Mireya Barrera no quería pelear.

Durante años, se sentó en las reuniones con los docentes de educación especial de su hijo, luchando por mantener una sonrisa mientras entendía poco de lo que decían. En las ocasiones poco comunes en que se pedía ayuda a otros docentes que hablaban el idioma de Barrera, el español, las conversaciones seguían siendo vacilantes porque no eran intérpretes calificados.

Pero cuando su hijo Ian entró en la escuela secundaria, Barrera decidió invitar a un voluntario bilingüe de una organización local sin ánimo de lucro para que se sentara con ella y recordara sus derechos al equipo escolar.

“Quería a alguien de mi lado”, dijo Barrera, cuyo hijo tiene autismo, a través de un intérprete. “Durante todo este tiempo, no nos estaban facilitando las cosas. Eso provocó muchas lágrimas”. 

Independientemente del idioma que hablen los padres en casa, tienen el derecho civil de recibir información importante de los educadores de sus hijos en un idioma que entiendan. En el caso de los estudiantes con discapacidad, la ley federal es aún más clara: las escuelas “deben tomar todas las medidas necesarias”, incluidos los servicios de interpretación y traducción, para que los padres puedan participar de forma significativa en la educación de sus hijos.

Pero, a veces, las escuelas de todo el país no prestan esos servicios.

Las familias que no hablan inglés se ven obligadas a asistir a las reuniones sobre el progreso de sus hijos sin poder opinar ni preguntar a los educadores cómo pueden ayudar. Las diferencias culturales y lingüísticas pueden convencer a algunos padres de no cuestionar lo que ocurre en la escuela, un desequilibrio de poder que, según los defensores, hace que algunos niños se queden sin un apoyo fundamental. En caso de ser necesario, no es infrecuente que las escuelas encarguen a los estudiantes bilingües la interpretación para sus familias, poniéndolos en la posición de describir sus propios defectos a sus padres y tutores.

“Eso es totalmente inapropiado, en todos los sentidos posibles, y poco realista”, dice Diane Smith Howard, abogada principal de la Red Nacional de Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad. “Si al niño no le va especialmente bien en una asignatura académica, ¿por qué confiaría en que su hijo adolescente se lo contara?”.

Los distritos escolares culpan a la falta de recursos. Dicen que no tienen dinero para contratar a más intérpretes o a agencias de servicios lingüísticos y que, aunque lo tuvieran, no hay suficientes intérpretes calificados para hacer el trabajo.

En Washington y en algunos otros estados, la cuestión ha empezado a recibir más atención. Los legisladores estatales de Olympia presentaron este año una ley bipartidista para reforzar los derechos civiles federales en el código estatal. Los sindicatos de docentes de Seattle y Chicago negociaron recientemente, y consiguieron, servicios de interpretación durante las reuniones de educación especial. Y los distritos escolares se enfrentan a una creciente amenaza de demandas de los padres, o incluso a una investigación federal, si no se toman en serio el acceso lingüístico.

Aun así, los esfuerzos por ampliar el acceso lingüístico en la educación especial se enfrentan a una ardua batalla, debido al escaso número de intérpretes capacitados, la falta de cumplimiento a nivel estatal y el escaso financiamiento del Congreso (a pesar de que en 1974 prometió cubrir casi la mitad del costo adicional que supone para las escuelas proporcionar servicios de educación especial, el gobierno federal nunca lo ha hecho). El proyecto de ley bipartidista de Washington para ofrecer más protecciones a las familias fracasó repentinamente, después de que los legisladores estatales lo despojaran de disposiciones clave y los defensores retiraran su apoyo.

El sistema de educación especial puede ser “increíblemente difícil para todos”, dijo Ramona Hattendorf, directora de defensa de The Arc of King County, que promueve los derechos de las personas con discapacidad. “Luego todo se agrava cuando se introduce el idioma en la mezcla”. En todo el país, aproximadamente 1 de cada 10 estudiantes que califican para recibir servicios de educación especial también se identifican como estudiantes de inglés, según datos federales de educación, y esa proporción está creciendo. Cerca de 791,000 estudiantes de inglés participaron en educación especial en 2020, un aumento de casi el 30 % desde 2012. En más de una docena de estados, incluido Washington, el aumento fue aún mayor.

A medida que crece su número, también aumenta la frustración de sus padres con los servicios lingüísticos.

Durante el año escolar 2021-22, la defensora del pueblo en materia educación del estado de Washington recibió casi 1,200 quejas de los padres sobre las escuelas. Su principal preocupación, en todos los grupos raciales y demográficos, fue el acceso y la inclusión en la educación especial. La defensora del pueblo principal en materia de educación, Jinju Park, calcula que entre el 50 % y el 70 % de las llamadas que recibe la agencia son sobre educación especial, y que el 80 % de ellas son de clientes que necesitan servicios de interpretación.

Mientras que la mayoría de los estados conceden a las escuelas un máximo de 60 días desde que se remite a un estudiante a los servicios de educación especial para determinar si califica, las escuelas de Washington pueden tardar hasta medio año escolar. Y si un padre necesita servicios de interpretación o traducción, la espera puede durar aún más.

“Las leyes actuales no apoyan la participación plena de los padres”, escribió Park a los legisladores estatales en apoyo a la primera versión del proyecto de ley 1305 de la Cámara de Representantes, propuesta que finalmente fracasó. “Los padres para los que el inglés puede que no sea su lengua materna”, añadió, “a menudo, se ven abrumados por la información e incapaces de participar de forma significativa en el proceso”.

Barrera, cuyo hijo asistió al distrito escolar de Auburn, al sur de Seattle, dijo que, a menudo, se sentía excluida de su aprendizaje.

En el kínder, tras el diagnóstico de autismo de Ian, su equipo de educación especial llegó a la conclusión de que necesitaba un paraeducador asignado a tiempo completo, dijo Barrera. Recurrió a Google Translate y a otros padres para que la ayudaran a redactar correos electrónicos preguntando por qué no recibió ese apoyo hasta tercer grado. Sus solicitudes de copias traducidas de documentos legales quedaron en gran parte sin respuesta, mencionó, hasta que un director le dijo que la traducción era demasiado costosa.

Cuando Ian entró en la escuela secundaria, el acoso escolar y su seguridad se convirtieron en la principal preocupación de Barrera. Una vez llegó a casa sin un mechón de pelo, cuenta. A pesar de las repetidas llamadas y correos electrónicos a sus docentes, Barrera dijo que nunca recibió una explicación.

Además, cuando pidió ir a la escuela para observar, un docente le dijo: “Ni siquiera habla inglés. ¿Qué sentido tiene?”. Vicki Alonzo, portavoz del distrito de Auburn, afirma que el auge de la población inmigrante en la región en los últimos años ha llevado al distrito a destinar más recursos a ayudar a las familias cuya lengua materna no es el inglés. Casi un tercio de sus estudiantes son multilingües, dijo, y hablan alrededor de 85 idiomas diferentes en casa.

En el año 2019-20, el distrito gastó alrededor de $175,000 en servicios de interpretación y traducción, dijo; el año escolar pasado, esa cifra fue de más de $450,000.

Alonzo señaló que el distrito no recibió financiamiento adicional para esos servicios, que incluyeron alrededor de 1,500 reuniones con intérpretes y la traducción de más de 3,000 páginas de documentos.

El problema del acceso lingüístico es “un fenómeno nacional”, dijo Smith Howard, de la Red Nacional de Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad. “Es un problema de recursos y también una cuestión de respeto, dignidad y comprensión, que todos los padres deberían recibir”.

Los docentes también están frustrados.

El sindicato de docentes de Seattle protestó y retrasó el inicio de las clases el año pasado por unas demandas que incluían servicios de interpretación y traducción en educación especial. El contrato final, que dura hasta 2025, exige que los miembros del personal tengan acceso a diversos servicios que proporcionen traducción telefónica (un intérprete en directo) o de texto (en el caso de documentos escritos). El objetivo de esta disposición es garantizar que no se pida al personal bilingüe que traduzca si no forma parte de su trabajo.

Los docentes dicen que estas herramientas han sido útiles, pero solo en cierta medida: en ocasiones poco comunes hay intérpretes telefónicos disponibles para los idiomas menos comunes, como el amárico, y son frecuentes los problemas técnicos, como la interrupción de las llamadas.

La disponibilidad de intérpretes “no es tan constante como nos gustaría”, afirma Ibi Holiday, docente de educación especial de la escuela primaria Rising Star de Seattle.

