Thread: Tuscon AZ: Hispanic men will get paid for school

Tucson Region

Hispanic men will get paid for school
PCC plan provides $1,500 to those who pass semester

By Becky Pallack
Arizona Daily Star
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 09.24.2009

Pima Community College plans to pay Hispanic men to stay in school because their graduation rates are so low.

Under a new program, called Gain, 500 men will be paid $1,500 each for successfully completing classes and utilizing some support services.

Three private foundations are funding the program. Public tax money won't be used.
The idea is to turn around low retention and graduation rates among low-income Hispanic men, said Lorraine Morales, assistant vice chancellor.

Only 11 percent of Hispanic men who enroll at PCC finish their degree program within three years. The overall graduation rate is 23 percent. Another 8 percent in each group transfer to other Arizona colleges.

MDRC, a New York-based nonprofit research company, is studying similar programs at community colleges in New York, Ohio, New Mexico and California. It invited PCC to participate and brought in two private funders: the Phoenix-based Helios Education Foundation and the Detroit-based Kresge Foundation.

MDRC wants to better understand what helps struggling students persist and graduate. The company will issue a report in 2012 that it hopes will influence how scholarships are designed in the future.

Students who volunteer for the Gain program will get $150 when they enroll in classes. They'll get another $150 mid-semester if they've stayed in school and used some support services, such as program orientations, tutoring, career counseling or time management and financial literacy workshops.

When they pass their classes, they'll receive the $1,200 balance.
Gain will start with 50 students in the spring, build to 300 in the fall and 500 the following spring.

An additional 500 Hispanic men will be asked to participate without receiving money, as a control group. In total, about a quarter of the Hispanic men on Pima's campuses will be a part of the study.

Poor preparation a problem
Could the scholarships really keep men from dropping out?

The payments "most definitely" would lead Francisco Valenzuela to stay in school, he said. The sophomore music student said Gain is a good idea and would help him pay for college on top of federal Pell grants and student loans.

When it comes to low graduation rates, part of the problem lies in preparation, said Morales, assistant PCC vice chancellor .

"This particular population doesn't really have a solid understanding of what the requirements are to be a college student," she said.

Another part of the problem is cultural, she said."A lot of the time they're hesitant to ask for help because the feeling is they should be able to take care of it themselves," Morales said.

Valenzuela agreed. "Asking for help, from a man's point of view, is degrading," he said, speaking generally.

But he said he learned to use the college's tutoring center, signed up for a work-study program and is researching transfer program options.

Kristy Valenzuela, his sister and a freshman nursing student, was disappointed the Gain incentives won't be offered to Hispanic women, who work as hard or harder than men, she said.

Julio Cammarota, an associate professor in the Mexican-American Studies & Research Center at the University of Arizona, said the program sounds promising.

"I don't think there's anything cultural going on that's preventing them from being successful in school. It's a resource problem," said Cammarota, who studies the relationship between Latino culture and academic achievement. He directs a high school program that also received funds from Helios.

Course work that helps Latinos validate their culture and support centers where they "feel like they have a home" are key, he said.

Contact reporter Becky Pallack at bpallack@azstarnet.com or 807-8012.
160 Comments on this story

http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/310337

Quote:
"Three private foundations are funding the program. Public tax money won't be used."

However, I did not know that our public institutions were allowed to sponsor and/or administrate (at public expense) any programs which favored one group over another or excluded any group based on race, creed, color, sex, religion, or country of national origin.

An entire separate "Developmental Program" paid for at public expense was not enough for those who needed to strengthen their academic skills and get counseling to place them on a "college track"?

And how many of these Hispanic men are illegal?