Latino enrollment in four-year schools reaches all time high

A recent Pew Center analysis found that the Latino students made up over 2 million of all students at a four-year institution.

by Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech | Oct. 08, 2022

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The Pew Research Center determined that the total number of Latinos enrolled in a four-year college or university reached an all-time high in 2020.

Latino enrollment in higher education has steadily gone up over the last two decades, in part to their growth as a share of the U.S. population.

Latino enrollment in four-year institutions continued to go up even during the first year of the pandemic, the analysis found.

Hispanic student enrollment at four-year colleges and universities has reached an all-time high.

A new Pew Research Center analysis of the most recent U.S. population survey data found between 2000 and 2020 the number of Latinos enrolled in a four-year institution increased by 287 percent jumping from 620,000 to 2.4 million.

Meanwhile, overall student enrollment at four-year institutions in the U.S. has gone up by 50 percent during this same time period.

The spike in part reflects Latinos’ rapid growth as a share of the U.S. population over the past 20 years, Pew researchers note in the analysis.

In general, Latinos make up a growing number of students enrolled at all types of postsecondary schools. In 1980, there were roughly 470,000 Latino students enrolled at a degree-granting college, university or trade school accounting only for 4 percent of all students.

But by 2000, 1.5 million Latinos were enrolled in a postsecondary institution and accounted for 10 percent of all students and by 2020 that number reached 3.7 million, or roughly 20 percent of all U.S. students, according to the analysis.

Hispanic enrollment in four-year schools continued during the beginning of the pandemic while Latino enrollment, and overall enrollment, in two-year schools declined.

Between 2019 and 2020 the number of Latino students enrolled in a four-year college or university spiked by 140,000 students, or 6 percent, the analysis found.

The COVID-19 pandemic eventually hurt enrollment rates for Latinos and most other racial and ethnic groups. In the fall of 2020, there were 640,000 fewer students, including about 100,000 fewer Latino students, enrolled at a college or university than the year before, according to the National Center for Education Statics.

A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that finances were the primary reason U.S students, particularly Hispanic students, do not complete a four-year degree.