También hay una cuestión de contexto. Es posible que los traductores no tengan experiencia en educación especial, por lo que las familias pueden salir de una reunión sin entender todas las opciones, lo cual puede ralentizar el proceso significativamente.

“Para muchas familias, la escuela de su país funciona de forma completamente diferente”, explica Mari Rico, directora del Centro de Desarrollo Infantil Jose Marti de El Centro de la Raza, un programa bilingüe de educación temprana. “Traducir no bastaba; tenía que enseñarles el sistema”.

Muchas escuelas del distrito de Seattle cuentan con personal multilingüe, pero el número y la diversidad de idiomas hablados no es constante, afirma Rico. Y existe un mayor riesgo de que el caso de un estudiante se pase por alto o se estanque debido a las barreras lingüísticas. Dijo que ha tenido que intervenir cuando las familias han pasado meses sin una reunión del programa de educación individualizada, incluso cuando su hijo estaba recibiendo servicios.

Hattendorf, de The Arc del condado de King, dijo que las soluciones tecnológicas más económicas, como las que utiliza Seattle, ofrecen cierta ayuda, pero su calidad varía mucho. Y los servicios pueden no ofrecer a los padres tiempo suficiente para procesar información complicada y hacer preguntas de seguimiento, explicó.

Al sur de Seattle, los Barrera decidieron cambiar a Ian de escuela secundaria.

Se graduó este año, pero la ley federal garantiza sus servicios de educación especial tres años más. Ian asiste ahora a un programa de transición para estudiantes con discapacidad, donde aprenderá habilidades para la vida, como conseguir un trabajo.

“Sabemos que, con ayuda, puede hacer lo que quiera”, dijo Barrera.

Ya, añadió, “todo es diferente. Los docentes intentan encontrar la mejor manera de comunicarse conmigo”.

Este artículo sobre los servicios de interpretación fue elaborado por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente y sin ánimo de lucro centrada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, en colaboración con The Seattle Times.

The post Los padres de estudiantes de educación especial que no hablan inglés se enfrentan a otro obstáculo appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

As our country continues to struggle with historic teacher shortages, we ought to consider an untapped pool of aspiring teachers: Young immigrants who want to become educators.

They can connect with other newcomers by sharing their stories and serving as role models, like the ones I had when I arrived in Queens from Ecuador at the age of 14.

The bustling pace of rush-hour commuters, the tangled mix of languages and the loud rhythm of a sleepless city disoriented me for months.

Thanks to Mr. Bello, my supportive math teacher at Newcomers High School in Queens, I was able to quiet the cacophony with the anonymity of numbers.

Mr. Bello taught me much more than trigonometry and geometry. He taught me about probability, and helped me see that I could succeed as an undocumented student despite the uncertainty of my status.

Mr. Bello, himself an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, helped me build confidence in my potential, which allowed me to face a higher education and workforce system that systemically shuts doors to undocumented immigrants.

Another teacher, Mr. Palau, an immigrant from Paraguay, patiently guided me through my college application process. He made sure I understood that I was eligible for the in-state tuition rate despite my undocumented status.

Eventually, I qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. That allowed me to get a work permit and pursue a career in the immigration research field.

Today, I am the project director at the Initiative on Immigration and Education at the City University of New York (also known as CUNY-IIE), which produces research and resources that center the strengths of immigrant communities.

In this role, I see firsthand the importance and urgent need in our schools for more teachers like Mr. Bello and Mr. Palau.

Related: Teacher shortages are real, but not for the reason you heard

Congress’s inability to pass any kind of immigration reform that would help undocumented immigrants become teachers makes easing the path of immigrants into educator roles a tough ask, especially as the 11-year-old DACA program is in peril of being eliminated for good by judicial decree.

Currently, immigrant educators may be granted work permits only if they qualify for DACA or Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which has been extended to people from 16 countries. State and local lawmakers and policymakers can and should be creative in expanding options.

The situation is urgent. According to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state needs to hire 180,000 new teachers over the next decade to keep up with the demands of the workforce. Enrollment in New York State’s teacher education programs has declined by 53 percent since 2009.

Congress’s inability to pass any kind of immigration reform that would help undocumented immigrants become teachers makes easing the path of immigrants into educator roles a tough ask.

Most disconcerting for our newest students: There is a significant shortage of bilingual teachers. In 2022-23, approximately 134,000 students who were enrolled in New York City’s public schools identified as English Language Learners, yet the United Federation of Teachers reported that the school system had fewer than 3,000 certified bilingual educators.

This shortage intersects with a political and social upheaval in the city. Since April 2022, New York has received more than 116,000 asylum seekers, including approximately 20,000 children who have now entered the public school system.

The majority of these students are from Latin America and the Caribbean and speak languages other than English.

Bilingual education is considered the best approach for immigrant students, according to Tatyana Kleyn, professor of Bilingual Education & TESOL at The City College of New York. Kleyn favors bilingual education because it allows students to continue learning in their home language while they also learn English.

For all New York teachers, an initial certification is valid for just five years. From there, they are expected to get a professional teaching certificate. For a while, DACA beneficiaries were not eligible for professional certification.

In 2016, the New York State Education Department began to allow undocumented students who are DACA beneficiaries to get professional teaching certificates.

Last year, the state expanded that guidance, allowing undocumented students without a social security number (and who are not DACA holders) to do fieldwork in certain schools and obtain initial certification.

These are two steps in the right direction.

Related: OPINION: In an era of teacher shortages, we must embrace and develop new ways to unleash educator talent

However, undocumented educators who are not DACA holders can’t make use of their education degree and initial certification because they do not have access to work permits.

In addition, some undocumented immigrants just missed the cutoff for DACA or have not been allowed to apply due to the litigation battles about the program.

Our working group, UndocuEdu, produced a report in 2021 titled “The State of Undocumented Educators in New York” that outlines the challenges undocumented educators face navigating teacher education programs.

One suggestion in the report is to eliminate testing fees for NYS certification exams for those in financial need.

Another recommendation is for policymakers to create municipal or state exceptions so that our city’s schools can hire educators who have training and certification but lack a work permit.

State legislators and advocates in New York are already discussing the creation of municipal work permits for recently arrived asylum-seekers.

We urge the city and state to embrace these types of solutions and find others to address the current educational need. It’s time to give more opportunities to a group of trained educators who are already in our communities.

Now more than ever, we need to expand our teaching pool for students who urgently need help. Undocumented teachers can become the Mr. Bellos and Mr. Palaus that every immigrant student deserves.

Daniela Alulema is project director of the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education in New York City.

This story about immigrant teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: To solve teacher shortages, let’s open pathways for immigrants so they can become educators and role models appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When Angel Amankwaah traveled from Denver to North Carolina Central University for incoming student orientation this summer, she decided she had made the right choice.

She had fun learning the chants that fans perform at football games. But she also saw that “there are students who look like me, and professors who look like me” at the historically Black university, said Amankwaah, 18, who is Black. “I knew that I was in a safe space.”

This has now become an important consideration for college-bound students from all backgrounds and beliefs.

Students have long picked schools based on their academic reputations and social life. But with campuses in the crosshairs of the culture wars, many students are now also taking stock of attacks on diversity, course content, and speech and speakers from both ends of the political spectrum. They’re monitoring hate crimes, anti-LGBTQ legislation, state abortion laws and whether students like them —Black, rural, military veterans, LGBTQ or from other backgrounds — are represented and supported on campus.

“There’s no question that what’s happening at the state level is directly affecting these students,” said Alyse Levine, founder and CEO of Premium Prep, a private college admissions consulting firm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. When they look at colleges in various states now, she said, “There are students who are asking, ‘Am I really wanted here?’ ”

For some students on both sides of the political divide, the answer is no. In the chaotic new world of American colleges and universities, many say they feel unwelcome at certain schools, while others are prepared to shut down speakers and report faculty with whose opinions they disagree.

It’s too early to know how much this trend will affect where and whether prospective students end up going to college, since publicly available enrollment data lags real time. But there are early clues that it’s having a significant impact.

One in four prospective students has already ruled out a college or university for consideration because of the political climate in its state, according to a survey by the higher education consulting firm Art & Science Group.

Related: Many flagship universities don’t reflect their state’s Black or Latino high school graduates

Among students who describe themselves as liberal, the most common reason to rule out colleges and universities in a particular state, that survey found, is because it’s “too Republican” or has what they consider lax gun regulations, anti-LGBTQ legislation, restrictive abortion laws and a lack of concern about racism. Students who describe themselves as conservative are rejecting states they believe to be “too Democrat” and that have liberal abortion and gay-rights laws.

