New Report: Hispanic Serving Institutions ‘Do More With Less’

A new report, published Wednesday by the center-left think tank Third Way, asserts that Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs) “do more with less,” often producing positive outcomes for students with less funding than other institutions.

The report was authored by Stephanie Aguilar-Smith, assistant professor of counseling and higher education at the University of North Texas, and is the latest installment in Third Way’s ACADEMIX series, research-driven papers to make academic findings more accessible to federal policymakers.

It notes that HSIs tend to receive less federal and state funding than other institutions and get approximately 68 cents per every federal dollar non-HSIs receive, which can lead to “severe resource gaps.”

But HSIs deliver major benefits for students, according to the report. Third Way measures colleges’ price-to-earnings premium, based on the average time it takes a student to recoup what they paid to attend a certain college, and HSIs made up almost half of the colleges where students recouped losses in less than a year. Among all HSIs represented in the data, 77 percent enabled students to recoup their tuition losses within five years.

Among other accomplishments, HSIs also offer routes to STEM careers for low-income students and students of color, the report noted. The majority of Latino community college STEM students, 81 percent, attend an HSI or emerging HSI. Four-year HSIs serve 60 percent of Latino STEM students, according to the report. Meanwhile, 37 percent of STEM students at two-year HSIs and 44 percent of STEM students at four-year HSIs come from the lowest income quartile.

The report includes a series of recommendations to support HSIs, including increasing funding for federal HSI grant programs and tracking which institutions are applying for and receiving grant funding to better understand which campuses are “under-benefitting” and need targeted assistance accessing those funds.