together enough money.

“My only means of paying for college would be a full scholarship,” Hamlett said.

Despite the financial barriers, college officials are working to attract more black and Latino students.

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 the University of California, 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 required immediate action, said Robert Jorgensen, assistant dean of social sciences at UC Santa Cruz and an adviser to the task force.

The group recommended granting 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 for university admission.

Many colleges and universities also work with black and Latino students at junior high and high schools to increase the pool of minority applicants.

In the 1970s, campuses such as UCLA and UC Irvine created the Early Academic Outreach Program to increase the number of underrepresented students at UC schools and other four-year colleges. Now they are stepping up those efforts.

UC Irvine, for example, launched a program last month for about 200 ninth-graders at Compton’s Centennial High School. As part of the program, which will continue until the students are seniors, students will visit the UC Irvine campus.

“UC Irvine is very close to the Southeast area of Los Angeles, but to high school students it may as well be in Paris,” said Juan F. Lara, UCI associate director of admissions. “You break down those distances by physically bringing those kids to campus.”