With so much attention focused on these issues, The Hechinger Report has created a first-of-its-kind College Welcome Guide showing state laws and institutional policies that affect college and university students, from bans on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and “critical race theory” to rules about whether student IDs are accepted as proof of residency for voting purposes.

The interactive guide also lists, for every four-year institution in the country, such things as racial and gender diversity among students and faculty, the number of student veterans enrolled, free-speech rankings, the incidence of on-campus race-motivated hate crimes and if the university or college serves many students from rural places.

Sixty percent of prospective students of all backgrounds say new state restrictions on abortion would at least somewhat influence where they choose to go to college, a separate poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found. Of these, eight in 10 say they would prefer to go to a state with greater access to reproductive health services. (Lumina is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)

“We have many young women who will not look at certain states,” said Levine. One of her own clients backed out of going to a university in St. Louis after Missouri banned almost all abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, she said.

Institutions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas are the most likely to be knocked off the lists of liberal students, according to the Art & Science Group survey, while conservative students avoid California and New York.

One in four prospective students has already ruled out a college or university for consideration because of the political climate in its state.

One in eight high school students in Florida say they won’t go to a public university in their own state because of its education policies, a separate poll, by the college ranking and information website Intelligent.com, found.

With 494 anti-LGBTQ laws proposed or adopted this year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, prospective students who are LGBTQ and have experienced significant harassment because of it are nearly twice as likely to say they don’t plan to go to college at all than students who experienced lower levels of harassment, according to a survey by GLSEN, formerly the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

“You are attacking kids who are already vulnerable,” said Javier Gomez, an LGBTQ student in his first year at Miami Dade College. “And it’s not just queer students. So many young people are fed up.”

Related: The college degree gap between Black and white Americans was always bad. It’s getting worse

It’s not yet evident whether the new laws are affecting where LGBTQ young people are choosing to go to college, said Casey Pick, director of law and policy at The Trevor Project, which supports LGBTQ young people in crisis. But LGBTQ adults are moving away from states passing anti-LGBTQ laws, she said. And “if adult employees are taking this into account when they decide where they want to live, you can bet that college students are making the same decisions.”

Meanwhile, in an era of pushback against diversity, equity and inclusion policies in many states, and against affirmative action nationwide, Amankwaah is one of a growing number of Black students choosing what they see as the relative security of an HBCU. Enrollment at HBCUs increased by around 3 percent in 2021, the last year for which the figure is available, while the number of students at other universities and colleges fell.

“The real attack here is on the feeling of belonging,” said Jeremy Young, who directs the Freedom to Learn program at PEN America, which tracks laws that restrict college and university diversity efforts and teaching about race. “What it really does is hoist a flag to say to the most marginalized students, ‘We don’t want you here.’ ”

More than 40 percent of university and college administrators say the Supreme Court ruling curbing the use of affirmative action in admissions will affect diversity on their campuses, a Princeton Review poll found as the school year was beginning.

Sixty percent of prospective students of all backgrounds say new state restrictions on abortion would at least somewhat influence where they choose to go to college.

College students of all races and political persuasions report feeling uncomfortable on campuses that have become political battlegrounds. Those on the left are bristling at new laws blocking programs in diversity, equity and inclusion and the teaching of certain perspectives about race; on the right, at conservative speakers being shouted down or canceled, unpopular comments being called out in class and what they see as an embrace of values different from what they learned at home.

One Michigan father said he supported his son’s decision to skip college. Other parents, he said, are discouraging their kids from going, citing “binge-drinking, hookup culture, secular teachings, a lopsided leftist faculty mixed with anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-free speech and a diversity, equity and inclusion emphasis” that he said is at odds with a focus on merit. The father asked that his name not be used so that his comments didn’t reflect on his daughter, who attends a public university.

More than one in 10 students at four-year universities now say they feel as if they downright don’t belong on their campus, and another two in 10 neither agree nor strongly agree that they belong, another Lumina and Gallup survey found. It found that those who answer in these ways are more likely to frequently experience stress and more likely to drop out. One in four Hispanic students report frequently or occasionally feeling unsafe or experiencing disrespect, discrimination or harassment.

Related: American confidence in higher education hits a new low, yet most still see value in a college degree

Military veterans who use their G.I. Bill benefits to return to school say one of their most significant barriers is a feeling that they won’t be welcome, a survey by the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University found. Nearly two-thirds say that faculty and administrators don’t understand the challenges they face, and 70 percent say the same thing about their non-veteran classmates.

Colleges should be “safe and affirming spaces,” said Pick, of the Trevor Project — not places of isolation and alienation.

Yet a significant number of students say they don’t feel comfortable sharing their views in class, according to another survey, conducted by College Pulse for the right-leaning Sheila and Robert Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University. Of those, 72 percent say they worry their opinions would be considered unacceptable by classmates and 45 percent, by their professors. Conservative students are less likely than their liberal classmates to believe that all points of view are welcome and less willing to share theirs.

“I do hear people saying things like, ‘I’m worried about what kind of a college or university I can send my kids to and whether they’ll be free to be themselves and to express themselves.’ ”

Steve Maguire, campus freedom fellow, American Council of Trustees and Alumni

“Is that really an intellectually diverse environment?” asked Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, which has launched a campus free-speech ranking based on students’ perceptions of comfort expressing ideas, tolerance for speakers and other measures.

“Anecdotally and from personal experience, there’s certainly a pocket of students who are weighing these factors in terms of where to go to college,” Stevens said.

Eighty-one percent of liberal students and 53 percent of conservative ones say they support reporting faculty who make comments that they find offensive, the same survey found. It used sample comments such as, “There is no evidence of anti-Black bias in police shootings,” “Requiring vaccination for COVID is an assault on individual freedom” and “Biological sex is a scientific fact.”

A professor at Texas A&M University was put under investigation when a student accused her of criticizing the state’s lieutenant governor during a lecture, though she was ultimately exonerated. An anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who taught an undergraduate course called “The Problem of Whiteness” said she was deluged with hateful messages when a conservative student posted her photo and email address on social media.

More than half of all freshmen say that colleges have the right to ban extreme speakers, according to an annual survey by an institute at UCLA; the College Pulse poll says that sentiment is held by twice the proportion of liberal students as conservative ones.

Related: How higher education lost its shine

An appearance by a conservative legal scholar who spoke at Washington College in Maryland last month was disrupted by students because of his positions about LGBTQ issues and abortion. The subject: free speech on campus.

A group of Stanford students in March disrupted an on-campus speech by a federal judge whose judicial record they said was anti-LGBTQ. When he asked for an administrator to intervene, an associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion confronted him and asked: “Is it worth the pain that this causes and the division that this causes?” The associate dean was put on leave and later resigned.

“Today it is a sad fact that the greatest threat to free speech comes from within the academy,” pronounced the right-leaning American Council of Trustees and Alumni, which is pushing colleges to sign on to its Campus Freedom Initiative that encourages teaching students about free expression during freshman orientation and disciplining people who disrupt speakers or events, among other measures.

Seventy-two percent of students say they worry their opinions would be considered unacceptable by their classmates and 45 percent that their comments would be considered unacceptable by their professors.

“I have to imagine that universities that have a bad track record on freedom of expression or academic freedom, that it will affect their reputations,” said Steven Maguire, the organization’s campus freedom fellow. “I do hear people saying things like, ‘I’m worried about what kind of a college or university I can send my kids to and whether they’ll be free to be themselves and to express themselves.’ ”

Some colleges are now actively recruiting students on the basis of these kinds of concerns. Colorado College in September created a program to ease the process for students who want to transfer away from institutions in states that have banned diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; Hampshire College in Massachusetts has offered admission to any student from New College in Florida, subject of what critics have described as a conservative takeover. Thirty-five have so far accepted the invitation.

Though many conservative critics of colleges and universities say faculty are indoctrinating students with liberal opinions, incoming freshmen tend to hold left-leaning views before they ever set foot in a classroom, according to that UCLA survey.

If everyone is thinking the same way or in similar ways about all topics, “is that really an intellectually diverse environment?”

Sean Stevens, director of polling and analytics, Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression

Fewer than one in five consider themselves conservative. Three-quarters say abortion should be legal and favor stricter gun control laws, 68 percent say wealthy people should pay more taxes than they do now and 86 percent that climate change should be a federal priority and that there should be a clear path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Prospective students say they are watching as new laws are passed and controversies erupt on campuses, and actively looking into not just the quality of food and available majors at the colleges they might attend, but state politics.

“Once I decided I was going to North Carolina Central, I looked up whether North Carolina was a red state or a blue state,” Amankwaah said. (North Carolina has a Democrat as governor but Republicans control both chambers of the legislature and hold a veto-proof supermajority in the state Senate.)

Florida’s anti-LGBTQ laws prompted Javier Gomez to leave his native state and move to New York to go to fashion school. But then he came back, transferring to Miami Dade.

“People ask me, ‘Why the hell are you back in Florida?’ ” said Gomez. “The reason I came back was that there was this innate calling in me that you have to stick around and fight for the queer and trans kids here. It’s overwhelming at times. It can be very mentally depleting. But I wanted to stay and continue the fight and build community against hatred.”

This story about choosing colleges was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

The post Culture wars on campus start to affect students’ choices for college appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Alexa Maqueo Toledo was a junior in high school in Tennessee when she enrolled in Spanish 4, the first course she’d take that offered students the chance to earn both high school and college credit at the same time. 

She remembers hearing that the college credit was free, and it seemed like a great opportunity to knock some college credits out of the way early. Though that was the case for most of her classmates, Maqueo Toledo quickly learned it was not the case for her. She was born in Mexico and immigrated to the United States at age two with her mother. They came on a visa and stayed in the U.S. even after it expired. In Tennessee, undocumented students are not eligible for in-state tuition or state financial aid, which she would need for dual-credit classes.

“My teacher kind of pulled me aside and was like, ‘Hey, you need to go to your guidance counselor, there’s a little bit of complications with signing you up for this class,’” said Maqueo Toledo, who is now a college access fellow at the Education Trust in Tennessee. 

Everything she’d heard about the dual-credit class was technically true, it just didn’t apply to her.  A state grant made the college credits free for most students, but U.S. citizenship was required. Without the grant, if she wanted to earn the college credits for the course she was already taking, she’d have to pay the community college’s out-of-state tuition rate. 

An estimated 20 percent of community college students are actually high schoolers getting both high school and college credit for the courses they are taking. Students who take dual enrollment classes in high school are more likely to finish college.

Today, that rate is $726 per credit, compared to $176 per credit for students who qualify for in-state tuition (though, thanks to the state grant, in-state high school students pay nothing for dual enrollment credits). Maqueo Toledo had been working at fast food restaurants ever since being approved for a work permit, but she was also paying half the bills at home. She couldn’t afford to pay for the college credits that her peers were getting for free because, she said, “I have more important things to pay for.”

Last month, Hechinger’s Jill Barshay reported that an estimated 20 percent of community college students are actually high schoolers who are getting both high school and college credit for the courses they are taking. Research has shown that the students who take dual enrollment classes in high school are more likely to enroll in college and graduate than their peers of similar backgrounds. For the students who can get the credit easily and for little money, it seems like a great set-up. 

But it excludes thousands of undocumented students. They can face a variety of barriers, like the cost-prohibitive dual-enrollment credits in Tennessee, depending on the state they live in. 

Related: STUDENT VOICE: DACA recipients like this DREAMer ask for full participation in American life

According to research by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonprofit group of university and college leaders that supports immigrant, refugee and international students, state policies vary drastically. Among them:

• Three states bar undocumented students from attending some or all public institutions of higher education. 
• Six states block undocumented students from accessing in-state tuition.

Five states provide in-state tuition only to recipients of DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.  

• Four states provide undocumented students with in-state tuition at some, but not all, colleges.
• 24 states (and the District of Columbia) allow undocumented students to access in-state tuition, and 18 of those states also allow undocumented students to access state financial aid.
• Eight states have no known policies related to undocumented students and higher education funding. 

“Undocumented students are shut out of these opportunities, and it’s really alarming,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, executive director of The Education Trust in Tennessee. “The fact is, these are students whose families are paying taxes. And these are public institutions that they should benefit from attending.”

Exorbitant out-of-state tuition is one of several barriers undocumented students can encounter when they’re trying to access dual credit courses. Some states require students to have attended a local high school for a certain number of years, making undocumented students who have come to the U. S. recently ineligible. In California, for example, students can only access in-state tuition if they have completed at least three years of school in California (it can be either high school, a combination of middle and high school, community college or adult school).

“There are many jobs in healthcare, in business, teaching, where we’re seeing massive shortages, and we need highly educated, highly skilled people to fill those jobs. And we’re creating these artificial barriers that are preventing those students from accessing those jobs and helping fill those roles.”

Sonny Metoki, higher education analyst, The Education Trust in Tennessee

Maqueo Toledo is one of about 19,000 undocumented immigrants in Tennessee between the ages of 16 and 24, according to an analysis of 2015 to 2019 U.S. Census data by the Migration Policy Institute. The Institute estimates that there are more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including about 352,000 between 13 and 17 years old and 1.4 million between the ages of 18 and 24. About 16 percent of undocumented people above the age of 25 in Tennessee have earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 18 percent of undocumented people nationally and 37 percent of the general population. 

Sonny Metoki, higher education analyst from the Education Trust in Tennessee, said that dual enrollment courses create a pathway toward college. Without access to it, he said, “it really does discourage a lot of students from pursuing education after high school.”

And if they do end up in college, often by combining a patchwork quilt of private scholarships, they are starting out even further behind many of their U.S. citizen peers.

Related: Undocumented students turn to each other for support post graduation

Undocumented students can even struggle to access dual-credit courses in states that don’t have an explicit residency requirement for in-state tuition, said Miriam Feldblum, executive director and co-founder of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. There may be a requirement to have attended a school in the state for a certain number of years, as in California. About 2.7 million undocumented people, or 25 percent of all those in the U.S., live in California.

Others may be able to take dual-credit classes, only to find out that the post-high school portion of a trade program they were studying has a work-authorization requirement, or that they are ineligible for licensure in that field because of their immigration status. 

Only five states allow undocumented students to obtain a license to any profession as long as they meet all the other requirements, according to the Higher Education Immigration Portal run by the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration. But most states limit the professions that undocumented people can get licenses for; limit licensure to people with work authorization permits; block undocumented people from most professions that require licensure, or have no state policy on the professional licensure of undocumented people. 

“Undocumented students are shut out of these opportunities, and it’s really alarming. These are students whose families are paying taxes. And these are public institutions that they should benefit from attending.” 

Gini Pupo-Walker, executive director, The Education Trust in Tennessee

Undocumented students with access to hands-on career and technical education programs in high school need to know if they will be legally allowed to practice the profession they are training for. Feldblum said that these programs are typically designed so that students can move seamlessly from the high school portion of the training to a post-secondary portion, but the post-secondary portion can have work-authorization requirements that exclude undocumented students. So, they may be unable to get to the point of applying for a license because they can’t complete the training. 

“There are many jobs and sectors in healthcare, in business, teaching, where we’re seeing massive shortages, and we just need highly educated, highly skilled people to fill those jobs,” Metoki said. “And we’re creating these artificial barriers that are preventing those students from accessing those jobs and helping fill those roles. I think we’re hurting ourselves to a certain extent.”

The workforce policy and financial-aid access issues are among many challenges that undocumented students face, said Felecia Russell, director of the Higher Ed Immigration Portal at the Presidents’ Alliance for Higher Education and Immigration and founder of the online storytelling platform Embracing Undocumented. But she said these students face challenges within their institutions, too. Her doctoral research focused on the experiences of Black undocumented college students, who make up about 14 percent of all undocumented students, compared to 27 percent who are Asian American or Pacific Islander and about 48 percent who are Hispanic.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: We need dream resource centers on college campuses

Making sure undocumented students have the support they need to get to and through college is what Maqueo Toledo wants to spend her career doing.

She was lucky to have a guidance counselor she trusted to disclose her immigration status to, who could help her navigate the tricky system. In her first year after graduation, she took that role for other undocumented students, as a college and career access coach at a high school in Knox County.

“I see peers of mine and friends who started school with me and didn’t have the chance to finish or didn’t finish in my class because they had to take time off to save money, or life happens, because they don’t have the support of our citizen peers,” Maqueo Toledo said. “I want to be working at a university helping first-generation immigrant students, whether they’re undocumented themselves or they come from undocumented families, finish higher education.”

Maqueo Toledo took two classes in high school that she could have earned college credit for, classes that many of her peers did get credit for and didn’t have to retake in college. 

Advocates say that this problem could be greatly reduced if undocumented students were allowed to pay the in-state tuition price for the dual credit classes. Even if they weren’t eligible for the Tennessee state grant that makes these credits free for U.S. citizens, they would be paying the much more accessible price of $176 per credit, instead of $726 per credit. It would shrink what Metoki called a “tremendous block” for students to get the college credits. 

This story about dual enrollment courses was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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LONDON — When Cansu (pronounced “Johnsu”) Deniz Bayrak was deciding where to emigrate from her native Turkey, she first considered San Francisco.

Only in her 20s, she had already co-created an e-commerce website that rose to the top of its category in her home country, gotten snatched up by a tech company, then been poached by another tech firm. But she saw more opportunity in the United States, where there is a projected demand for more than 160,000 new software developers and related specialists per year, and where tech companies said in a survey that recruiting them is their biggest business challenge.

Bayrak quickly learned, however, that to come to the United States, she’d need an employer sponsor. Even then, she’d have to enter a lottery for an H-1B visa, with only one-in-four odds of being approved. If she was laid off, she’d have 60 days to find a new job, or she’d likely have to leave.

Bayrak was recounting her story over a pint in a pub in London, where she now lives thanks in part to a United Kingdom program that actively recruits immigrants with skills in short supply and streamlines the naturalization process for them — no employer sponsor, lottery or long and unpredictable waiting period required.

“There’s a certain element of hubris that, ‘Of course people are going to come to the U.S.,’ ” said Bayrak, now 37. But coming to the U.K. turned out to be “much easier to navigate.”

While foreign-born applicants who want to work in the United States face red tape and long delays, new “talent visas” in the U.K., Australia, Canada and elsewhere are luring away people who have some of the world’s most in-demand skills.

Now these countries are homing in on another target: international students being educated at U.S. universities to work in tech and other high-demand fields.

“We are a beneficiary of the failures of the U.S. system,” said Nicolas Rollason, partner and head of business immigration for the London-based law firm Kingsley Napley.

“How do you get to the U.S. and build your startup? You can’t, unless you win the Nobel Prize.”

Sergei Nozdrenkov, a Russian software engineer who moved to the U.K.

Most international students in the U.S. say they want to remain, and U.S. employers need workers like them to fill jobs in areas of shortage. But only 11 percent of foreign-born U.S. university bachelor’s degree recipients and 23 percent who get master’s degrees manage to stay and work in the United States, according to researchers at the University of California, Davis, and elsewhere.

International graduates of U.S. universities can apply for an optional practical training, or OPT, visa that allows them to stay in the country for 12 to 36 months, depending on what they studied, after which they have to get an employer sponsor and enter the lottery for an H-1B visa. With delays in processing and other problems, including those long odds for an H-1B, however, the number getting OPT visas was down by 17 percent last year from its peak in 2019-20, to 184,759.

That has ominous implications for the supply of talent in the United States, where around 80 percent of people studying computer science and electrical engineering at the graduate level are international students, the National Foundation for American Policy reports.

Related: How other countries are recruiting skilled immigrants who won’t come here

Other countries are eagerly taking advantage of the difficulties of the U.S. system faced by foreign-born university graduates with valuable skills.

The U.K. last year added a “high potential individual” visa, offering a two-year stay to new graduates of 40 universities outside the country ranked as the best in the world — 21 of them in the United States.

Rollason said that, at this time of year, his firm is regularly contacted by international students who have just graduated from American universities but are still waiting for an OPT visa or can’t get a visa through the H-1B lottery, and have decided to move to the U.K.

“Why wouldn’t you want people who graduate from Harvard or Stanford or MIT?” he asked mirthfully.

The number of international graduates of U.S. universities on optional practical training visas, which let them stay in the country for up to 36 months, fell by 17 percent last year from its peak in 2019-20.

Nearly 40,000 foreign-born graduates of U.S. universities were recruited to Canada from 2017 to 2021, according to an analysis by the Niskanen Center, a Washington think tank that advocates for immigration reform.

Australian recruiters are also fanning out across the United States, attending job fairs and visiting university campuses, Patrick Hallinan, regional director for the Americas in the Australian Department of Home Affairs told a webinar convened on this topic by the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.

The United States still enjoys substantial advantages in attracting international talent. It boasts by far the most venture capital investment in technology businesses, for example — four times more than second-place China. The number of eligible applicants this year for H-1B visas for foreign workers in specialty occupations remained strong; it was up nearly 60 percent over last year, although because of a cap set more than three decades ago, the already distant one-in-four odds of approval plummeted as a result to about one in seven.

“The United States has managed to remain competitive in spite of its immigration system,” said Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford.  “People tolerate the chaotic immigration system because there’s so much else that’s attractive.”

Over the longer term, however, “the question is: As these other countries start to take the race for talent more seriously, will that dynamic shift?” said Kate Hooper, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

A bill introduced in the House last month would eliminate per-country limits on employment-related visas and make it easier for international students with science, technology, engineering and math degrees to stay in the United States. Previous similar measures have gone nowhere.

Related: How higher education lost its shine

While other countries have promised to make life easier for immigrants with skills, it still isn’t easy. Back in that pub, Bayrak’s glass sits empty by the time she’s finished listing the many twists and turns in her journey to the British passport she finally received in February.

But the British path is still faster and simpler than the American one, said Rollason in his office overlooking London’s ascendant high-tech neighborhood of Shoreditch.

“I imagine if an Indian engineer has two job offers, one in the U.S. and one in the U.K., I can guess which they would choose,” he said.

Whether or not the new visas attract large numbers of highly skilled immigrants, they “do serve a function in terms of staking a claim in this contest for talent,” said the Migration Policy Institute’s Hooper. “There’s a sort of marketing element that signals you’re open to talent.”

She added, about the U.S.: “What signal are we sending?”

“There’s a certain element of hubris that, ‘Of course people are going to come to the U.S.’ ”

Cansu Deniz Bayrak, who moved to the U.K. from Turkey

Under the U.K.’s more general global talent visa, launched in early 2020, immigrants who work in digital technology and other industries — no matter where they got their educations — don’t need a job offer to come into the country, and can be eligible for permanent citizenship within three to five years, depending on their field.

“We’re in a global race for talent,” said Gerard Grech, founding chief executive of Tech Nation, the nonprofit organization that the British government appointed to administer its new global talent visa program. And to compete, Grech said, some countries are making it “as frictionless as possible for the best, brightest and most talented people” to immigrate.

Canada is increasing its immigration target from 465,000 to 500,000 per year by 2025, and the share of spots for people with workforce skills from 57 to 60 percent.

It already has an “express entry” program for particularly highly skilled migrants, more than 440,000 of whom applied through that program in 2021, the most recent year for which the figure is available — up from 332,331 in 2019. Most common among them were computer programmers, software engineers and designers and information systems analysts and consultants.

With an aging domestic population and high numbers of vacancies in many fields — problems also being faced by the United States — “immigration has to be part of our response as a country,” Canada’s deputy minister for Immigration Christiane Fox told that Migration Policy Institute webinar.

A company launched by an American expat is leasing billboards along Highway 101 in Silicon Valley to advertise Canada’s comparatively simpler immigration system as a means of recruiting tech workers to come there. “Canada’s secret weapon,” it calls that system, promising a process that approves 80 percent of applications within two weeks compared to as long as 18 and a half months for an employment authorization in the United States.

Related: In Japan, plummeting university enrollment forecasts what’s ahead for the U.S.

In Australia, the government last year also announced an increase in the number of immigrants it would accept, to 195,000 — nearly three-quarters of them with workforce skills, Hallinan, the Home Affairs official, said.

Admitting immigrants with designated skills appears less politically controversial than immigration more broadly. Even in the U.K., where hostility to immigration helped fuel Brexit, surveys show that people largely support admitting immigrants with skills in areas in which there are labor shortages.

In those cases, “there’s not as much concern about competition in the labor market,” said Sumption. And among politicians, she said, “there was this desire to have a counterweight and say we’re not necessarily cracking down on everyone. We’re recruiting the brightest and the best. It sounds meritocratic. It sounds fair.”

In fact, giving preference to immigrants with skills isn’t necessarily either fair or meritocratic, according to its critics. Rights groups say people should be allowed to immigrate regardless of the educations they were able to afford. “There’s a lot of pushback around the words ‘skilled’ or ‘unskilled,’ ” Sumption said. “People feel it’s a judgment on a person’s worth.”

As in the United States, immigration policies in other countries are subject to political winds. There’s now worry among advocates in the U.K. that the record numbers of immigrants coming there will again prompt politicians to close the gates, including to those with needed skills. The net number of immigrants who arrived in the U.K. last year was a record more than 600,000, despite the Conservative government’s promise to reduce the annual flow to below 100,000.

Related: Foreign tech workers are getting fed up. Can better education for U.S. students fill the gap?

While research is only now getting started to track the people admitted to the U.K. through the global talent visa, “it seems to be the case that lots of these [immigrants] are working for decent corporations or setting up their own companies,” said Jonathan Kingham, an attorney based in London who specializes in business and personal immigration law at the legal-research provider LexisNexis.

That’s because, “if you allow people to naturally shine, they create great things,” said Sergei Nozdrenkov, a Russian software engineer who also moved to the U.K., where he is working with an Italian-born fellow immigrant to create technology that could help scientists and commercial interests measure marine biodiversity and predict algae outbreaks.

The U.S. “has more VC,” Nozdrenkov, who is 30 and resembles a young Elon Musk, said at a coffee shop outside London’s Liverpool Street rail station, using the acronym for venture capital. “But the immigration process is very hard. How do you get to the U.S. and build your startup? You can’t, unless you win the Nobel Prize.”

Notwithstanding recent layoffs at Meta, Amazon and other US. tech giants, deep shortages of workers continue in those fields, according to the labor market analytics firm Lightcast; there have been more than four million job postings in the last year in the United States for software developers, database administrators and computer user support specialists, it says, and the number of computer and IT jobs is projected to grow another 15 percent by 2031, with too few native-born workers to fill them.

As billions are being spent to beef up U.S. production of semiconductors, there’s a projected shortage in that industry alone of 70,000 to 90,000 workers, Deloitte reports. In the equally hot field of artificial intelligence, more than half of the workforce in the United States consists of immigrants, according to the Georgetown University Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Two-thirds of U.S. university graduate students in AI-related fields are foreign born.

“These visas [in other countries, for skilled workers] often aren’t catering to a huge number of people, but they do serve a function in terms of staking a claim in this contest for talent.”

Kate Hooper, policy analyst, Migration Policy Institute

“We are educating the best and brightest, and then we end up losing them to other countries,” said Cecilia Esterline, an immigration research analyst at the Niskanen Center.

“We don’t have the necessary talent within the U.S.” to do these jobs, Esterline said. “But we don’t have the visas required to onshore the people who can.” Now “other countries are jumping at the opportunity to take our graduates.”

One result is that international students appear to be reconsidering whether they want to come to the United States at all. That’s a threat not just to the broader economy, but to universities and their communities, which take in $45 billion a year from them, the U.S. Department of Commerce reports.

The number of international students in the United States has been flat or down since 2016, and international enrollment in the especially important subjects of science and engineering began to fall in 2018 after years of steady growth, according to the most recent figures from the National Science Foundation.

A survey by Interstride, which helps universities recruit international students, found significant concern among them about their ability to stay in the country once they graduate; fewer than half said the value of a U.S. higher education continued to justify the cost.

“Our ranking as the top destination for international students is in jeopardy,” said Esterline. Already, she said, “We’re not necessarily keeping up and we’re going to lose our edge when these other countries are coming up with new schemes that are very welcoming to immigrants.”

Nozdrenkov said he might have moved to the United States if the process had been easier. But like other immigrants with skills who have been welcomed to the U.K., he said England “feels like home now.” And he is planning to stay.

He paused, reconsidering for a moment.

“I might skip winters, though,” he said. “It’s too dark.”

This story about skilled immigration was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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Since the onset of the pandemic three years ago, college enrollment has fallen by more than 1 million students. Fewer high school graduates are now going straight to college, and there is growing skepticism across the country about the long-term value of a college education.

As well-founded as concerns about the rising cost of college might be, however, the evidence suggests that a college degree is just as valuable as ever. Higher education remains a gateway to economic opportunity, creating pathways to first jobs, promotions, raises and careers.

To continue to be engines of social mobility for generations to come, colleges must find ways to attract an increasingly diverse population of learners and provide them with the resources they need to pursue their educations.

Those who attend college are significantly more likely to experience upward mobility than those who do not attend. With median earnings of $2.3 million over a lifetime, bachelor’s degree-holders earn 74 percent more than those with only a high school diploma. They account for 36 percent of total employment.

But a college degree doesn’t just change the life of the graduate. When a first-generation college student earns a degree, it’s the beginning of a sprawling domino effect that can transform entire communities. Ensuring that individuals have the support they need to make their way to and through higher education has an impact that spans generations.

Higher education remains a gateway to economic opportunity, creating pathways to first jobs, promotions, raises and careers.

In many ways, my own story is proof of the multigenerational benefits of a college education. When my father’s parents agreed to buy him a one-way plane ticket to the United States from India, they did so with the understanding that he would attend college. When he returned to India three years later to enter an arranged marriage with my mother, he was well on his way to a degree.

My mother had a very different experience with higher education. She already had a college degree from India, but she soon discovered that the credentials she had worked so hard to attain there were not as valuable in the U.S. labor market. So she went back to school, this time to an American community college, where she earned a degree in information technology.

Related: A boost for Chicago’s neediest students

That degree got her an entry-level job at a local company, where she worked for nearly 30 years.

My parents’ college journeys shaped my own in important ways. Knowing the sacrifices they made by leaving their families behind and navigating an unfamiliar system of education and employment instilled in me a deep appreciation of the promises and perils of higher education.

Their hard work also meant that I had access to even greater opportunities than they had.

My sister and I are both examples of the ripple effect of a college education on later generations. Research shows that children of college-educated parents are far more likely to pursue and complete an undergraduate degree than learners whose parents never attended college.

The same goes for older siblings, with a 2019 study finding that when an older brother or sister goes to college, it substantially increases the enrollment rate of their younger siblings. The study described an older sibling’s college journey as a “high-touch intervention” that provides inspiration and guidance.

Of course, being the first in a family to go to college is a daunting task. First-generation students face far too many barriers to their success. The transition can be a lonely and overwhelming experience. They lack institutional knowledge that students whose parents went to college rely on to guide them to and through school.

Not surprisingly, the graduation rate for first-generation students at open-admission schools, where the vast majority of these learners enroll, is just 21 percent. In contrast, the graduation rate for students who have at least one parent with a college degree is 44.1 percent.

Today, one-third of undergraduates — about five million students — are first-generation, and that number is going to increase in the coming years, meaning that the need to better serve these learners will only become more urgent.

The good news is that it is no longer a mystery which resources and interventions have the most impact on helping first-generation students and other nontraditional learners enroll in and graduate from college.

Related: STUDENT VOICES: ‘Dreamers’ like us need our own resource centers on college campuses

Supporting first-generation students requires a holistic approach that combines financial, academic and personal support to guide students to make the right decisions about their educations and ensure they have the resources to reach their goals.

These students often need academic advising, personalized student coaching, mentorship programs, intensive tutoring, career planning and financial assistance.

To combat rising income, housing and food insecurity, a growing number of institutions are providing “one-stop” services to connect students to community and public resources such as transportation assistance, child care centers, legal aid services and housing and other basic needs support.

In an environment where degree skepticism is on the rise and the value of a college education has become a politically polarizing question, it can become all too easy for us to focus on reasons why college might not be worth it. But the data — and our own lived experiences — tell us that college success translates into a positive impact not only in the short term but for generations yet to come.

Aneesh Sohoni is CEO of One Million Degrees in Chicago, a leading provider of wraparound services to community college students

This story about the benefits of a college education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: Despite public skepticism, higher education can still change lives for generations to come appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Edward Blum’s ongoing campaign and Supreme Court cases to remove race as a factor in college admissions leverage a group of Asian Americans as plaintiffs. These Asian activists, many of whom oppose any form of race-conscious admissions, cite a 2018 analysis which found that Harvard “consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like ‘positive personality,’ likeability, courage, kindness, and being ‘widely respected.’ ”

As an Asian American college student, I empathize deeply with the concerns raised by these cases. For many Asian families, especially low-income and working-class immigrants, the opportunity to earn a prestigious college admission is their way to the American Dream.

However, I’ve had time to reflect on the role of race in college admissions. During my two terms as student body president at Washington University, I came to deeply appreciate the value diversity adds to my campus and the college experience.

Today, along with 70 percent of Asian Americans, I support affirmative action. As an Asian student leader, I have benefited from the diversity our university has fostered along the lines of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, geographic background, ability and ideology. I believe that affirmative action and holistic admissions are key to keeping diverse perspectives in our classrooms from which all learners benefit.

Related: College admissions is already broken. What will happen if affirmative action is banned?

If affirmative action ends, it will mean that future students will have fewer opportunities to discuss the ways in which identity has shaped their passions, motivations and trajectories. Preventing such discussions will lead to incomplete narratives that disregard the effect of race on applicants’ lives. Without affirmative action, we will have classrooms with less diversity of experience and perspective, excluding valuable voices and diminishing the quality of our education.

In a country that remains immensely stratified along race, class and educational background, a college campus can be one of the most diverse spaces students will enter in their lives. Often, it’s only on a college campus that people are consistently exposed to others with different upbringings.

Through conversation, collaboration and community-building, college provides opportunities to understand the world through a radically different lens — from the perspective of a Nigerian international student, a first-generation Asian student who grew up in Chinatown or a white student who grew up on a farm in rural Missouri.

Repealing affirmative action would endanger this diversity, as we’ve seen at the University of California and the University of Michigan, which were forced to abandon their affirmative action programs in 1996 and 2006, respectively. It would deprive students of all backgrounds of the opportunity to learn from one another.

These interactions are important in a multiracial democracy and a multicultural world. They build empathy by showing our shared humanity. Diversity not only enriches our educational experience but also our social lives and civil society by building bridges across diverse communities.

Affirmative action is no panacea for educational inequity, but it is a first step, and it recognizes that race is a fundamental piece of our identities.

I have grown to appreciate the strong sense of solidarity a diverse, multicultural campus provides. Black, Latino, Middle Eastern and Indigenous students and faculty were quick to join arms with Asian students when we were confronted with waves of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic.

Together, we advocated for spaces on campus to build community and called for greater leadership from the faculty and staff who represent our communities. Our similar experiences and a shared understanding of racism in America provided support when we needed it most. This solidarity can help minoritized students feel a sense of belonging and safety on college campuses that weren’t built for us.

Opponents often respond that affirmative action is not fair, arguing that white and Asian applicants are better qualified and more deserving of admission than Black and Latino students. Some base this assumption on a belief that Black and Latino students lack the aptitude or qualifications to succeed at competitive colleges, resulting in a “mismatch.”

Yet this belief has been disproven over and over again: At my university, Black, Latino and Native American peers consistently win national fellowships, host campuswide performances, serve in student government, found activist movements and produce impactful research, legislation and policy change.

Across the nation, underrepresented students of color enrich their campuses as students, athletes, leaders, entrepreneurs and advocates. For many of my peers, their experience of race has been vital in shaping their academic and professional ambitions. Some of us come from neighborhoods still suffering legacies of redlining, gerrymandering, deportation and voter suppression, and seek to break these cycles of violence.

Others want to enter medicine, business or law to provide services for communities left behind because of race, religion, class, immigration status or linguistic background. Race continues to powerfully predict educational attainment, health, income and political representation. Our racial identities connect many of us to our work and the world we seek to build: one without racism and racial inequality.

Affirmative action recognizes that race plays a powerful role in shaping our lives and merits consideration in admissions as one facet among hundreds of others — including class, achievement, background and opportunities.

Opponents of affirmative action falsely characterize its repeal as a move toward more meritocratic admissions. If other indicators for admissions continue to be allowed — characteristics such as legacy status, intergenerational wealth and institutional connections — children of white, wealthy elites will be favored at the expense of everybody else.

Related: OPINION: Why the upcoming affirmative action cases ignore the real issue in college admissions

Higher education institutions have long legacies of discrimination. For many years, students who looked like me would not have been considered for admission — much less allowed to serve as a student body president.

The history of racism at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill (the schools named in Blum’s Supreme Court cases) is why affirmative action is still necessary to address the legacies of institutional and interpersonal bias.

Affirmative action is no panacea for educational inequity, but it is a first step, and it recognizes that race is a fundamental piece of our identities. If the Supreme Court overturns affirmative action in 2023, it won’t just be a loss for underrepresented students of color: It will be a loss for all students.

Ranen Miao is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis. He served two terms as student body president and is passionate about ensuring access to quality education for all.

This story about affirmative action in college admissions was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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As a pediatric speech-language pathologist, I often find myself in settings where discussing Palestine, or even mentioning my identity as a Palestinian American, presents more challenges than when I worked in the field of human rights and law.

Although educational settings should encourage the free expression of identity, I find that Palestinian American educators aren’t necessarily as free as many of our colleagues. While every school is different, Palestinian teachers are often vilified, diminished or made unwelcome.

To gain more insight into our experience, I reached out to my network of Palestinian American K-12 educators.

Sawsan Jaber, the founder of Education Unfiltered Consulting and a high school English teacher in Illinois, said she was once called a terrorist by another teacher and labeled as an antisemite by colleagues simply for being Palestinian. She said she was even told by an administrator that her Palestinian identity was “offensive” to people and that she should “tone it down.”

While working with other teachers on an instructional leadership team planning an anti-bias and anti-racist curriculum, Katherine Hanna, an elementary school teacher in Massachusetts, identified herself as a person of color and began to share her perspective on the importance of teaching others about her culture. She said that another teacher confrontationally disagreed with her approach and dismissively retorted, “You’re white.”

Although emotionally taxing, these instances of discrimination do not surprise the Palestinian American teachers in my network, because many of them know what it is like to grow up marginalized in American schools. It is what inspired them to pursue a career in education.

Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi, the founder of Altair Education Consulting and a former middle school social studies teacher in Maryland, said she sought out a diverse school with a diverse staff because she “knew students of color needed a teacher of color to help them out and help them navigate the world.” Sawsan Jaber said she felt a similar responsibility, but it led her in a different direction: She intentionally chose a school district that did not have Arab teachers. “We have many Arab students in our district, and they deserve to see themselves as well,” she said.

Palestinian American teachers told me that they face the most pushback when using Palestine as an example in their curriculums, even in classes specifically about the Arab world. Many recounted how they have to spend an exorbitant amount of personal and professional time anticipating and preparing for backlash. “There are so many layers to consider, and it is exhausting because you can’t be your authentic self when presenting on a topic that means so much to you, when you know you can be censored,” Abeer Ramadan-Shinnawi said.

Even using their own experience doesn’t protect teachers from attacks. When Rita Lahoud, an elementary school Arabic language, culture and art teacher in New York, taught a unit on the olive harvest in the Levant, she said she used a personal example of tasting olive oil from her family’s trees in Palestine. Her mere usage of the word “Palestine” sent one family into a frenzy. Lahoud told me that within hours after sending out a newsletter about the unit, it was shared over 150 times and that she received a “really vile” letter accusing her of teaching misinformation because “Palestine doesn’t exist.” Lahoud expressed her frustration with this attack on her identity and lived experience, saying, “As a Palestinian teacher with a role that requires me to teach about the Arab world, I can teach comfortably and freely on any country except my own. When it comes to Palestine, that is where I have to tiptoe. I have to calculate my words and be very careful about what topics I choose.”

The expression of identity by Palestinian American teachers is often seen — and treated — as inherently threatening or too political. These attacks frequently go beyond the curriculum and become personal. Katherine Hanna had two students tell her, “My parents said where you are from doesn’t exist.” Mona Mustafa, a high school history teacher in New Jersey, said she has been assailed with questions such as: “What is Palestine? Do you mean Israel?”

Related: Refugee students languish in red tape as they seek to resume their educations

Regardless of these difficulties, many Palestinian teachers say they view ignorance about Palestinians as an opportunity. “I’m probably the only Palestinian they’ve ever spoken to,” said Mona Mustafa. “I feel like this lack of knowledge can be a good thing, since I am able to start at the base and teach students the connections between the Palestinian struggle to exist and those of other marginalized and oppressed peoples.”

Outside the classroom, Palestinian teachers say they are criticized for engaging in the same kind of anti-racism activities that other teachers are sometimes praised for. “My advocacy for Palestine is professional suicide,” Sawsan Jaber said. Even in her work as an educational consultant, she has had to refuse contracts that include “an intentional written clause that says you cannot mention Palestine or bring up anything Palestinian at all.”

Thuraya Zeidan, a high school English teacher in New Jersey, said that after she co-led a teach-in with other Arab American educators and American philosopher and public intellectual Cornel West about K-12 educators on Palestine, a pro-Israel organization called StopAntisemitism engaged in a coordinated attack against her. The organization, founded in 2018 by a social media influencer, conflates anti-Zionist advocacy with antisemitism and uses a “name and shame” approach that seeks out “consequences” for supporters of Palestinian human rights. “I know [the attack] came as a result of publicly speaking about being Palestinian,” Zeidan said. “I felt like I was facing this consequence because I was vocal. It’s just the reality of being Palestinian — especially being a visibly Muslim female Palestinian.”

“My parents said where you are from doesn’t exist.”

Teachers need to feel safe and empowered to engage in difficult discussions both in and outside the classroom. For this to happen, the teachers I spoke with emphasized that more professional support is needed. “The education community must be more intentional in seeking out representation,” Sawsan Jaber said. She noted that she is often the only visibly Muslim or Arab person in educational conferences she attends. “People are genuinely interested in learning how to do better, but there are not enough people advocating,” she said. “I went to an international conference with 18,000 people, and I was the only Arab hijabi person presenting at the conference. I attend the NCTE [National Council of Teachers of English] every year, and with 10-14,000 attendees, I am one of the very few Muslim Arab speakers.”

While teachers who want to support anti-racist education are strongly encouraged to work with and listen to diverse communities, there has been an unmistakable tendency — even in anti-racist contexts — to delegitimize, silence or deny native Palestinian voices from talking about their experiences. Thuraya Zeidan said educators should be able to teach honestly about all topics. “Too many educators face backlash and risk job security for teaching the truth,” she said.

Palestinian voices must be included in the increasingly popular conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion. Those who engage in anti-Palestinian rhetoric or silencing must also be held accountable. How can Palestinian students feel safe if they see that the teachers who look like them are not safe? How will non-Palestinian students show openness and curiosity to their Palestinian peers if they see their school silencing and devaluing teachers who are Palestinian?

All schools, especially genuinely anti-racist schools, must model the very empathy and understanding they expect their teachers to model for their students. This starts with giving Palestinian American teachers the freedom to authentically be who they are: Palestinian.

Rifk Ebeid is a Palestinian American writer, children’s book author (www.rifkbooks.com) and pediatric speech language pathologist. She recently produced “I Am From Palestine,” a children’s animation about the Palestinian American experience in K-12 schools, now screening in film festivals worldwide.

This story about Palestinian American educators was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Among the multiple groups of struggling students in America, the undocumented live in the shadows, awaiting recognition and assistance.

They are not easy to spot, and often face far more challenges than many other groups, left to navigate a difficult path to higher education without adequate assistance. Nationwide, just 2 percent of undocumented students are enrolled in postsecondary education.

When we were undergraduate students, we struggled with the immense difficulties of being undocumented. We owe many of our accomplishments to our colleges’ dream resource centers, places we heavily relied upon for academic, emotional and financial support. That’s why we are firm believers in the power of dream resource centers and believe that — with nearly half a million undocumented students in college — such centers should be on every campus.

In California, multiple universities and community colleges have dream resource centers to provide support to help undocumented students navigate and find financial aid, career advancement, legal and mental health services.

The centers help set students up for success by encouraging them to feel they are part of a school community and of society as a whole.

More than 427,000 undocumented students are enrolled in higher education nationwide

Students can meet with counselors and educational advisers via Zoom or in person by appointment or drop-in sessions. And dream centers partner with legal support teams that typically include a paralegal assistant and an accredited immigration attorney and offer free legal screenings and help with DACA applications and renewals, citizenship applications and family petitions.

This is essential aid for many undocumented students as they transition into higher education.

It was for us: We educated ourselves about laws, policies and support systems through the help of these centers.

Without these designated resource centers, information on policies that save undocumented students a lot of time, worry and money — such as the policy that allows students who attended a California high school for three years to have access to in-state tuition — would be largely unknown.

Related: California helps college students cut their debt by paying them to help their communities

More than 427,000 undocumented students are enrolled in higher education, and more than 94,000 are enrolled in California’s colleges and universities. Nationally, of those enrolled, about 19 percent  are in private colleges, such as the University of Southern California, and 90 percent are in undergraduate programs. Fewer undocumented students seek graduate degrees because there are less resources available to them.

Nearly 27,000 undocumented students in California graduate high school each year. They would likely feel more inclined to pursue higher education if they knew that every college had a community they could rely on for support.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2019 requiring all public colleges and universities to designate a dream resource liaison for each of their campuses; the bill also allows a California college campus to accept on behalf of the state any gift, bequest or donation that supports the development of a dream resource center.

Many Californian public colleges and universities now have on-campus dream resource centers, including UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, and UC Davis. But some colleges are lucky to have a dream resource liaison, if that.

New York City has Immigrant Student Success centers or offices on many of its CUNY campuses. Providing these physical entities allows for the allocation of more resources and the accommodation of the needs of more undocumented students.

Unfortunately, too many colleges and universities have yet to create such support centers, even though many students are pushing for them. On our campus, the University of Southern California, undocumented students have repeatedly requested such a space, but have been unsuccessful so far.

When we were undergraduate students, we struggled with the immense difficulties of being undocumented. We owe many of our accomplishments to our colleges’ dream resource centers.

In today’s political climate, undocumented students need that support more than ever. Undocumented students struggle every single day on college campuses nationwide.

Establishing resource centers for undocumented students at public and private universities and colleges nationwide would strongly encourage undocumented students to pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees — especially if they feel supported along the way.

And having more dream centers would benefit the entire undocumented community. The support would improve and promote mental health; the physical spaces would serve as sanctuaries at a time of ever-changing immigration laws.

Undocumented students’ burdens would be lightened, and students would have more time and energy to devote to their studies.

Higher education institutions need to foster a welcoming and supportive environment that improves the university experience and creates opportunities later in life for all “Dreamers.”

Vianey Valdez is a first-generation DACA student pursuing her Master of Social Work degree at the University of Southern California. Maria Fernanda Molina is a DACA recipient and a first-year master’s student at the USC Suzanne-Dworak Peck School of Social Work.

This story about dream resource centers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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Last fall, U.S. college enrollment fell for the third straight year, part of a significant and steady drop of nearly one million students since the start of the pandemic.

At the same time, employers, including higher education institutions, have been grappling with intense staff shortages.

We are overlooking a segment of potential students and workers who could help address both challenges: immigrants and refugees.

Millions of immigrants are either unemployed or underemployed in the U.S. today, representing a largely untapped but robust pipeline of potential learners and employees.

We just need to help them with their English skills.

Shockingly, the United States currently serves the needs of just 4 percent of adult English learners.

Both four-year universities and community colleges could have a significant role to play in the critical work of providing better access to quality English instruction. But to do so, they must reimagine what English language learning looks like inside and outside their classrooms. It’s imperative that they create personalized, career-focused educational opportunities designed around the needs of all English learners — newcomers as well as those who’ve been living and working in the U.S. for years — and the labor market.

Related: English learners in college: From marginalized to invisible

Many higher education institutions are still relying on outdated, ineffective and unscalable teaching models, despite clear evidence of alternatives that could help adult English learners acquire language more effectively and efficiently. New research explains how personalized language learning offered in relevant, real-world contexts is far more effective than grammar-driven approaches, fill-in-the-blanks exercises and the canned, scripted dialogues still commonly used in many ESL programs.

Institutions should instead focus on instruction rooted in “task-based language teaching,” an approach that organizes courses around specific tasks rather than abstract rules of grammar and conjugation. Task-based courses equip learners with the language skills they need to accomplish their goals — from enrolling in a graduate program to getting a new job to communicating with their children’s teachers.

Task-based language training dovetails with Integrated Education and Training (IET), an approach many community colleges are already using to provide skill-based support for career training programs and apprenticeships; several four-year universities and employers also offer successful models to study.

At Denver’s Emily Griffith Technical College, for example, students can use their performance in computer-based, career-aligned English courses to demonstrate readiness for certification programs in nursing and computer networking. This model allows learners to improve their English skills at their own pace so that they can directly enter the certification programs without taking a formal ESL class first.

The United States currently serves the needs of just 4 percent of adult English learners.

At the University of Maryland, frontline employees across campus have access to English language instruction designed to quickly improve communication and collaboration and open up new employment and learning opportunities on campus and beyond.

And, finally, higher education institutions can partner with companies to offer employer-based English programs alongside other educational benefits. A growing number of companies already provide such training. Employees at the Alabama-based Taziki’s Mediterranean Café, for example, receive personalized English instruction designed for hospitality workers, many of whom are also immigrants and refugees.

These models are all ripe for replication. With the two-fold challenge of declining college enrollment and ongoing labor shortages, it’s never been more urgent for institutions to find novel ways to attract new students and help a new pool of qualified candidates enter the workforce.

If community colleges and four-year universities work to reimagine English instruction, they can drive enrollment, address worker shortages and unlock career opportunities for new Americans — improving the lives of millions of workers and the economy as a whole.

Katie Brown is founder of EnGen, a Certified B Corporation that has partnered with community colleges, universities and employers to deliver personalized, contextualized, mobile-first, career-aligned English language instruction to immigrants, refugees and speakers of other languages.

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